It is nine years now since the day America lost its mind. Since the day a small band of hate-filled terrorists opened the door to madness, and our nation walked right through. Since the day when the entire world was moved to stand as one (a French newspaper proclaimed: "We are all Americans!") but we didn't notice because we were filled with grief, fear and rage.
For a moment on that day, we forgot our differences. Southern crackers and Detroit homeboys and Amarillo cowboys were all Americans, and all New Yorkers.
Sadly, it did not last. Nine years later we are a bitterly divided nation, bankrupted by seven years of war in Iraq and more than eight in Afghanistan, manipulated by political snake-oil salesmen into denying and abandoning the core values we profess to believe in order to protect the core values we profess to believe.
We fell victim to rage, were seduced by the dark side, and were led down a path paved with lies into warfare that, for many, may have felt good, but ultimately strengthened the enemy and led us to today, when "the terrorists have won" is arguably true.
We have lost our shirts and we have lost our souls.
I blame the news media.
Oh, there is plenty of blame to go around. We could blame the politicians and we could blame ignorance, but there will always be slimy politicians exploiting the crisis of the moment, and there will always be dense people who are not interested in facts.
But it's our responsibility. It is what we signed up for. We who are journalists are supposed to facilitate an informed conversation among the citizenry that leads to sound self-government. If that is our intent, we have measurably failed.
What has transpired is anything but sound self-government and not at all informed.
Nine years after the 9/11 attacks led by extremist Wahhabi terrorists, the average American doesn't know a Wahhabist from a Sufi. And to a loud minority that gets constant coverage, all Muslims, well over a billion people worldwide, are the enemy.
Television news in particular has failed to meet its journalistic responsibilities. Friday morning I saw all the network morning TV shows feature a crackpot hatemonger preacher from Gainesville, Florida, leader of a tiny and inconsequential sect, who planned to burn the holy book of Islam. He was thrown out by his little congregation in Germany, and half of his Florida group has abandoned him. He's a little bug in the big picture, but he was being treated as if he led some broad-based American anti-Muslim movement.
It's a carnival, a circus, a show, a fraud. We have plenty of air time for the drama and almost none for learning.
The cable networks are journalistic frauds, focusing on reinforcing prejudice in order to boost ratings, and all too often abandon even the pretense of seeking truth.
I have often pointed a finger at Fox News, a vile and deeply corrupt organization, but CNN and MSNBC also are guilty, if not equally.
I could blame the Internet, too. It is a neutral technology but the consequences of the global network are profound.
There is a Sanskrit proverb: "The eyes do not see what the mind does not want." The Internet turns that weakness of human nature into a force for proactive, malevolent ignorance.
People clump together in echo chambers and hear only reinforcement of their prejudices. Islamic radicals use it to recruit teenagers and turn them into walking human bombs. Angry white men hang around on wingnut websites and convince themselves that the president is a Muslim secret agent. Some plot murder. Some merely fantasize.
The Internet amplifies many things, including the worst qualities of humanity. The old media and society at large have not figured out how to cope.
When the terrorists crashed an airliner into the Pentagon, they killed Muslims and destroyed a Muslim prayer room that was inside the Pentagon itself. When the terrorists crashed two airliners into the Twin Towers, they killed Muslims and destroyed a Muslim prayer room that was right there in the World Trade Center.
These facts have been communicated by responsible journalists, but they've been drowned out by a combination of hateful screeching and spineless stenographic reporting that treats the screeching as if it were legitimate.
The 9/11 attack was not an attack on Christianity by Islam, but rather an attack on America by heretics. And yet we have this ginned-up "controversy" over a Sufi community center in Manhattan on "hallowed ground."
Nobody worries about the Ground Zero Titty Bar, or the Ground Zero Amish Market, or the Ground Zero Souvenir Hawker, but (if you believe the "news") huge numbers of Real Americans are inflamed that Muslims dare to profane the sacred soil by planning a community center.
Facts? It's several blocks away from the World Trade Center site, where a Muslim prayer room was crushed beneath the rubble of a high-rise building full of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics and more than a few who never gave a damn about religion.
The entire story is fakery, an arson fire covered by journalists throwing gasoline on the flames.
Shame on you all. Shame on us all.
Comments
Here Here!
