we must live into our dreams, not live in them

from a New York Times editorial:

Revising 9/11

On the first three anniversaries of Sept. 11, 2001, the nation had the grim luxury of uncluttered memory. We looked back on that day's events as the most terrible thing that could happen on American soil. Today, we are cursed with an unwanted expansion of that vision.
...
[B]y the time [Hurricane Katrina] died down and the floodwaters stopped rising, it became clear that this hurricane would force us to revise 9/11, which, until now, had defined the limits of tragedy in America.

Without realizing it, we had internalized what happened four years ago in a rather tidy story arc: Terrorists struck with brutal violence and the country responded. Everyone rose to the occasion...

We felt that 9/11 had changed our lives in an instant, that we had been jerked out of a pleasant dream. The difference in the blow that Katrina struck was not merely that we could see it coming. It was that, as a nation, we thought we were already fully awake.

I end a long day of posting perhaps where I should have begun: by remembering the tragic violence that struck the United States four years ago. It was said that a slumbering giant was awakened that day; much as the attack on Pearl Harbor drew the U.S. into World War II, so the attack on New York City and the Pentagon, and the plane downed in Pennsylvania, awoke Americans to another great peril. It is true, we were awakened.

But were we awakened to a great menace, a clear and present danger? Or were we merely awakened from one form of self-delusion to another? After all, the attack of 9/11/01 happened, we might argue, because we fell asleep to world affairs. Americans simply were not paying attention to world events. The captivating headlines of that summer were about shark attacks: and that despite the fact that the number of such attacks was not unusually high. Then the Twin Towers were hit, smoke was seen over the Capitol, and we were shocked out of the security of the world we had created (if only in our minds) with one resounding question: Osama who?

It was a name most Americans were not familiar with. But some were; some had known him since they helped arm him, train him, and assist him and the Taliban in fighting against the Soviet Union. That he later turned on the US was an embarrassment. But because he was such an unknown to the American public, he was a much smaller embarrassment than was Saddam Hussein - "our son-of-a-bitch." Remember, it is possible that the chemical agents Saddam used to gas the Kurds were supplied to him by the United States.

But I digress. I love the NYT editorial's simply elegant suggestion that 9/11 jerked us out of one dream long enough for us to create a "rather tidy story arc" and then fall into another dream state. Our first dream was that all was well with the world. Our second dream was that all will be well with the world, if we just trust our leaders and go shopping. We traded our freedoms and personal liberties for an illusion of security. We bought a false story (that Saddam was an imminent, "mushroom-cloud" threat - sold to us, of course, by those most embarrassed by the way he turned on them/the US) because we wanted to return to our pleasant state of ignorance. We trusted; we trusted things would get done. Hurricane Katrina proved that nothing has been done that has made us more prepared for disaster. Even with warning, most responders (FEMA and Homeland Security topping the list) fell flat on their faces. The cost for our selfish ignorance? Suffering and death for thousands of people (mostly poor and mostly black).

What should we do to remember the victims of 9/11? What should we do to honor them and the victims of Hurricane Katrina? We should not allow ourselves to be lulled into another dream state. We should plug back in to the world. We should pay attention to world events (like the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and its spread in Pakistan), to scientific discoveries (like global warning, which hardly counts as a 'discovery' these days, except to a few deniers), to the plight of people in foreign places (like those suffering in Sudan; as often as President Bush has stood in the devastation that Hurricane Katrina wrought and referred to it as "this part of the world" [on Sept. 2: twice in Alabama before arriving in the disaster area, twice more in Biloxi, MS, and then four times in Kenner, LA!; and on Sept. 5: twice in a very short speech in Poplarville, MS], Louisiana and Mississippi are not in a foreign country). We should especially pay attention to the way that our lifestyle choices - everything from guzzling gas to shopping for the cheapest clothing - leads to the enslavement or even killing of innocent people.

Too many of our leaders in government and big business are hoping, right now, that Americans settle back into an even deeper cycle of sleep, as it were. We should pay attention to them, as well. Because while many do have the best interests of the American people at heart, the temptation to worship the throne of power and feed at the trough of the almighty dollar is constant. Do we have the strength and moral fortitude to stay awake? It will not be pleasant. It will force us to challenge much that we take for granted. But the alternative is simply more of the same: pleasant dreams for a time, followed by yet another rude awakening. And who knows? Next time it might be you or I who isn't privileged to wake up. Would we really want some cheap platitudes offered in our memory as a way of hypnotizing people back into their REM cycle?

Jesus used to say, "Let those with ears listen." Now, most everyone he met had ears that worked just fine, of course: the problem was that many people chose not to use them.