I am very alarmed by what is happening in the world right now—not just the crisis but our complicated reactions to it. How much truth is enough? How much is too much? We sense as a nation, by and large, certain realities. We accept proscriptions that in less harrowing times we would probably have been deadlocked over. Consider the role of the press in covering breaking events. Bush said to the American people a long time ago, “There will be things we simply cannot tell you.” With startling alacrity we adapted as a nation to this reality. We did understand. Can anyone imagine this consensus if Johnson and Nixon had tried to float that concept during Viet Nam? Even in the 1990 confrontation with Iraq, the press howled with indignation at the way Norman Schwartzkopff and Colin Powell kept their hands clamped on the information spigot. This was the first censored war for America, and by comparison, our current conflict is not simply censored. It is largely blacked out.
And we appear as a nation to understand. We are willing to trust. When future historians seek to find evidence of our national resolve, of our patriotism, they might begin here—with our willingness to place our trust in Bush and Powell. Many observers have commented on the way Bush has risen to the challenge that history has imposed upon him. And the observation is unassailably true. But we should not overlook a parallel transcendence that is occurring in the American people. The sea change is palpable. We are rising together as one in this nation. We are closing rank. Like Bush, we are discovering that we are up to the task.
This is heady stuff, truly inspiring. And coming after fifty years of lassitude, disenchantment, venality, and corruption in our highest public officials—one has to say: “Who would have thunk?”
Consider the stagnation: a demythologized Kennedy, in which Camelot became Peyton Place; the moral plummet of Lyndon Johnson during Viet Nam; the tawdry debasement of Watergate, and not just Nixon but Agnew, Mitchell, Martha Mitchell, Dean, Liddy, Erlichman, on and on. Reagan? Bush #1? Clinton? We are too close to these presidencies historically to know for certain how they will settle out. Still, it is hard to imagine future generations being exultantly uplifted by them. Some would argue that Reagan broke the mold, and he may wind up with more mixed reviews. But I don’t think history will proclaim his presidency as the next renaissance.
And now, the ascendance of George Bush, Jr. Who would have thunk? Of course this all could change. And of course he must continue to prove himself worthy of our trust. But who can deny the resurgence of resolve and strength that we all feel right now in this nation. We feel a power growing and know instinctively that it is moral.
Why then, am I alarmed? I think it is the look I see in everyone’s eyes. I see the resolve and courage there, sure. But I also see terror. Perhaps this is inevitable. But why do we not even acknowledge it? That makes me very queasy. When I broached with several people my anticipated focus here, one person warned me sternly not to “stir up panic.” By stating the obvious? That we are all scared shitless? That troubles me. It feels like a taboo.
I see people going about their routines as usual, as though there were absolutely nothing wrong. We have 100,000 troops in the Middle East. CNN discusses Armageddon. Bobbie Battista takes Doomsday predictions from the viewers. I strain to see into Saddam’s face. But I can’t find the depth of field. The actual man is every bit as two dimensional as the propaganda posters of the effigy. He looks like a vacuous thug, a dullard. He looks bored. And that scares me ten times over.
I’m scared to death. CNN publishes polls confirming that five billion of us feel more or less identically in that regard. . But no one’s saying a damned thing. I want to hurl myself against the plate glass windows outside of Tavern on the Green and scream, “Please, people, talk to me! It really is Doomsday! We actually are entering Armageddon!”
Am I the only one who feels these things? Why are you all just staring at me and not saying anything?
Roosevelt’s famous remark comes to mind here—“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” This must, I imagine, still be true. And we know quite well that terrorism depends on fear for its effectiveness. The problem is: we are not sure we know that this new terrorism is yet. Information is disseminated so rapidly now. How does that alter the equation? I don’t think that we know. Bin Laden appears on the brink of crossing another once unthinkable moral boundary—unleashing some kind of nightmare on tens of thousands of people. Biological? Chemical?...Nuclear? Who knows?
And so, we hold our breaths.