Good Piece
More readings
Some worthwhile journalism that counters the screeching:
Ted Koppel: "The goal of any organized terrorist attack is to goad a vastly more powerful enemy into an excessive response. And over the past nine years, the United States has blundered into the 9/11 snare with one overreaction after another." http://bit.ly/cXIsfG
New York Times: "Fanatics can come from anywhere, Gainesvillians will tell you, but why did this one have to come from here?" http://bit.ly/a1p8MG
CNN: "Ultimately, they discovered that America still embraces immigrants and the nation is filled with welcoming and loving people." http://bit.ly/dfrZNX
New York Times: "Opponents of the Park51 project say the presence of a Muslim center dishonors the victims of the Islamic extremists who flew two jets into the towers. Yet not only were Muslims peacefully worshiping in the twin towers long before the attacks, but even after the 1993 bombing of one tower by a Muslim radical, Ramzi Yousef, their religious observance generated no opposition." http://bit.ly/9lqLLg
Haaretz, quoting Donna Marsh O'Connor, who lost her pregnant daughter in the WTC attack: "I never go to the ceremony at Ground Zero, because it was used for political purposes for several years, and frankly, it is excruciating for me to see it replayed in this way. I have spent 9/11 speaking out on certain issues, I have spent 9/11 at home with my family, trying to forget that 9/11 is a day when everybody remembers this horrific crime, as most of us live with it every single day of our lives. I have spent it at my daughter's grave. I will never, however, think that it’s okay to participate in this ceremony until it’s said that the way 9/11 was used at a nation is over. And on that day, I might participate." (O'Connor leads a survivor family group that supports the Park51 community center project.) http://bit.ly/cdZyWh
And ...
Dan Gillmor: "Yes, traditional media organizations should be more responsible. But in the world that now exists, we can’t count on them to be. So maybe we, the audience, have to take some responsibility on ourselves, being more literate about media techniques, especially the kind used to persuade or manipulate audiences." http://bit.ly/8ZNirV
On Facebook ...
Bill Loving had this response to my post:
Prejudice?
Thank you so much for this
Thanks Steve
blogs
This is an eloquent and evocative piece
A common decency
This is yet another echo of responsibility.
The nature of bigotry
One of my overnight spammers (whose contributions will not be posted) surprised me by noticing this thread and also noticing the background on the photo of me at the top of this page.
It is the Hagia Sophia (Ἁγία Σοφία) museum in Istanbul. The current structure dates back to 532, replacing an earlier building as the principal basilica of the Byzantine Empire. It was converted into a Roman Catholic cathedral for about half a century when Crusaders invaded around 1204. In 1453 the Ottoman Turks took control and converted it into a mosque.
This was not one religion conquering another. All Muslims, Eastern Christians, Roman Catholic Christians, Protestants, Jews, Mormons, Rastafarians and even the Baha'i are of the same Abrahamic tree, one common religion.
It was members of the same religion conquering one another. Century after century, followers of the same God, adherents to a common line of religious belief, have been killing one another in quests for wealth and power, and justifying it through religious bigotry.
When Americans refer to "the Muslim God" as a "monkey god" and shout "kill them all" as some did yesterday in New York City, it reveals a profound ignorance.
We are all born ignorant. The long climb out requires a learning mind and opportunity. As journalists, we're supposed to help provide that opportunity, but my point above is that we largely have failed to do so, and have drowned out any context by shoving cameras in the faces of bigots and fools and treating the news as an entertainment program.
"Jonathan," above, insists that the Burlington Coat Factory site has become "hallowed ground."
There are only two possibilities: Either it isn't (in which case everybody should shut the hell up), or it is. If it is, how could it possibly be wrong for a Sufi to put a place of worship there?
The implied argument is that Muslims are responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center, which may work if you can't tell one Muslim from another. Few of us would blame Quakers or the Amish for the actions of IRA terrorists, but that's because most of us know the difference. Most of us have no idea what goes on inside Islam. Whose fault is that? The shallow and sensational reporting of this clash of cultures has failed to shed much light.
My trip to Istanbul, paid by the International Press Institute, was instructive. I learned about Sufis there. I saw the whirling dance of Dervish mystics. I came away knowing about Mevlana Celaleddin-i Belhi-Rumi, the great Islamic Sufi poet-philosopher who lived some 800 years ago.
Sufis are nonviolent builders of bridges to other religious threads. There are even Sufi Buddhists, as some Buddhists find value in the contemplative principles of the Sufi traditions.
That's the context of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's plan to build the Cordoba House, a context lost when the cameras chase bigots down the street in hopes of catching a video of somebody burning the Koran.
I've written enough. I will close with the Seven Advices of the Muslim poet Rumi:
1. In generosity and helping others, be like a river.
2. In compassion and grace, be like the sun.
3. In concealing others' faults, be like the night.
4. In anger and fury, be like the dead.
5. In modesty and humility, be like the earth.
6. In tolerance, be like a sea.
7. Either exist as you are, or be as you look.
Dervishes in Istanbul
Islam
Blame?
More than poetry
Hallowed ground, you say?
A Cross over Constantinople
Well written. I posted this
Spin doctors (and their disciples)