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Friday, July 18, 2003
Living in fear
"Everything has changed"
Ask the Europeans or the people of South America, Africa, the Middle East, or anywhere. There has always been terrorism, whether it goes by the name of Crusade, pogrom, or land reform movement. People have been slaughtered for their beliefs, their lack of beliefs, or just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But when it happened here, a great many Americans were shocked to see that they weren't bulletproof. That bad things don't just happen to villagers in Peru or Jews in Warsaw. Terrorism came home and we are fast seeing the kind of people that we are. We lash out at our supposed enemies because we think everyone is out to get us and, hey, it makes us feel better. It makes us feel safe like there is a beginning and end to "evil", that if we can just slaughter one more "other" we can go back to our sun-dappled days of blissful ignorance, county fairs, and Sunday softball games. In the meantime, our dark meantime, we indulge ourselves in our paranoia and our fears and our belief that somehow we are special and that what is happening to us is an isolated moment in the history of man, and "why me...why me?", let's go hunker down in the basement and, yeah, that guy on the TV sounds about right, let's go kill some more folks who are looking at us funny and please God don't let me die tonight or tomorrow or ever.
This is what I see when I read crap like this:
Blair’s speeches sound like the work of a keen and fierce intellect that has come to a certain conclusion by logical deduction. His heart has been informed by his head. In the case of Bush I think it’s the other way around. I suppose that’s the difference between being the leader of a nation that was attacked, and the leader of a nation whose ally was assaulted. What I found most invigorating about the speech was the tenor - the tune, not the notes. It was a speech sung in the key of War, and reminded us that we are just midway through the end of the beginning. If that.
[snip...]
When I hear a speech like Blair’s, I have to check the calendar. And the calendar is usually wrong. It may say 2/23, or 7/16, or 4/30. But I know what the date is, and the date is 9/12. It’s going to be 9/12 for a long time to come.
Nothing changed for Lileks on 9/11. He was a coward before the first plane hit.
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