And hold them…
And hold them…
We know that there is no alternative, of course. But it is harrowing. And, while I don’t know about you, I feel bin Laden’s menace growing in that void of helpless uncertainty. I feel him very much the way I experience the Hitchhiker. He is not looming anywhere imminently in front of me. Yet this is precisely when I sense him with the most dread. I feel him hovering around my ears, the back of my scalp, my neck.
If I am correct that others feel similarly unnerved, then I think we may be encountering a new dimension of terrorism—terror of terrorism. And if that is true, then I wonder if denying our fears is the best strategy. True, it would be optimal perhaps to imagine that we could simply march thorough undaunted. But is that realistic? Mightn’t it be better to permit ourselves to say out loud—“Shit! I’m scared!” I vote “yes.”
And no, I’m not sure I’m right. But I’ll go on my hunch. I think it’s time to be less terrified of terror. It’s time to throw open the curtains on our inexpressible nightmares. They can, I think, only rise to proportions that will destroy us if we do not expose them to the light of day. For terror, like mushrooms, like the Hitchhiker, seems to thrive best in the dark.
We are worried about death, and about the grim and unimaginable nature of that death. I once would have quoted a few passages from the writings of Ernest Becker at this point. Becker was a twentieth century philosopher who lived in Switzerland. His most important book was The Denial of Death. He believed we are compelled to deny our own mortality, absolutely encoded to deny it. Denial of death, he said, simply is. Yet, because we do deny death, we suffer enormously. In human experience, Becker felt, the challenge of grasping our own extinction was too formidable—a cognitive leap across a chasm of understanding that is simply too wide. Yet, he added, this has hardly discouraged us from trying. Indeed many people feel compelled to devote their energy to little else. Death is, after all, the most profound and ineluctable mystery we face. And, in a way, when we are able to comprehend it, even a little, even only fleetingly, we experience this not as morose or life-denying. It feels strangely life-affirming, or even ecstatic, an emotion similar to awe.
Jackson Browne, in For a Dancer:
“I don’t know what happens when people die,
Can’t seem to grasp it no matter how hard I try.
It’s like a song I can hear
Playing right in my ear
That I can’t understand,
Yet can’t help listening."
So—is the Hitchhiker death then? In a way, yes. But more precisely he is a symbol that elicits our ambivalence and terror of death. He is, I think, the face of terrorism itself. What really makes him so frightening is the tension between our dread of knowing what he brings and our compulsion to know.
…can’t understand,
Yet can’t help listening.
“Fascination with the abomination.” –Joseph Conrad.
And let’s not forget the ambivalent primates in the opening sequence of 2001. Remember the conflict they felt as they approached the obelisk?
I say, instead of hitting the accelerator every time we glimpse him, maybe we should slam on our brakes. Maybe we should pull off the highway and throw open our doors. Not just one of us in isolation, either, but hundreds of us, thousands of us. For the hell of it, let’s all turn on our lights, too. On bright. And that honking I hear? That’s all right, too. Let there be a blare of horns.
I wonder—how fearsome would the Hitchhiker be then? And this is why I reject relying on silence.
Long ago, I would have told you that I thought Ernest Becker had figured the matter out, for once and for all. Death, the Grim Reaper, the Hitchhiker? All one and the same. A unity. Good to have death out of the way as a conceptual nuisance. Next question…
Am I as sanguine now?
What do you think?
Since September 11, I find that I am no longer certain of anything—you name it, and I no longer know what I think. This is true...But then again, so’s that. Nothing seems solid anymore. The bedrock of our entire security disintegrated on September 11th. How was this possible? America is the most powerful nation in the history of the world. Yet, all it took for us to realize that we are out there helpless, totally exposed, was an airplane high-jacking and a dozen bacterially tainted envelopes. Please understand—I am not attempting to diminish the enormity of September 11. But I am saying that this crash of a commuter plane plays in an endless feedback loop of memory against the backdrop of humanity’s fear of total extinction. Is this all that was necessary to topple the first dominoes in a chain reaction leading ultimately to civil anarchy? If so, who in the hell needed plutonium?
