A Nation of Fractures
The Trump administration is naive and lacks a grounding in history. This is a known issue. And nothing seems to confirm this more than their fail immigration policy. The administration seems to no understand that for most of American history, outside attacks on the Homeland are rare…very very rare. Most of the time terrorism in the US is homegrown. And today in NYC there was more proof of this. A resident of the country attempted yet another terrorist incident.
And lets be clear here. It was a resident, not a visitor or illegal, but a resident. And most incidents since the founding have been perpetrated by residents and citizens. Vetted people already here. What makes an incident like 9/11 standout is the rarity and severity of the attack. It just rarely happens that we are attacked from an external force. Why is this? Well there is a vast desert to our south and vast arctic tundra to the north and we have two vast oceans on either side. After 9/11 we strengthened our airports and ports to create a hardened wall of defense. While many conservatives there is a false narrative that if only there was a wall everything would be Okay. This is naive at best.
You see ideas don’t need an airplane to move. And its ideas that cause people to do great and horrible things. And you lock down the net, you can ban books, you can even try to keep people away from each other but people eventually talk and ideas are what cause people to do horrific things. The Trump administration has tried really really hard to plant all kinds of different ideas in Americans heads. And those ideas have been divisive and turned Americans against themselves. The internal violence has only increased and our enemies now know that ideas in American society are more powerful than a direct attack. Our enemies now know this and have used ideas to turn us against ourselves, to fight ourselves, and to commit terrorist actions against ourselves. Ideas it turns out are far more powerful than bullets and planes.
So what to do about this? It may be time to go to war again. We may need to turn to our great grandparents for an example. Both sides need to start talking about how great we are again. Our leaders need to honestly challenge the nation to pursue high and difficult goals again. Our leaders must focus the country again on living together as a community. Our leaders must focus us on gathering again. It used to be the Church was the true second home in our lives. That may be over but it certainly can’t be replaced with coffee shops and chat rooms. We need to encourage a sense of “we are all in this together again”. This may sound nostalgic, but is exactly what will get up through these difficult times. Otherwise people will look for community and acceptance. We have seen this result in hate, terrorism, racism, misogyny and other evils. Let us choose a more positive community.
