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It seemed surreal at first, and in many ways it still does. The twin towers of the World Trade Center and the bulk of the Pentagon were mere images that I had seen only on television and movie screens; they were not real places in the sense that Mt. Elbert or our state capitol is a real place where I have walked and shaken hands with people.
For the first hour or two of Tuesday-morning attachment to Cable News Network and its competitors, I felt like one of those people who believed that the 1969 moon landing never happened, that it was all part of some made-for-television spectacle designed to delude a gullible public.
It finally started to seem real when the cameras got to people on the street who were fleeing from south Manhattan.
They weren't in military uniform and they weren't masters of the universe in their dress-for-success power outfits. They were in T-shirts and blue jeans, halter tops and shorts, with tattoos and nose rings and shaved heads and purple hair. They came in all known human colors and they spoke in accents that ranged from nearly incomprehensible to the Queen's English.
By noon, it sank in. They were my countrymen, and they had been attacked. These were real places with real people, people who sweated and swore and brawled and made babies and went about their lives, just like the rest of us. And they had been there. It wasn't a too-many-special-effects-and-no-plot Grade B disaster movie any more.
But maybe this seemed unreal because the talking heads were so much more sensible than they had been in the past. Not long after the Oklahoma City bomb exploded in 1995, the experts were assuring us that this was definitely the work of foreign terrorists. This time around, they weren't jumping to conclusions.
Nor was anyone saying this happened because the Ten Commandments weren't posted in classrooms. No Colorado politician got any airtime by blaming radical environmentalists who threatened national security by opposing oil exploration in national parks so we had to import it from the Mideast where the money flowed to terrorists.
But watch long enough, and the stupidity will start to
flow. The most galling phrase was loss of
innocence.
My house sits on land that was once claimed by the crown of Spain, as a result of bloody warfare led by conquistadors in the 16th century. It was then claimed by Mexico as a result of a revolution in 1821. In 1836, the Republic of Texas, born of bloodshed, claimed the same territory. The United States of America send soldiers west in 1846 to take this land in a sanguinary struggle with Mexico. More soldiers came to expel the Utes during the following 35 years. After that there were labor wars at the mines, mills and railroads.
Just where in this chronicle of violence was this
innocence
that the talking heads said we had
heretofore enjoyed?
Just where in America were there people who felt totally serene and secure before last Tuesday? Where were those people who didn't feel any need to worry about trigger-happy police kicking in the wrong door? Or the people who trusted their political institutions when a court went out of its way to interfere with a presidential election? Maybe there are such people who felt secure and innocent before Sept. 11, but I sure don't know any of them.
But even if they're annoying, the talking heads must be
watched, especially now that they're applying spin, which
comes in two forms: act of terrorism
and act of
war.
If the conventional wisdom decides on act of
terrorism,
then we're supposed to hold our heads high
and go on about our lives, to show that the terrorists
failed in their goal of disrupting our country. Those
responsible will be arrested and tried through the normal
channels of justice, or something close to it.
But if the commentary begins to settle on act of
war,
then we're supposed to respond in precisely the
opposite way: not normal life, but mobilization for a long
war against invisible foes.
Civil liberties are generally curtailed during wartime. The same people who ran for office promising a smaller and less intrusive government will be beating the drums for internal passports and the monitoring of all personal communication.
Those believed responsible for the initial attack, as well as anyone with any connection with them, will be bombed into oblivion. And of course there will be casualties on both sides, but presumably the talking heads who want war will find a way to be spared.
So as much as I'd like to ignore the talking heads, we've got to watch them. Whether they spin this as terrorism or war will make a big difference.
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