The Terrorists Have Won

I was out in the park with the dogs this morning talking to my friend Carolyn-the-Constable about the miserable state of the economy and how it affects not only both of us, but literally everyone we know. We couldn’t think of a single soul who was not affected in some way by, if nothing else, the atmosphere in the country.  And then it came to me: the terrorists have won.

Think about it for a minute.  What did the terrorists want? They wanted to punish America for its ungodlike, lavish lifestyle, and the way it was spreading its culture around the world. The terrorists thought, and still think, that we deserved to die simply because of the way we live.

So they flew their planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and they accomplished their purpose. We don’t live that way anymore. They destroyed the uniqueness of America: its optimism, its upward mobility, and its entrepreneurship. And they did it the way terrorists always do everything: by creating a climate of fear.

Into that climate walked George W. Bush, the perfect insecure dry drunk, and his sidekick Dick Cheney. Out of fear, they created two wars, one against the Taliban, and one against  God-knows-who in Iraq. We spent dollars and lives in both wars, with inconclusive results. And despite what everyone says about the American people not being asked to sacrifice, we have sacrificed a lot: our current comfort, our social contract, our futures, and those of our children. As a people, we have given our all, and the terrorists have still won, because they have frightened us.

We now have a political system polarized and stalemated by fear, and a Treasury decimated by debt. (And I mean that word almost literally. Our treasury has been cut to roughly a tenth of what it was, and we are drowning in debt) Our country is crumbling, and we can’t get up the mental energy to come together around a solution to rebuild it.

This also comes from fear. We are cowering in a corner. The Republicans are fearful that we will burden our children with debt and the stimulus won’t work. The Democrats are afraid the stimulus won’t go far enough, and will omit things like education and health care. Those of us on the sidelines are afraid the government will cease to function and NOTHING will be done.

In behavioral psychology, this used to be called “operational neurosis,” and was confined to rats on a grid who were delivered electric shocks on an intermittent, unpredictable basis.

As a country, we have lost the basic philosophical underpinnings of our existence: the social contract. And we’ve lost the basic theological underpinnings of our existence: the Golden Rule. We are all trying to save ourselves, and letting the guy next door hang. And that is how the terrorists have won.

Tagged as: economy, fear, stimulus, terrorism, war on terror