This question hinges on the question of: who are we, and who are our enemies?
---
Everyone grows up in a certain context. That context is the situation around you; what people do for a living, what people think, what businesses, what location, etc. And from that context, people begin to understand who they are. For instance, I have grown up in Brooklyn NY, therefore, I am a brooklynite. I have gone to public school, therefore, I am a man of the public schools. Not only that I have gone to these places, I have embraced them as a part of my identity.
It is this identity that tells me who I am, it gives me a way to understand myself. Understanding myself is more than just saying 'I am who I am'. In society, you are more than just who you are; you are a man, you are white, you are big, you are small - you are a person who has many adjectives associated with you. We as people associate adjectives with other people, because it places those people in a certain context that we can understand.
For instance, I was at a bar tonight. As I was sitting at the bar, the bartender that was serving me acted, in what I would call, a very gay way - as in much of his movements when he was around me seemed to give off the aura that he was gay. Even one time when he gave me my jerk chicken, he said 'no pun intended'.
Now, what does this say about me, about how I see the world? I have grown up to imagine that people have sex with each other, and that many times, you can tell what type of people they like to have sex with based on their body language. This says that people who act in a certain way are more likely to be gay than people who act in another way. This is how I understand it, that there is a certain type of body language associated with people being gay.
I'm getting to my point. In everyone context that people grow up in, in a society that is always changing, there are always going to people who do not fit into that context. For instance, in my neighborhood, there has always traditionally been latino's, blacks, bohemians, etc; however, recently, we have seen the entrance of the yuppie manhattan crowd - those people who are leaving manhattan because manhattan is too expensive, but they are taking what is 'manhattan' and bringing it into what is 'brooklyn'. This high demand is then changing the makeup of my neighborhood, by bringing higher prices to the real estate, and thus down the line, probably going to make it a much more manhattanized area.
In each 'context' that people grow up in, there is always an 'enemy'. This enemy is someone who does not fit into that context, who seeks to undermine it in some way, shape, or form - or even seeks to eliminate it. For instance, near me, the city is thinking of allowing a huge project, the Atlantic Yards (google it), right there; this will totally transform the area that I know now into an extended part of Manhattan. The enemy, in this situation, is a guy by the name of Bruce Ratner, the principal developer, and Mayor Bloomberg, the guy who is willing to seize private property for private use.
So what are terrorists? Terrorists are people who live by a different set of rules than us, who descend from a different religion than us, who mobilize support in a different way, who want to impose their 'religious views' upon our society, and a whole lotta other things.
Whenever we look at terrorists and think 'bad', we will think of ourselves 'good', because no one can live with defining their life as 'bad'. Even if someone lives a bad life, in absolute terms, like they are a murderer, to them it is a good life, because they chose to take the path in life that they did because it showed them the best life they could have. So, looking at the terrorists, we can see why they are bad, why we are good, and by extension, how the media controls them being 'bad' and we being 'good'.
What are terrorists? I'm going with popular conceptions here.
They are people who believe in a fundamentalist perspective in Islam, who don't believe in liberal societies.
-> Obviously, we are people who do believe in liberal societies, which is wholly incompatible with strict religious definitions.
Terrorists are people who are willing to maim women and children for political gain.
-> We are people who are not willing to maim women and children for gain. In fact, we are people who are not willing to maim women and children at all, becaue they are 'innocent'.
Terrorists are people who blow themselves up in crowded market places
-> Not only do we not blow ourselves up, but we only fight 'on the battlefield'. We do not issue suicide belts to our soldiers.
Terrorists are poor, trampled on youth, who become exploited by some enterprising leader intent on making gain.
- > We are people who are capable of reason, and reasonably choose to enter into society because it is the most beneficial to our person and where we live.
Terrorists hide among the people, waiting for the opportune moment to blow themselves up
- > We loudly proclaim where we are, and come to meet your wherever you are.
Anyway, that's enough for right now.
What do we see when we see the media? I'd say that it is stories that re-enforce our exisiting notions about ourselves. All the stories are phrased within the context of who the American people are. Sure, the stories may disagree over details, like 'it is in the true interest of the American peoplpe to withdraw from Iraq' - but ultimately, the stories need to be phrased so that Americans can understand it. Thus, when stories talk about that we should withdraw, they don't openly say 'we should withdraw'. They phrase the stories in such a way as 'we are systematically attacking innocent women and children, or are causing them harm- doing this is a tyrannical way of acting.' And so on...
A quick glance at tomorrows headlines in NY times:
Congress Backs Tighter Rules on Lobbying
Not exactly on topic, but what does this say about us? We don't think that Congress ought to be in control of lobbyists, because they don't represent the sense of the people, but instead the sense of the corporations. Those corporations are elitists, and are not 'the people', thus more restrictions on lobbyists bring us closer in reality to what we should be ideally.
In Increments, Senate Revisits Immigrant Bill
A very divisive issue, but what does this say about us? There is no clear answer to the problem of immigration. Although some say that we were all originally immigrants, there is also the nativist tradition, that the people who were here before those immigrants deserve to be the dominant ones in society. This says that, we as citizens of America, are both nativists, and immigrants.
At Hussein Grave, Legend Lives as Fury Simmers
What does this say about us? We are people who rode in on the cavalry and said 'haha, goodbye tyrant!' Another example of American anti-tyrants - I'd like to see George Bush pre-emptively invade a nation that is led by a man he calls 'moral'. He just couldn't convince people. Imagine if he had called Saddam Hussein a 'moral leader', and then said, 'we must invade him because he possess WMDs that he will use!'
arg i'm tired.
I hope people respond in this thread.
What does it mean to say that terrorists are our enemies?
Today
Sponsored Links
Linear Mode
