I didn’t seriously think it would happen in my lifetime. Of course you always have those doomsday scenarios in the back of your mind, but it’s different when it starts to become real.
I have lots of friends who are German, all of whom are far too young to remember when that country let itself be killed from the inside. But they are all acutely aware of that death, and the terrible pain of rebirth after such a horror. They will likely understand what I’m talking about more than will folks living in the U.S.
Because now it’s coming here, the death. I didn’t pay much attention when it was just the professional jackasses — the Glenn Becks and Sarah Palins, and other cynical jokers making money hand over fist by stoking hate. You always get that kind of thing in a democracy. The more outrageously the fools on the fringe are pulling down their pants, the more you can be sure your free society is functioning. A free society can tolerate hate, and we don’t feel a need to suppress it because we know we won’t succumb to it.
But then good, decent people, educated people, people in my own family, started turning off their brains and muttering darkly about a “Ground Zero Mosque” where terrorists could gather to plot another attack.
The fact that there is nothing further in this world from a radical Islamicist than an American Sufi seems to be off the radar. I’m not even sure that people realize what a Sufi is. Sufis are to Islam what Quakers are to Christianity. They’re the pacifists, the conscientious objectors, the ones who believe in tending to the poor and sick, who believe in humility and universal tolerance, in reaching out in friendship to people who are different.
That the American people could be tricked en masse into believing that a community center built by Sufis — of all people! — is somehow an infiltration by a radical militant Islamic force, tells me that our nation’s brain cells have started to die. It happened in Germany, and now it is starting to happen to us.
We are on our way to becoming a nation of drooling, blithering idiots, stumbling in the dark and babbling nonsense like “it’s disrespectful to build a Mosque at Ground Zero.” Except it’s not a Mosque, and it’s not at Ground Zero. And that’s not even the most important thing.
The most important thing is to consider the following: Which group of Americans was most brutally harmed by the destruction of the World Trade Center? Was it the Italians, the Jews? Maybe the Irish?
Nope. Which group of Americans essentially got their eyes gouged out, their hearts ripped to pieces, their deepest dreams spat upon and crushed underfoot? Which Americans had to watch helplessly while someone effectively held their own children in front of them, their pride and joy, put a gun to those kids’ futures and pulled the trigger?
If you’re like most Americans, you probably harbor a silly fantasy that you have more reason to hate the bastards who took down the twin towers than anyone else does. But of course you’re wrong. In fact, you have no idea.
Reason to hate is watching somebody destroy everything you’ve spent your life building. Reason to hate is watching your beautiful young sons and daughters, U.S. citizens born in this country, who always believed in its promise of liberty and equality, suddenly finding their friends and community turning on them with suspicion.
Can you imagine anybody with more reason to hate than the American Sufis? And yet, their response is to build a community center open to all, a gesture of peace and interfaith community in the middle of all the hatred.
The fact that we are not even paying attention to who these people actually are, the fact that the majority of Americans — even New Yorkers, I am deeply ashamed to say — are mouthing off hateful idiocies easily refuted by a simple Google search, tells me that it may already be too late.
We’re already half way to wearing the swastikas, and darkly muttering “kill the Jews”, except this time it’s not Jews. We are idiotically demonizing our own peace loving friends and neighbors who are the enemy of the Taliban, and all it stands for, to an extent we cannot even imagine.
I see this beautiful nation melting down, its brain cells failing, becoming necrotic. Much as I would like to blame it on the rancid self-serving poison of the Sarah Palins and bastards like pastor Jones who wants to publicly burn the Koran, I know that would be dishonest. For it is not them, it is us.
John F. Kennedy once said: “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.” Yes, I know we are a wounded nation, I appreciate that. But rather than rise to the occasion, rather than face the hard and complicated truth of our circumstance, we are letting ourselves be anaesthetized by convenient myth, and that way leads to the sleep of the waking dead.
Unless we wake up in time. I sincerely hope we wake up in time.
Anyone who believes their country is exempt from the kind of tyranny that gripped Germany in the 30’s is deluded (and therefore in danger of letting it happen on their doorstep).
Ordinary German citizens were and are no weaker than any other citizen. Neither are Americans stronger.
“Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.” Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC.
Exactly! Beautifully said Katrin, thank you. I just hope Americans realize this before they slip too far into letting fear destroy them from within.
Yes but, in NYC for example the double-standard is everywhere. For example public schools this week will observe Jewish holidays and there will be no school on Thursday and Friday, but they will not observe Islamic holidays. I don’t know in other states though, maybe just NYC…
The inviolability of human dignity is the most important thing to learn and as it seems the easiest thing to forget, if fear, the feeling of powerlessness and hurt take in. It makes people look for the easiest way out. Prejudices are easy and convenient, especially in a world that gets more and more complex. There is no reason for reasoning, if one can hate.
The jews, the Americans, the muslims, the Germans, the ….We all seem to be to happy to forget, that we talk about Ken, Khalid, Mike, Dagmar….
And I am doing something I have heard you better should not do in the US I am quoting a real! communist (Rosa Luxemburg):
Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.
Does this mean, I am a communist myself? Just guess…
@Ken: As I said: “I’ll be back!” 🙂
This is worth reading – even if you just read the posted excerpt:
They Thought They Were Free
The Germans, 1933-45
Milton Mayer
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
That slippery slope is very gradual, and very difficult to see from the inside, especially when pride is involved.
Katrin, thank you for posting that link. I hope many people here read it and understand its significance.
Fantastic link! Thanks!
While I found your writing on this issue very interesting, and your financial support heartwarming, it’s mostly preaching to the choir. As terrible as the “Ground Zero Mosque” incident seems, perhaps it’s worth remembering that we did recently elect a person who isn’t 100% white as president. Likewise, support for gay marriage is slowly but steadily gaining ground. Both are significant evidence that America is becoming more tolerant.
Have you tried having a calm, rational discussion with the protesters or your own family members? Certainly when I have political arguments with family members, they get heated and degenerate quickly, but reasoned engagement with the other side seems to be the only real way forward.
Rob, I agree that all is not dire. Nonetheless, we still need to be paying attention to slippery slopes. A society can be doing just fine in some ways, yet sliding into an abyss in others.
Interestingly, my post was motivated by the experience of starting out in calm rational discussion with people in my own family, only to see those people quickly turn to these knee-jerk judgements. And these are people whom I usually find to be careful and reasoned in their approach to political issues. The key fallacy in the public debate — and in what I’ve been hearing from people in my own family — is the inaccurate conflation of all Muslims into a single category.
People in my family — Obama supporters all — were particularly annoyed with our president for sticking his neck out in support of the community center. They were worried that his stance would hurt the chances of the Democrats in the mid-term elections.
I realized at that point that I needed to address the particular fallacy of “all Muslims are the same” head-on. Hence the focus of my post.
The “all Muslims are the same” attitude is what will give us another 9/11.