[This is a sort of column I’ve been doing since the early part of the new century.]

I have a problem: I like to think that you can drive down the road at a safe and nearly-legal speed without having to witness someone flipping you the bird. If the way people are behaving on the freeway or in the supermarket is any indication, 98% of you have already turned to an article of People magazine, or have put down this publication to turn on the boob tube; I’m sure there’s an episode of Friends in syndication somewhere. After all, you do have 893 channels to choose from, fought and bled for on the battlefields of the world.

For the remaining 2%, then, this one is for you. What is wrong with this country, this society? Does everyone realize that we are at war? Doesn’t anyone else see that we are on the brink of either total decimation as a species, or at least dancing on the threshold of a new era ruled by anarchy and lawlessness?

Apparently not. I had thought that the atrocities committed in New York and Washington, D.C., and in the air over a small town in western Pennsylvania, would have brought some of the inadequacies of our lifestyle as Americans into sharp focus.

And it did, too–for about a week and a half. But on or about September 25, 2001, there was a car some 4 inches off my bumper on the freeway, a form of non-verbal aggression demanding that I take my car from 15 MPH above the speed limit of 55, and push it to 75 with my toddler in the back seat. I’m sorry; didn’t the Twin Towers plunge to earth 2 weeks ago? That American flag decal on your back bumper is hardly dry yet, and you’re already back to your dealing with us all in such a non-caring way? Great. 

Perhaps it’s me. Maybe I’m the problem here. I mean, it was me who turned his back on baseball several years ago–how un-American can you get? So what if they were athletes playing a sport for profit, and they were complaining about how many millions of dollars they were allowed to make each year? Who cares if they had a year-long strike in order to be given the contractual right to hold the owners hostage whenever they felt it appropriate? What difference does it make if the owners of the teams are the ones who put up all of the capital? Baseball is the American pastime, isn’t it? The world came to a crashing halt when the strike began, didn’t it? We didn’t know what to do with ourselves. We were lost.

No, we were not lost. We went to more movies [even if they were block-busting effects-heavy bloodbaths]. We spent a little more time with our families. And guess what happened? We didn’t miss baseball. We found we could live without it. How about that, huh? I personally found that I could live without football and basketball, too. [I believe I could live without hockey, but I hate to lump those guys in with the rest of them–they just seem like they want to play. Even if they do decide to have a hold-out, it lasts a stretch of hours as opposed to days, weeks, or even months; they can’t wait to get back out there on the ice. But I digress.]

So perhaps I’m the culprit. Could it be that I’m un-American? Am I driving too slowly in the middle lane of the highway, or maintaining too safe a distance between myself and the other cars? Am I turning my back on baseball when they really need my support? Am I refusing to aquiesce to the universal call for sainthood for Dale Earnhardt, and instead making the call for an abolition of this dangerous ‘sport’ that wastes precious resources and puts human beings in harm’s way every time?

Yes, I am. I’m the guy. I miss the America I grew up in, where people gave a damn about what their kids were watching on television. I long for the days when, at the age of 12, my mother saw that I had picked up a copy of The Godfather by Mario Puzo, and took it away from me, telling me that I was “too young for that.” [She was right. Wow.] I truly regret that that first trip I took to Tiger Stadium with my dad is a thing of the past: the ticket prices are outrageous due to exponentially-increasing player salaries; you never know if the person in the seat next to you might snap, and whip out a firearm; and the language is so foul that I’m afraid to take my young son into the middle of it. Not to mention that the players are no longer the reluctant heroes they were for us; they’re downight surly about it. And we’re being told by our government that security precautions are being taken now to keep us safe at these sporting events that used to seem so harmless and engaging.

So maybe I am un-American, at least by current standards. Because, you see, I think about what we were, and wonder where that has gone. The America in which I grew up would still be treating each other with respect on the freeways six months after the attack on our country. We’d be talking to each other, and, yes, screaming at times, too. Agreeing to disagree: an American institution. And I grew up in the 60s, by the way, when civil unrest and public demonstrations against the Vietnam War and racism and our own government were rampant, and still people waved you on when there wasn’t enough room for two cars on a narrow street. 

Before September 11, 2001, I considered myself a pacifist. Afterwards, I started to see myself as a troubled pacifist, realizing I would not have a problem if our government decided to retaliate once we figured out who was to blame. Then we found out who was responsible, and I found myself thinking something I never thought would cross my mind: nuke them ’til they glow. And I hated myself for what they had turned me into. Wasn’t there a more peaceful response to this? Had I been the person elected to the office of President, I think I might have had a more peaceful response, but a response that was ultimately more damaging to our country and people than a military one.

My response? Close the country to outsiders. Expel the United Nations from New York, and close the borders. Give anyone who isn’t an American citizen 30 days to wrap up their affairs, and leave the country. Cease our trade with the rest of the world. Grow our own food, make our own clothing, cars, etc., and let the rest of the planet police themselves. Stop being so damned intent on playing the big brother it seems that no one wants us to be anyway. Pull our head into our shell, and play the isolationist once more.

But we can’t do that. We decide what is morally right in this world, from the treatment of prisoners in a foreign prison to whether or not a person can abort the being growing inside of them. We decide whether an inmate should be put to death for their crime, or if they should instead be allowed a life in prison. We also decide whether a country is treating its citizenry properly, or practicing an acceptable governmental style. We are the moral lawgivers and enforcers for the planet. 

So we wait. We wait for the next attack, whether provoked or not. We vacillate between people fiercely resistant to giving up the freedoms for which we have fought so long and so hard, and a huddled mass of humanity so terrified of what might come next that we are willing to give up some of those freedoms, at least for a while. Someone out there doesn’t like us, and they are more than comfortable inflicting pain and suffering on any one of us. They know where we are, they know how to reach us, and they know how to hurt us. Thank God they didn’t hurt someone in my family, or one of my friends, or worst of all, my little boy. I hesitate to think what I might be capable of.

But thankfully, he and I escaped unscathed…this time. We were spared, and were merely asked to bear witness to the awful events of September 11. We survived that day, only to be cut off by a Nissan Maxima with a Flyers sticker. What a beautiful country.