Two weeks ago in the East Valley Tribune (in AZ) one of the columnists published a piece that declared the only thing that was going to keep this country safe was staying angry. After reading what was probably the biggest load of crap I have EVER read, I sat down and spent a few hours crafting a reasonable response. It was printed, with my picture and all, in today's (Sunday's) East Valley Tribune in the Perspectives section. Unfortunately I haven't found a link to the original column that started this, but here was my response. It was printed in full without edits..... including the Yoda quote!
Anger Resides in the Bosom of Fools.
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. - Yoda”
Linda Hansen’s Sunday column states, unequivocally, that a ‘healthy dose of rage’ will keep this country safe. Obviously, she has missed the lessons of Yoda, Buddha, Aristotle, and Benjamin Franklin, among others. It is easy to be angry. Anger is born out of fear, one of the basest of human emotions. Anger removes logic, kills compassion, and perpetuates violence. Anger will not protect this country; it will be the undoing of this country.
In the days following September 11th, a ‘healthy dose of rage’ turned ordinary American citizens into extremists on par with the 19 on those planes. Anger is what drove Frank Roque to shoot and kill Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh, four days after September 11th. Anger is what brought on the attacks on mosques in Irving and Denton, Texas, hours after the towers fell. Anger is what drove those to firebomb a Hindu temple in Mattawan, New Jersey. Anger, my friends, leads to ignorance and violence.
Anger is also what fuels the fires of the extremists like Osama. Anger not over ‘our freedoms’, but with what our country does. If you want to be angry, Mrs. Hansen, then I suggest you direct your anger into fixing things you can actually control. Be angry at American foreign policy based on ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. US support for oppressive regimes, like those in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Egypt do more to fuel anti-American sentiment than the fact that we can all own as many IPods as we can afford. Some will interpret this as my saying that the US deserved to be attacked. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nobody ‘deserves’ something like what happened on 9/11. However, to believe that US foreign policy actions do not have consequences, some even dire, is to be purposefully ignorant.
A common tactic from some of those on the right, including all three ‘voices of clarity’ in Mrs. Hansen’s column, is to condemn dissenters as traitors to this country. Mrs. Hansen does this in her column stating dissenters have ‘breached the walls of treason, some as verbally vicious as any blood-thirsty terrorist’. Really. American citizens who dissent from this President’s failed policies are just like the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11? These are the sort of arguments, completely devoid of logic and reasoning, which come out of the anger she wishes to find. Using her logic then, the Congressional Republicans who opposed Clinton’s 1996 Anti-Terrorism legislation are ‘appeasers’ and ‘terrorist lovers’. Going further, House Republicans who voted to cut off funding for US troops in Kosovo must be nothing more than members of the ‘hate America’ crowd.
Benjamin Franklin once said that “Anger is never without a reason and seldom a good one”; and “Whatever is begun in anger is ended in shame”. Those words could apply to the shame we deserved over our actions in Abu Gharib prison. We should all remember the exhortation shared in Ecclesiastes Ch. 9, V. 7 “Be not hasty in spirit to be angry, for anger rests in the bosom of fools.”
Do we really need to tap into the anger, the rage, brought on by the September 11th attacks? Judging by the actions of ‘angry Americans’ in the days and years following, I would say no.
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