On Being American

THE WAR ON TERROR IS OVER.

And we lost.

What began on Sept. 11, 2001, ended on Jan. 27, 2017. It ended when the US Government banned million of refugees and legal residents from entering the country out of ignorance and fear.

Not for due cause. Not for being on a watch list. Not for being a member of a terrorist organization.

Just fear. Just the last cowardly act of a country unable to live united anymore, unable to accept “other” anymore. This is what those men – not refugees, but trained militants and martyrs – wanted when they crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

They didn’t just want to kill Americans; they wanted us to destroy ourselves. And we obliged. We did more damage to our way of life than Al-Qaeda and ISIS combined.

So what are we to the rest of the world now that we’ve lost? What is “being American?”

• Being American is being a Christian, though not necessarily one who follows the tenets of Christianity.

• Being American is being white.

• Being American is being a woman who is a sex object first and an underpaid worker second.

• Being American is being in favor of walls between neighbors.

• Being American is making racial slurs about black people while cheering for black athletes to entertain us.

• Being American is discriminating against Mexicans while eating tacos and drinking margaritas.

I’m sorry, does this post bother you? Does it make you angry? My apologies, I’m almost done, promise:

• Being American is lamenting the lack of family values despite your affairs and three divorces.

• Being American is preventing women from making choices about their bodies but ensuring plenty of choices for people to kill each other.

• Being American is assigning labels to people so we don’t have to understand them.

• Being American is creating your own truth when reality doesn’t agree with you.

• Being American is being against immigration, except the immigrants responsible for making you an American.

• Being American is hate.

There, that’s enough. I’m sure you get the idea.

Of course I don’t believe any of this and I expect you don’t either. But what I believe or what you believe doesn’t matter anymore.

This is what the world believes or will believe very soon, and there’s little we can do to change this perception.

Because the war on terror is over – and we lost.

It remains to be seen how much more we will lose, how much further we will fall before we hopefully, somehow, someday, rise again.

So let me ask you one more time: Does this post bother you? Does it make you angry?

I hope so. For the sake of my daughter’s future and the future of the United States, I sure fucking hope so.