tp227.xml
Title
tp227.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2003-03-10
TomPaine Story: Story
When the World Trade Center fell to two kamikaze jet liner impacts, we were told that ""Everything is different."" I say nothing is different, especially our inability to acknowledge or learn from our mistakes. We proclaim our support for Ariel Sharon as a ""man of peace."" We have a record a mile long of backing armed intervention in the self-government of countries from Viet Nam to Guatemala. In 2001 we began quite unjustifiably bombing and paying mercenaries to fight in Afghanistan to take ""an eye for an eye"" for the WTC terrorist attack. Economically, we're fully as bossy, selfish, and hypocritical on a global scale.
And we wonder: ""Why do they hate us so much?"" We leap to the comforting conclusion: They hate us because we're free.
In fact, our sense of freedom is illusory, based on the fallacy that we have no past. That was the advantage of coming to a New World from the old. That was the lure of the Frontier: There a man's past didn't matter--only what he was, what he could do. Now, new technology and population growth have so shrunken the globe that that beckoning Frontier has vanished. No way remains to pretend that the past didn't happen--no where to escape from the consequences of our own acts. We still must take to heart the bitter lesson that cost Europe so dear--that ""Those who will not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.""
They really hate us because we THINK we're free of the laws of karma that bind everyone else to suffer the consequences of their acts. Now we must begin to follow the dictates of that law--to acknowledge that all our acts have consequences--or we will bring a holocaust upon ourselves and the whole world.
And we wonder: ""Why do they hate us so much?"" We leap to the comforting conclusion: They hate us because we're free.
In fact, our sense of freedom is illusory, based on the fallacy that we have no past. That was the advantage of coming to a New World from the old. That was the lure of the Frontier: There a man's past didn't matter--only what he was, what he could do. Now, new technology and population growth have so shrunken the globe that that beckoning Frontier has vanished. No way remains to pretend that the past didn't happen--no where to escape from the consequences of our own acts. We still must take to heart the bitter lesson that cost Europe so dear--that ""Those who will not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.""
They really hate us because we THINK we're free of the laws of karma that bind everyone else to suffer the consequences of their acts. Now we must begin to follow the dictates of that law--to acknowledge that all our acts have consequences--or we will bring a holocaust upon ourselves and the whole world.
Collection
Citation
“tp227.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed October 7, 2024, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/699.