The wrenching away of our sense of security came suddenly, and it was profound. One reality ceased. A vastly more ominous one took over. Nothing would ever remotely be the same. We saw instantly that our illusions of omnipotence, so long kept in tact, had actually required dazzling gymnastics of determined self-deception. As the mortar and steel reigned down on us from the World Trade Center, there we all stood, dumbfounded. Our jaws were agape. Our arms hung slack at our sides. We released our collective grips on rice-paper parasols of sheer illusion. We had held them so confidently over our heads only moments before. I think we must have felt like imbeciles. We knew, anyhow, that we would never hold up one of those things ever again. And, I think, the truly pathetic nature of our constructions made us feel even more unprotected. As well they should have. The anti-anti-anti missiles of the Cold War? The S.T.A.R. Wars Defense Initiative (remember?). Tomahawk-Cruise missiles? It had all been a ruse.
In ten seconds, we grasped that fifty years had gotten us nowhere in our quest to convince ourselves that anyone could be safe in a world-wide conflagration. And while I grow weary of muddled-headed remarks in the media about bin Laden's preternatural powers, I must also admit that the attack did have a diabolical cleverness. A jury-rigged low-tech sucker punch was all it took. A cheap shot had shattered our trillion dollar defense budget and incinerated our make-believe delusions of protection... Now I lay me down to sleep...I pray the S.A.C. my soul to keep...Not! Sure, we had cruise missiles, stealth bombers, and laser-guided smart bombs. These--and absolutely no place to run to, no place to hide, no shelter at all. We had nuclear weapons pointed at every square inch of the planet. We could shoot down incoming missiles with sophisticated interceptors that snatched the weapons in midair. Yet we were helpless to stave off panic when a bacterially contaminated envelope showed up in a Manhattan post-office. My name is Ozymandius! Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair...(not).
I want to be crystal clear here. I am not mounting a pacifist campaign. Far from it, actually. I feel queasy as I say this, but I am convinced that inaction on our part now will spell certain doom. I am 100% behind a full-scale attack of our enemies if it comes to an attack. But, I do have grave concerns about the power of our technology alone when many of us show signs of personal cowardice, dwindling morality, and alarming narcissism. As our fates play out on a grand planetary scale, I worry--when was the last time that we looked long and hard in the mirror? Do we, as a nation, have the mettle to prevail? Mettle, not metal... The answer, I would contend, may lie not in our pageantry, but in our capacity to be human. To come forward one by one and say, “Yes, I am afraid.” “Me, too.” “Count me in.’ “Roger that.”
Does anyone imagine that this could possibly be perceived as a display of weakness?
Ah--and ain’t The Bomb just grand then?
The horror of extinction. I do not for a moment think that Rod Serling had this on his mind when he directed The Hitchhiker. But thinking about Armageddon in this way, up close and personal, does confer upon it a certain personal imprimatur, doesn’t it? The macrocosm of Doomsday may just be too overwhelming to grasp. Anthrax spores, on the other hand, just a few of them coasting the inside of a plain envelope—that sends meteor showers of recognition down our vertebral columns. The hitchhiker doffs his hat…
(Part III to follow)
In 2000, David lost his only son to Parental Alienation Syndrome. "Before my divorce in 2000," he says, "I had never been charged with anything worse than a speeding ticket...They threw me in jail and dragged me into a courtroom handcuffed, weeping, and manacled to a chain. The proceeding required less than ten minutes. I never saw my son again... I'm no 'expert.' I'm just one more broken man. I hope to do something positive with what is left of me. My resume is one line long--I am a father who lost the most beloved person in his life--my son. I do what I can now, not because I'm noble, but because I have no choice. I try to do the right thing because I sense that this is my only hope. My ideals are all that, in the end, they couldn't take from me. I refuse to accept a world where hatred routinely prevails over love, and where the destruction of our children is viewed as simply the cost of doing business. I'm no saint. I'm dazed and terrified. I'm not sure what "God" even means, and I'm sure as hell no hero. But I will stand up to any legal system, hateful mob, or totalitarian regime whose code of ethics is built around cruelty, power, and lying; and whose only god is money."
