Re: [ST] My September 11.

[pattib@xxxxxxxxxx]

>Now this one is f-r-e-a-k-y:

What I find freaky is that Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are now
blaming the terrorism on abortion, gays and lesbians, and the ACLU.
They think it happened because we as a nation have pissed off their
god.  

	"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists,
	and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are
	actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the
	ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have
	tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their
	face and say 'you helped this happen.'"


The following came from Mork Morford, a San Francisco columnist who is
usually one of the snarkiest, snidest, most cynical people I've ever
read.  Right now, he also moves me-- he says very wise things about
how to live life right now.  He says "get out and ride and enjoy it"
though not quite in those words.

- -Patti



From: SF Gate Newsletters [mailto:morningfix@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 8:41 AM
To: dailylist@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: SF GATE MORNING FIX: Please, no fearful withering


===============================================
SF GATE MORNING FIX
September 14, 2001
=============================================== 
By Mark  <mailto:morningfix@xxxxxxxxxx> Morford
morningfix@xxxxxxxxxx 


NOTE: Special Edition #2 of the Fix today. No skewed Media Stew stories, and
no usual wry banter, factoids, story picks, or etc. Just another Notes &
Errata column, solo. The Fix will return to its former state beginning
Monday, when I'll try to ease back into light satire mode, see how it goes.
Much also depends on whether the AP wires will start running anything that's
not too somber and tragedy-oriented. Might be tough. Meantime, always
remember, there really is no such thing as too much lubricant. Probably. --
mm 


MARK'S NOTES & ERRATA
***********************************************
Please, No Fearful Withering 


This much we know: The only way the terrorists will have won, will have
achieved their goals of permanently obstructing the nation's breathing and
instilling a deep undercurrent of dread, is if the U.S. government starts
restricting basic freedoms. 


If it starts wallowing in paranoia and cracking down on speech, travel,
movement, communications, life, love, pizza delivery, singing in the shower,
the right to feel not all that righteously patriotic in the wake of the
tragedy, but rather to feel waves of sadness and disgust and pain, the
necessity of healing. 


The only way the terrorists will have won is if we give in to the waves of
primal blood lust currently (and understandably) ravaging everyone's heart,
and start bombing the hell out of anyone we can think of. 


If we start swinging our country's enormous dragon's tail of clumsy military
might, smashing into foreign countries and taking innocent lives, destroying
economies, ravaging landscapes, raging into the Void while we struggle to
pinpoint a sprawling network of decentralized sociopaths, instead of taking
a reasoned and intelligent approach, calm and decisive and smart, the moral
high road, if at all possible. 


The only way the terrorists will have won is if we viciously constrict our
borders, wallow in exclusionary thinking, develop a mean sort of sour
patriotism whereby we willfully leap onto the hot spike of ignorant
isolationism, become indignant about our superiority and our ungainly power,
start chanting mine mine mine, get out get out get out. 


Instead of letting the equilibrium return and realizing that decimating the
nation's famed (though arguably flawed) sense of openness and
multiculturalism would be a direct route to misery and anxiety and
closed-mindedness and far, far too many people buying guns and forming
militias and reading Soldier of Fortune and purchasing Hummers and naming
their kid Uzi. 


The only way the terrorists will have won is if we start suspecting one
another, begin looking askance at our neighbors, the foreigners and the
immigrants and those who look different or think different or act different,
wear funny clothes or believe in communism or Taoism or sapphism, shave
their heads or listen to really awful music or eat unpronounceable foods,
watch foreign films, enjoy square dancing. 


This is our first reaction, to lash out, find a culprit, even an entire
people or culture or nation, and start stereotyping and blaming and hating.
This way idiocy lies. 


The only way the terrorists will have won is if we stop recognizing the
beautiful and the simple, if we lose our sense of probity and our ability to
laugh and love and make really profound eye contact, if we lose our soul to
the twin demons of anguish and anxiety, start seeing the world as a black
cauldron of war and death and unspeakable acts of violence, the world
suddenly less a place to love and dance and watch dogs frolic in parks and
more a place full of shattered buildings and unspeakable anguish and
screaming zealots hurling Molotov cocktails at riot police. 


The only way the terrorists will have won is if we let them, if we allow
that simple, open need for human connection wither and die and instead go
through our days dour and suspicious and eternally wounded. If we stop
kissing with passionate intent and stop finding the meaning of life in the
long eyelashes of our lovers and stop sending freshly baked chocolate-chip
cookies to columnists who use the word "probity" in a nice way. This much we
know. 


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