 Reflecting on Terror |
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The Price of Sophistication:
A Return to the 12th Century
By CHUCK McFADDEN
of TheColumnists.com
SUDDENLY, we are dealing with advocates of the 12th Century.
The people behind the September 11 events don’t like movies, music, globalization, democracy or women deriving pleasure from sex. In fact, they don’t like women very much. One of the hijackers specified that women not be allowed to visit his grave.
They believe they are campaigning against the work of the Devil evidenced in a corrupt, soft, decadent society that must be reformed or eliminated.
There have always been enemies. Hitler, Japanese militarists of the 30’s and 40’s; Stalin…on and on. But all of those people had goals. Hitler wanted to dominate Europe, if not the world. So did Stalin. They didn’t give a damn whether American women wore short skirts.
It’s different this time. Now we’re under attack from throwbacks to the medieval who don’t believe homosexuals should be allowed to live, who don’t believe women should be allowed to go out of the house unescorted by a male relative, let alone vote. They don’t believe that people should be allowed to reach their own conclusions about God. They don’t believe that people should be allowed to elect their leaders. They emphatically don’t believe in the separation of church and state
That’s a surprise to Americans. We’re so used to the notions of individual rights, to the equality of women, to voting for our leaders, to freedom of religion, that we are astounded when we encounter people who, as a matter of principle, don’t believe in any of it. Can it be that there are people who, as a matter of morality, are opposed to allowing women to drive cars?
Oh, yes, indeed there are. The whole gorgeous, sexy, capitalist, globe-girdling, prosperity-creating, go-go glittery whirligig of western civilization is anathema to them
And they are not easily convinced otherwise. We Americans have a naïve conceit that to know us is to love us. But the September 11 hijackers spent time in this country, going to the supermarket, buying shoes, listening to what Americans had to say about their lives in this big, messy, freewheeling place. At least some were apparently here during the Bush-Gore election and the vote count suspense. They watched us agonize and argue over what was fair. None of it seemed to sway them from their belief that Americans are frivolous, evil, people; none of it derailed their suicidal commitment. They are untroubled by the use of genocide to enforce their religious beliefs.
To these religious cultists, not only are our freedoms and our culture a corruption of what God really intends, we’ve added earthly insult by not paying much attention to them or the world from which they spring. We have made it evident that they, and their culture, have nothing to bring to the table. No one is thinking about building an auto plant in Afghanistan. Oh, there’s oil, of course. We’ll deal with anyone to get oil. But let these people use the front entrance? Oh, please.
It’s confounding. Most of us who have thought about it at all have subscribed to the notion that bit by bit, country by country, the Third World would incrementally be brought--bring itself--into the economic mainstream. Witness India, with a flourishing software industry, and Korea, where the economy has moved onto the world stage over the past 30 years. They’re not on Fifth Avenue, but they’re moving in that direction. Other countries would eventually join the march, we believed, and the level of prosperity around the world would rise, however unevenly and slowly. Hooray. Who would want to die to oppose that?
Some people are, it has become all too apparent. We are coming to realize that there are many around the world who want no part of the rising tide we presume has been raggedly and fitfully lifting all boats for 900 years or so. These are people who - perversely, in our view--regard liberal democracies and global capitalism as things that must be rolled back.
These are religious cultists who believe people should be told what to do and what not to do by clerics, women should be kept in their narrowly circumscribed place because that’s how God wants it, and individual decision-making, especially in important matters, should be kept to a minimum. You don’t get to decide how you’d like to live. That will be decided for you by people who are wiser than you, and who have a better connection with God than you do.
Now we know there are people who are willing to kill millions to enforce those beliefs.
September 11 was a hell of a way to become more sophisticated.
© 2001 by Charles
M. McFadden. The series logo illustration is © 2001 by Jim
Hummel.
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