The Mega-Lie and Wrong Perspectives

A wise person reminded me about perspective. When you are hurt, wounded, and bitter, the way you look at the world will be from a pained perspective. To have a clear vision of the world, we must lift that veil of pain.

So it was when the U.S. felt pain in 2001. We had been hurt before over the previous decade: domestic terrorism in the Oklahoma City bombing, teenage murder in the Columbine shootings, and a Presidential impeachment trial left us tired and gunshy. We had just dealt with the most controversial election in history, dealt with an unprecedented Supreme Court intervention, deciding the election. We were hoping that the conservative candidate that promised to be ‘compassionate’ would become a president of reconciliation and healing. We all know that we got something else.

On September 11^th, the president seized the opening to perpetrate the mega-lie. As Larry Beinhart suggests in the opening chapter of Fog Facts, our response to terrorism that day was criminally out of proportion. We should have considered the perpetrators criminals and brought their networks to justice. Instead, we had militarism and called it an act of war. As Richard Behan suggests:

Other nations have suffered criminal acts of terrorism, but there is no precedent for conflating the terrorists with the states that harbor them, declaring a "war" and seeking with military force to overthrow a sovereign government. Victimized nations have always relied successfully on international law enforcement and police action to bring terrorists to justice.

What both of these writers expose for us is our failure to maintain proper perspective. People were hurting. People were impressionable. We failed to watch out for the wolves.

We trust our criminal justice system. We trust our law enforcement officers to bring criminals to justice. We trust our legal counselors to thoughtfully try cases in court. We believe that wrong-doing will be punished. We have faith that this system works. The alternative is something truly horrifying.

Some other countries wield their military arms with such cavalier and indiscrimination as our president, but we call them militias and juntas. When a leader exercises unchecked and dictatorial powers in the way our president does, we call them regimes. These words have such spite in them that you can feel in your bones the distrust and righteous anger we ordinarily keep in check. The danger is in ignoring a word’s definition while abiding by its emotional evocations.

Terrorism is a perfect example of this. It is clear that the word does not mean Muslim, cabal, or religious extremism. The word refers to a type of violence intended to frighten a group of people. Those guilty of terrorism are common, petty criminals and should be considered such. To blow it all out of proportion and call it an act of war; to declare war against a nation harboring those criminals; to declare international law invalid; to act so recklessly is obscene, not careful; to drive a nation to war is inhumane, not protective; to be so obsessed with killing is pathological, not just.

Perhaps it is time to put things into their more accurate perspective: the president is a monster. He is dangerous, reckless, and soulless. His sense of Christian vocation is a badge, not a ministry. He is a petty bully beating up the smaller kids on the playground. Sometimes the only thing you can do with a bully is to expel him.

NOTE: if you want to read an excellent article about all of this and more, including the mega-lie, check out Richard Behan's article for Alternet here. He places the pretenses for war into the overarching smokescreen of the War on Terror.