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Bubblehead America The terrorists watching last week’s financial market turmoil might conclude that if they are sufficiently patient, we will destroy ourselves without their help. Nevertheless, I’m confident they are eager to trump 9/11. Personally, I felt a bit out of place with all the ceremonial remembrance of 9/11 on the recent anniversary, the symbolic reading of the casualties’ names and ringing of bells, re-emergence of flags everywhere and talking heads on TV summing up for those unable to think for themselves what it all means. On my own street, mine was one of the houses without a flag affixed to my mailbox post. But don’t mistake my attitude for any lack of patriotism; I just have an aversion to ceremony. I didn’t attend either of my two college graduation ceremonies – just mail the diploma, thank you. I skip ceremony at every opportunity, just a personal quirk that impedes my appreciation for symbolic displays. I suppose one of the things those ceremonies can do is remind us that numbers don’t tell the story. There were 2,954 9/11 casualties, not counting the 19 highjackers who don’t deserve to be counted, but each one was someone’s son or daughter, husband or wife, mother or father, sister or brother. I yell irrationally at my TV when talking heads refer to 9/11 as a “tragedy,” as if I could get it through their skull that a tragedy is a horrific accident but 9/11 was an “atrocity,” a vicious attack by lunatics who have been dedicated to our destruction for a long time. On 9/11 my wife Julie called from her office. I was working at my desk at home and she told me to turn on the TV. Like you, I was transfixed watching the second plane hit the second tower, and my heart broke, just like yours, when people jumped to their deaths and when the towers crumbled. Before that day was over, I wondered if the events of 9/11 would finally wake up the Bubbleheads in America. I use that term to describe people who have lived their lives under the bubble of protection and plenty in this country, and who believe somehow our way of life is the natural order of things, that the finely-tuned balance of civilization they enjoy is their birthright. Bubbleheads have no clue that our society is fragile, built and defended at great cost, but can be turned on its head in an instant. Bubbleheads have trouble believing there are truly evil people, those who cannot be convinced to get along by holding hands in a circle and singing a few verses of Kumbaya, people who would gladly cut our children’s throats and praise Allah as their lifeblood seeped into the dirt. Bubbleheads don’t serve in our military, oblivious to what it takes to protect our country; that’s someone else’s job. Bubbleheads take for granted that the lights come on when we flip a switch, the telephone lines always work, clean water always comes out of our taps and we can always buy gas for our cars even if the price is too high, oblivious to the fact the fragile layers of our world work only because we live in peaceful cooperation with one another. Bubbleheads don’t understand our civilized comfort could be shattered by serious interruption of foreign oil, biological attack that overwhelmed our health care system, attacks on our electrical infrastructure or a hundred other possibilities. Think for a few minutes how our lives would be changed if electrical service were down in major cities for an extended period: no way to pump gas into your car, nothing but canned goods at the store until the shelves are empty even if they remained open and accepted cash, no new deliveries because factories are down, no way to get to work but the office is closed, commerce is stopped and they can’t print your paycheck but the mail doesn’t run to deliver it anyway and the banks are closed. Pretty soon your cash is gone, even cell phones don’t work, the water tap is dry, the refrigerator is empty and toilets don’t flush because nobody is at work making the interlocking pieces of our civilization function, and there is no newspaper or TV to keep us informed. How long before bottled water is more precious than greenbacks? How long before the matches run out and you have to learn to make a fire with two sticks? I’m not trying to be alarmist, just pointing out the American bubble of protection and plenty is breakable, not the natural order of things, and many of us have long wondered when Bubblehead America would wake up to the fact our way of life is a target. Islamic lunatics have long been at war with us whether we recognize it or not. Consider just a selected few events prior to 9/11: April 1983: 17 dead at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. October 1983: 241 dead at the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. December 1983: 5 dead at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait. April 1984: 18 dead near a U.S. airbase in Spain. September 1984: 16 dead at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. December 1984: 2 dead on a plane hijacked to Tehran. June 1985: 1 killed on a plane hijacked to Beirut. December 1988: 270 killed in Pan Am flight 103 at Lockerbie, Scotland. January 1990: an Egyptian freethinker killed in Tucson, Ariz. November 1990: a Jewish leader killed in New York. January 1993: two CIA staff killed outside agency headquarters in Langley, Va. February 1993: 6 people killed at the World Trade Center. August 1998: 224 dead at the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. October 1999: 217 passengers killed on an EgyptAir flight near New York City. October 2000: 17 dead on the USS Cole in Yemen. These are just a few high points; anyone willing to do their homework will find that terror attacks since the 1960s worldwide, nearly all of them by Islamic nut-cases make a very long list. 9/11 was one small penetration of our bubble. Many attacks have been interdicted since then while some Bubbleheads hold their eyes closed tightly and, taking their lead from our media, point the finger of blame at their primary enemies, George Bush and Dick Cheney, while making excuses for the Islamic fanatics plotting our destruction. But don’t get me started on politics. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when we all felt unified and American flags flew everywhere, I wondered, “How long will it last? How long until America nods slowly back to sleep in the warm fuzzy comfort under the bubble?” I was reminded then, just as I was this Sept. 11, of the words of Adlai Stevenson, who said true patriotism is “... not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.” I wonder how many Americans would pass that test? Even during the post-9/11 patriotic frenzy, I knew we were in trouble when our president frequently cautioned America that Islam is a religion of peace. Muslims in America worried publicly about profiling but somehow stopped short of condemning the attackers and committing to defend America against Islamic terrorists. I knew we were in bigger trouble when Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said the U.S. would not profile Middle-Eastern young men at airports, even though Middle-Eastern young men are the source of nearly all terrorist acts. Profiling, when done properly, is just common sense. If an innocent black man is pulled over and questioned in a high-crime part of town where 90 percent of crimes are committed by black men, should he be angry? Well, yes, but he should be angry at those who commit the crimes, not at the police who use their head. But at our nation’s airports since 9/11, we have practiced institutionalized stupidity as we select passengers for extra scrutiny at random, frisking grandma while ignoring Mohammed, willfully blind but congratulating ourselves on American sensitivity. If there were a manual on national suicide, surely this would be one of the key chapters. We are at war with Islamic lunatics even though so much of America is asleep to that fact. That is what concerns me daily, and perhaps you will forgive me if I don’t get motivated by ceremonies or memorials when an anniversary date rolls around. Meanwhile, I think I hear the rumble of snoring, the sound of half my country lulled back to sleep, relaxed and reassured that the bubble they were born to will provide everlasting protection. God help us all. login to post comments | Terry Garlock's blog
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