It's been a hell of a week, kids and kittens. A school principal shot to death in Wisconsin. A schoolgirl shot to death in a small town in Colorado. Five schoolgirls shot to death in an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania. Reports coming in of arrests in various locations throughout the country, as disgruntled teenagers are turned in by classmates and friends who fear they might act out their threats. Once again, our comfort zone is shattered.
After the first incident, the usual cries for greater security in our schools were heard. Lock all the doors, all day long. Armed security guards. Metal detectors. Cameras. Every school in every town in every state needs these precautions. Frightened voices demanding safety for our children.
The one thing that the incident in Amish country should have proved was the futility of that reaction to fear. Does anyone seriously suggest we should put guards and metal detectors up in a one-room Amish schoolhouse?
This country has lived in a climate of fear for about a decade now it seems, jumping at shadows as one incident follows another and shakes our sense of security, giving us the victim mentality. We have gone from "It can't happen here" to "We aren't safe anymore". The politicians are much to blame for this, shamelessly exploiting every incident and using it as an excuse to further their personal agenda. They are as much to blame for the climate of fear and suspicion we've lived in as are the troubled individuals who perpetrated the violence.
Were we ever really "safe"? Define "safety", in this context. The thousands of victims of random violent crime each year can tell you that you aren't safe in your day-to-day life: people break into your homes or businesses and assault you, steal from you, maybe kill you; they steal your car; they kidnap you from a parking lot, a jogging path, even your own bedroom; you can get hit by bullets meant for somebody else; you can get attacked because you look like someone's ex-girlfriend, teacher, or just because they don't like your skin color or the color of your shirt. If it hasn't happened to you, you can continue to live comfortably and go about your day-to-day business secure in the belief that it won't happen to you -- this is the essence of our usual sense of security, that baseless but comforting belief that we are somehow immune to the tragedies that befall others, less fortunate. The victims will either do their best to shake it off and live normal lives again, or go through their days locking doors, staring suspiciously at strangers, not going out at night, and even subscribing their movements in ever-decreasing circles of the "safe" and familiar.
The world mourned with us when the World Trade Center was attacked. Included in this mourning was our loss of innocence; terrorist attacks are nothing new in many European countries, but the United States has been protected by large oceans on each side and friendly bordering nations without too many religious or political extremists bent on our destruction. Suddenly, many Americans learned what it meant to be random targets. We were terrified and shell-shocked, and they pitied us.
We took action, prompt and vigorous action. We sought out the masterminds and their organization, and have done our best to squash them. An understandable, justified reaction. One might even say a productive reaction, at least in the sense of trying to neutralize a known threat from a source that went beyond propaganda and into action.
We took other actions, actions designed to make our country safer as a whole. We tightened up access by air, land and sea. We looked into credentials more carefully, we started keeping better track of people who enter on student visas or work visas or with organized groups. We instituted airport security measures similar to those in place for many years in many major European cities.
We also passed legislation called the Patriot Act which effectively negated several parts of the Bill of Rights upon which our Constitution and our country were founded. This was not a rational action, this was a fear-based reaction. We didn't wait for the shock to wear off and examine the facts, we just reacted. We rounded up hundreds of people with suspected terrorist ties or sympathies and impounded them (which is not illegal, for the record), where they sit to this day, still not charged with any offense, still without the right to a fair trial (refer again to the Bill of Rights, right to a speedy trial). We have been performing search and seizures without warrants, we have been listening in on conversations without proving probable cause, we have been tracking purchases in bookstores and withdrawals from libraries. We became suspicious of anyone who was not a white, middle-class, mainstream Christian, despite freedom of religion being another one of our founding principles, along with that "all men created equal" thing from the Declaration of Independence. Worst of all, there came to be a climate of intimidation, where anyone who disagreed with these actions was deemed unpatriotic, certainly un-American, perhaps even a threat, and people of calm common sense became afraid to speak up in defense of our Constitutional rights. McCarthy era ring a bell to anyone?
A few months ago, a man in Colorado attended an event that Vice President Cheney was attending. At an autograph session afterwards, this man, along with his 7-year-old son, approached the Vice President, told him that he disagreed with the Iraq war, and then walked away. Upon returning to the area a few minutes later, he was arrested, and held for several hours in jail before being released.
Is it now illegal in this country to express your disagreement with government policies? I thought we had the right to freedom of speech, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Has our fear over our vulnerability led us to such extremes? Do we really need to eavesdrop on the conversations of hundreds of everyday citizens, without going through the legal system to obtain the proper authorization to do so? Do we need to track people's reading materials, and put them on a "suspicious" list when perhaps they were simply doing a report for school on terrorism and its roots? Do we need to try to secure every square foot of our border with armed guards and electric fences?
Safety is an illusion. It can never be truly attained, because bad, sad, and random things happen every single day, in every part of the world, to every type of person. There's no guarding against it. We could secure our borders so tightly that no one comes or goes, and still step out of the house the next day and get run over by a bus. You can surround yourself with nice middle-class white Christians, and still find out one of them was being abused by their spouse, was molesting children, was embezzling funds from their work, or was an alcoholic. Why? Not because people are bad, but because people are people. We all have our weaknesses, our problems, our beliefs that we will defend. We all have buttons that can be pushed that will make us act out. All that happens when we "protect" ourselves in this way is that we remove outside influences that can be broadening, educational, enlightening or soothing, and become increasingly incestuous and frightened.
We could surround the Amish schoolhouse with metal detectors, guards, dogs, and electrified fence, and it could catch fire and burn down, and rescue personnel wouldn't be able to stop the inferno because they couldn't get past the "safety measures". Quit turning our schools into locked down military institutions, and quit trying to turn the United States ("land of the free", remember?) into a military Christian theocracy. "Safety" of this sort comes at far too high a price. We vilified the former Soviet Union for spying on their citizens, censoring their newspapers and television, and keeping a military state, and we were right. Why are we now doing the same thing? Whatever excuse you use, it's still wrong.
True safety is not possible, but peace of mind is. Peace of mind comes from trying to understand the world around you and to live in it compatibly, contributing what you can and appreciating the contributions of others. It will not always be a fair, fun, or yes, safe, place to live, but at least you will actually be living.
Comments