Let's Get Rid of the Word "Terror"

This morning I woke up to the news that four men, some of whom were Muslim, were arrested for "aspirational" plans to target synagogues in New York in a terror attack.

I'm very wary.

When did law enforcement get involved with the alleged plotters and how did their involvement help bring the plan closer to fruition? It's called entrapment and it's too common with these kinds of investigations.

And why on earth would police brief Rep. Peter King, a robust Muslim-hating politician, who has rebuffed repeated invitations to visit with members of the mosque located in his own congressional district, opting instead for accusations that any mosque harbors militant terrorists?

Which leads me to this request: let's get rid of these phrases "war on terror," "terrorist attack," and terrorist, too. These words are hyperbolic and don't communicate ideas, but emotional responses that turn off thinking. Yes, we have a problem. Yes, there are some people who want to destroy our way of life, but that isn't terrorism. It's political opposition that uses techniques that introduce instability and insecurity. That isn't terror. That's life. Random acts of violence are about as much a part of life as random acts of kindness and always have been.

I'm reading Columbine by Dave Cullen, which unhysterically examines what happened in that Colorado high school when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold opened fire on students and teachers that April day in 1999. It wasn't a feud with the jocks, or satanic worship; it wasn't a bunch of misfits, or the trench coat mafia. It was a psychopathic young man, Harris, and a very depressed and angry friend, Klebold, who fed off each other. It's called a dyad in psychology. Psychopathy is neither insanity nor sanity, but a category of human behavior based on a total lack of empathy, superiority, and the thrill, like drug addiction, accompanying early acts of violence. Eric Harris killed because he felt superior and wanted an audience. Kleibold hung around for the ride.

Added to the motives of the killers themselves was enormous incompetence of police, who could have prevented the incident that killed twelve children and a teacher, along with the suicides of Harris and Klebold, the ineptitude of journalists, and the crazy impact of twenty-four hour news cycles. That wasn't terror. It was our own children turning onto themselves and others with many opportunities to stop them although regrettably not to stop the disease of psychopathy.

Fear makes people stupid, so let's stop using Dick Cheney's vocabulary and start speaking realistically about the people who don't like America, no matter who they are, what religion they practice, and what they look like.

Whose Reality Is It , Anyway?

There are multiple realities, a common experience, especially after eight years of Bush where the rich lived one kind of life, ordinary working people another, and the media projected something entirely different.

I heard one "ordinary" person interviewed on NPR express relief that we finally had a State of the Union-type address without any mention of 911.

That creeps out Fox News, but somehow allows the rest of us to wonder which is more devastating to us personally and as a people: losing our jobs, home, health care, and our children's futures or living in a constant state of "orange" over inflated threats of terrorism?

After eight years we have grown accustomed to fearing those darkish men with Middle Eastern accents. On the first flight I took after 911, two South Asian men, both exceptionally well dressed, who along with me were flying from JFK to San Francisco on an early Saturday morning (not exactly prior time for a media event) were taken out of the waiting room, not once, but twice before boarding. Shame and embarrassment were what I read on their faces.

It's easier for white people to choose dark skinned people as the enemy, so long as you aren't one of them.

But the real enemies are white guys in suits: bankers, lawyers, mortgage executives, guys with MBAs from Harvard, Wharton, and Yale, the clever folks who created new ways to make money, created new property to own. The insecurity and devastation that the alleged "best and brightest" have brought us is far more undermining than most of what Jack Bauer might be imagining.

That's why we need regulation, and the only entity large enough to regulate is the federal government. So, shut up, Republicans. When money is at stake, greed and avarice appear. Then there is no such thing as self-regulation.

Shut Up, Dick Cheney!

Two weeks into the Obama administration, and Dick Cheney gave an interview yesterday to Politico.com in which he warned the country that if there is another terrorist attack, and he suggested that there will be one and that this time it will be nuclear or biological, we can blame Obama.

“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said.

Protecting the country’s security is “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” he said. “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.”

Listen to Darth Vadar himself.

Of course, he is self-serving. In addition to the bad taste of criticizing his successor two weeks into the administration, Cheney is defending his policies as a way of pushing back against cries for accountability: prosecution of Bush administration officials who authorized wiretapping, surveillance, rendition, torture, and war crimes.

I've always found it amazing that Bush and Cheney begin their defense after the 911 attacks. They speak about protecting America for the seven remaining years of their administration. However, they had nine months to listen to Bill Clinton and Richard Clarke's warnings that Al Qaeda was the threat to the country. They did nothing. Bush cleared bush. Cheney had secret meetings to assure that his oil and energy guys made lots of money. Remember Enron? So the only attack on America's continent since the War of 1812 occurred during the Bush Cheney administration. Let's not forget that.

Read The New York Times editorial blog that debunks each of Cheney's scary and untrue assertions.

The Symantics of Fear

Having been in the Czech Republic when the Mumbai attacks began, I watched BBC World and CNN International, which blathered hour after hour with rumors and unconfirmed reports to fill up air time. Perhaps it was the European accents that made their reporting a bit less hysterical than what we have come up against upon our return home.

But I expect more from NPR, National Public Radio. Saturday morning, Juan Williams, not my favorite conservative African American news analyst, was filling in for Daniel Schorr, one of the best. Williams spoke about "the terrorists" generically, as if all of the attacks in all of the countries across the planet have been coordinated by one organization. That assumption is wrong; there are dissatisfied people in every country and the more unstable a country's economic, social, and political system, the more likely it is that there will be civil unrest. However, to imply that all of these discontents are connected is reminiscent of the "Red Scares" of the 1930s and 1950s. Rebels are notoriously isolated, because they are forced into hiding. Every discontent is not Al Qaeda.

This assumption that there is a singular enemy merely accelerates fear and makes repression by governments not just feasible but acceptable. Remember what Bush-Cheney got away with post-911? Considering that George Washington set the precedent for "no torture" of captured British soldiers and Tories, it saddened all of us who believe in American ideals that the President, Vice President, and Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department were spending their time justifying the use of torture and enhanced interrogation techniques on human beings captured as suspects in the amorphous "war on terror."

There is no such thing as "we" and "them." Our way to make the world safer is not to create false enemies, but to understand how we are connected, what we need for dignified and sustainable lives.