When a homeless teen gets pregnant, one of the things social workers have to contend with is her belief that the child will give her life focus and direction. This is not to say that homeless teens shouldn't have babies, though obviously there's an argument to be made that many of them should not. The point is that people whose lives lack focus and direction will sometimes commit themselves to a course of action that is harmful to themselves and others, in order to get focus and direction. You can see something similar in Vietnam vets, who talk about hating the war every minute they were there but not being able to let it go once they were back. The world is full of people who have very little to live for. Some of them go looking for ways to make their lives harder, so they can define themselves by that conflict. Some of them are placed in the conflict by circumstances beyond their control, and can't let go of it after the fact.
Those people you always hear about— those "lives of quiet desperation" types; the experience of having their actions matter in some way is like a drug to them.
There are about 300 million people in the United States, spread out over millions of square miles. We have the most powerful military on the planet. We spend more on defense than any other country in the world, by an order of magnitude. Our civilian population is armed. We have an extensive and well-armed law enforcement apparatus. We have layered telecommunications capabilities; radio, telephone, telegraph, satellite uplinks, internet, intranets, short wave, and cell phones. Every state maintains a National Guard. We have more resources in our reserves than any nation has ever dreamed of.
What Abraham Lincoln said a hundred and forty years ago is true today; no foreign power can conquer the United States. The Soviet Union, at the peak of its power, could never have subjugated the U.S.; their military options for a direct conflict were limited to the destruction of the planet. There isn't a nation on the face of the Earth today that could duplicate that threat. The age of global Armageddon is over. And nothing short of global Armageddon can realistically threaten the security of the United States of America.
The September 11th attacks took a terrible toll. Thousands of people died in a heartbeat. But that's still only one person for every 100,000 people in the country. If there was a September 11th style attack once a month for a year, the average American would still have better odds of being killed by air pollution.
The thing that used to freak me out about Michele's blog was he supposed normalcy. Her supposed reasonability. How she swung over from the left to the right. How popular her perspective is on the internet. But after this latest rant of hers, I've actually had something of an epiphany; Michele's just bored. Her enormous readership? Bored. Bored people with empty lives, trying to give their existence a little meaning by standing around screaming that the world has changed— everything's different! There's a terrible threat on the horizon! Everybody must band together—
So these poor bastards will feel less alone.
And, finally, I cease to care. Ah well.
Next!
the exact same can be said for the other side of the fence (take the "Bush Knew" people, for example) - it's exactly the same battle cry on both sides, they just have different visions about what they think the warpath should be.
obviously everyone's - and not just in the US - world perspectives changed on 9/11. things DID change. it IS all different now. but things change all the time. part of what bothers me about the way that sentiment is expressed by many, and, many, many other people around the world find it unnerving as well, is the assumption that *it was the most awful thing to happen, ever, and the world should stop and recognize that* meanwhile, other countries and cultures around the world are living day-to-day civil wars - some of them heavily supported and funded by the US, and have suffered much greater tragedies since 9/11 that few americans seem to care much about.
Posted by: leblanc at July 23, 2004 03:27 PMI just don't buy the "everything changed" bs. I mean, does anyone *aside* from me remember living in daily fear of having the entire country destroyed by nukes in a matter of hours... a fear that was very real (we were told) and reinforced every singly day in news, education, and entertainment media? All this bullshit that we used to think our Oceans protected us didn't apply when I was growing up in the eighties just waiting for ICBMs to kill us all.
Posted by: David Grenier at July 23, 2004 07:36 PMjoshua
i think there may be version of conquer that your argument is missing. maybe conquer isn't the right word at all. i agree that there is a group of people that think UBL and his boys are going to be para-trooping over the US sometime soon. these people are baked, no doubt.
but there is a significant impact that well placed terror attacks can have on the US. wide-spread fear of attacks can effect a number of sectors, entertainment, travel to name a few, or wall street as a whole. the 9/11 attacks had an effect on the recent recession. continued attacks could promote a feeling of uncertainty and go along way to handcuff the economy.
i'm not sure i am disagreeing with you here. the us vs. them rhetoric is pedantic. but it does serve as a wake-up call to the greater public.
Posted by: seed at July 26, 2004 11:35 AMSeed:
I think you're splitting hairs. A significant impact on our quality of life— entertainment and travel, for god's sake —is not a threat to our national security. Enron did a lot more damage to our economy than 9/11 did, and I don't see anyone laying precision bombs in on Ken Lay's house. Fuck's sake, he'll do minimum security time if he does any at all.
The United Nations charter does not cite reduced air fare revenues as a justification for war.
but it does serve as a wake-up call to the greater public.
This statement implies so many presuppositions that I fundamentally disagree with, it's hard to know where to start. Suffice to say, for the time being, that I think the collapsing towers probably provided as much "wake-up" as most people needed.
oh c'mon, the impact on the transportation industry was significant enough to call for a $15 billion gov't bail-out. (somebody will probably call me on that number, it's close.) there was a direct correlation to 9/11. as far as the airline industry's hand in the recession, i'd say it was an even third of the pie, shared with the dot-com burst and enron. sure the econ wasn't in great shape before the attacks, but how can anybody tell what amount of significance can be attributed to each incident?
my point is that additional attacks, across several sectors, could go along way to handicapping the US economy. by entertainment industry, i don't have jo-lo and co. in mind. i'm think along the lines of an attack at a sporting event. a couple well placed attacks could do a good job of knocking down the entertainment industry, and those that it supports.
my beef with your post is that, although ASV sports opinions that are inflatulated (my new word, it can also be used in reference to moore), there's an opinion that the conlfict with global terrorism is more complicated than us vs. them. It's not necessarily about being conquered. it's about being influenced by terrorists, whether it's how you live, where you work or how you vote. i think you're paying ASV too much service by considering the opinions expressed there as relevant. but, as i think back here, that IS what this site is for.
Posted by: seed at July 27, 2004 07:27 AM"the experience of having their actions matter in some way is like a drug to them."
HELL YEAH you better avoid making your actions matter you might get addicted.. and drug addicts get imprisoned you know..
(sorry but i found this particular line a very weak spot in yer article)