And so it goes…Sullivan's dish
And so it goes…Sullivan's dish (03-14, “Bush vs. Israel”) points out the subtleties I miss…like I said, I'm just sick about everything over there…and tired…no, the Palestinians shouldn't do that…those bad things…with the exploding in the cafés and so forth…yes, Israel can defend itself…and should…but gosh, don't you wish they would have thought about this when they decided to build settlements in occupied lands? Wouldn't it have been nice if Ben-Gurion and the rest of the Zionist visionaries had come up with something other than ‘relocation' as a plan for dealing with the folks who lived on the land they coveted? Wouldn't it have been wonderful if the British hadn't promised the land to both the Jews and the Arabs in exchange for support during WWII? There is the stink of primitive monkey evil all over that swatch of wretched earth…that miserable dusty corner of the globe where rocks and walls are holy, and worth shedding blood upon…that desert that breeds madmen and prophets with honey-drenched beards and locusts stuck in their teeth.
Meanwhile, Horowitz comes up with this cheery tidbit. We have truly dangerous, hateful traitors in our midst. Perhaps those who believe that the events of September 11 were anything but morally repulsive need to be taken to the top of the Sears Tower in Chicago, soaked with jet fuel, set on fire, and thrown off. On the way down, they can contemplate the justice of their punishment, and decide whether those office workers and firemen deserved to die, their bodies aflame, crushed into spaces no thicker than a sheet of paper, or rendered unidentifiable by the impact of a 90-story fall onto plaza concrete.
My first response, on 9-13-01, was to write a tirade about the American failure to uphold justice throughout the world. There is a theological perspective that simply states: there is no perfect Justice here, because this is an imperfect world. Perfect Justice is only found in the hereafter. Unlike me, these people—Sontag, Chomsky and the like—do not have the excuse of naiveté to explain their continued refusal to acknowledge the inherent absence of good in the acts of 9/11. These are educated people who firmly believe that flying airliners into skyscrapers is a reasonable act.
We have sunk so deeply into the swamps of relativism that life itself has become meaningless in the face of all-encompassing Theory. It is only since wiping the dust of buildings and bodies from my brow that I have come to realize that, even in the absence of God, simple reverence for life commands us to condemn atrocity. The fact that the United States government often fails to perfectly uphold such principles everywhere, at all times, is not an indicator of complete moral failure. It is only an indicator of imperfection.
Think of it this way: elsewhere in the world, women fight for the basic right to participate in government, to drive, to wear the clothes they want, to leave the house unaccompanied, and to have their genitals left unmutilated. Here in America, women fight for the final 25 cents needed to bring their average wages up to par with their male counterparts. Elsewhere in the world, speaking out against the teachings of religious authorities results in exile, persecution, and death. Here in America, the Church must defend itself against just criticism when its priests commit acts of sexual predation upon children. Elsewhere in the world, the people have no recourse to information other than that provided by their governments or their religious figures. Here in America, we have so much information, from so many different sources, that the only determiner of proffered truth is the reasonableness of the proposition, the argument used to convey it, the information that backs it up, and the intelligence of the person contemplating it.
What we're doing in America is working out the kinks and details in a relatively new system of government that is the freest the world has ever seen. Much of the rest of the world hasn't even decided whether everyone deserves to live or not.
The very process of criticism, even that leveled by such moral idiots as Sontag and Chomsky, is an indicator of the superiority of our system of governance and of those like it. The very fact that we don't imprison, torture and kill these people, but allow them to have their say, however they can manage to get it out, supports the open nature of our society. What is their objection? That the ubiquity of the “party line” promulgated by Standard Media, Inc. is equivalent to their repression? Get with the program, people! You are not the majority. The fact that very few people outside of your own precious, utopian revolutionary circles agree with you is simply an indicator of your elitism and the pragmatic common sense of the vast majority of the population.
Yes, the United States has done evil things, in the service of questionable ideas. But here, at least, our government hides such acts, knowing that, if made public, the citizenry would cry aloud in moral revulsion. That indicates that there is at least an awareness that such acts are wrong. Compare that with the joy in the Muslim world at the deaths of innocents, the pride with which Palestinian mothers strap toy explosives to their children, the celebration of suicide.
Our government may do shameful things. But at least we have a sense of shame.
