Hindsight
It seemed the right thing to do at the time, like giving blood or lighting a candle in Union Square. So I do not chide myself too harshly that I said to a friend in the days after 9/11, "we need to support our president."
In times of peril, is it not in our nature to cling to some authority figure, to listen for a shepherd's voice, to flock to the protection of an apparently strong-armed leader who will guard us from the shadowy wolf that crouches in wait to devour us?
So now when we hear these terror alerts again and again, do we run back to the warm embrace of one who purports to be in authority?
Not this time.
For this time we realize...
The shepherd has become the wolf.
And though I remain a frightened, bewildered sheep, my fears are fanned far more by insidious governmental destruction of freedom and future, than they are by terrorists.
Yet there is an antidote. Today, I went to a teaching session, run by the New York Civil Liberties Union, for this Sunday's protest march against the Republican National Convention. And my fears are dispelled. I join in spirit with millions of people, all supporting each other against the would-be tyrants. I am surrounded by intelligent, creative, passionate, articulate people, all determined to counter the darkness encroaching on our land.
During the march, there will be legal monitors everywhere, identified by blue and green hats, checking on police conduct, tracking the treatment of anyone arrested, and doing everything possible to secure our rights.
I feel empowered, I feel supported. For me, marching this Sunday is more therapy than it is protest.
If, Heaven forbid, there is another terrorist attack in the future -- whether it is the handiwork of that slippery predator, Al Qaeda; the act of some state-sponsored secret organization; or some delicious feat of revenge perpetrated on the American people or on another Western nation for daring to defy the Bush administration -- it certainly won't be the work of protestors!
But no event, however devastating, could ever justify another wave of wrongful arrests and torture, the production of yet more deadly weapons, or the outright desecration of our Constitution, Bill of Rights, or The Declaration of Independence. If these processes are brought to completion, what will be left of America to protect?
Aug. 25, 2004
