She who holds the earth
by Suzanne Deveuve
February 1, 2002 Candlemas
from the goddess...
The Editor's Note
by Stephanie Hiller
The Twin Terrors
In this (probably brief) hiatus between the war in Afghanistan and whatever lies ahead, in which a new year has brought renewed hopes of normalcy, we may allow ourselves the luxury of planning for the future without being stopped by a sense of pervading jeopardy. Such thought did not seem possible in November. When I found myself fretting about what I might be doing next year, I immediately reined myself in. Next year, I corrected myself, if there is one. It's hard to imagine that such a pall as hung over us then could re-occur, but our leaders are already warning (or promising) that worse things than the fall of the Twin Towers may yet be in store for us at the hands of evil terrorists whose own plans for the "future" have already been carefully seeded. And they don't include next year. Crashing a plane into a nuclear plant, a plan we've been told has been unearthed in the caves of Al Qaeda, is an act of immediate finality for the perpetrators, and thousands of innocent victims as well. To undertake such devastation is something unthinkable to the rest of us. Certainly the term "evil" applies here.But what of the evils at home?
By now it must be clear to us that two versions of current happenings -- two story lines, if you will -- are being narrated here -- and the story you believe pretty much determines your attitude to our government's behavior.
One, the mainstream view, put forward by our leaders with the help of the mass media and embraced by a huge majority of Americans, is that we are the innocent victims of an awful assault on our safety and well being. We are "under attack" by forces of insanity and darkness, agents of terror, dark men with Kalashnikovs beside them at breakfast, lunch and dinner, with home-made nuclear bombs in the cellar earmarked for special occasions, whose intent is to destroy our civilization in the name of Allah.
In response, our government and its allies must marshal terrific forces of protection and defense, as well as repellent measures such as the recent bombardment of Afghanistan, to knock the floor out from under the enemy, capture them, and fracture their plans. Says our President, We will bar no expense to safeguard America. And it feels good to all of us in front of our television screens to hear him say these things. Daddy is at the helm! With such a threat, even those who did not vote for Bush and do not appreciate him are now on his side. Events like the attack on the Twin Towers cannot go unretaliated; our men are not going to take it "lying down"!
As the salesman in the shoe store told me in defense of the bombing of Aghanistan, "These people don't understand anything else."
I too have a need to be defended, a desire to feel safe (though enough wisdom to know safety is impossible), and a dumb belief in heroism.
But there is another story.
This is the story told by the "progressives", the "left", the anti-capitalists, the pacifists and the liberals, also mostly male, like Noam Chomsky, Peter Phillips et. al. In this story, always prefaced by remarks such as "while I do not condone the bombing of the Twin Towers," the demonic figure is the United States government. Terrorism? Aren't we the biggest terrorist, creating enemies like Osama bin Laden by arming them to do our dirty work and then deserting them to clear up the mess our wars leave behind? Supporting dictators like the Shah of Iran and even Milosovic when he was a "good" boy, who operate as puppets in service to our corporate enterprise while leaching wealth and resources from their own people? Aiding the murderous Pinochet in his plot to overthrow the relatively enlightened leadership of Allende in Chile? What about the hypocrisy of accusing Saddam Hussein of (gasp) manufacturing weapons of mass destruction -- when it is we who have amassed such weapons ever since the second World War and now possess enough of them to annihilate the planet many times over? How about the prison industrial complex and the incarceration of masses of black men? Genocide of the Native Americans, which continues to this day?
It's all too true, definitely. Looking at the politics of US oppression of people of color here and throughout the world, we have to acknowledge that we are responsible for causing more pain -- and more deaths of innocent victims in Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Nicaragua and so on -- than any small band of outlaws can possibly accomplish -- to say nothing of the ongoing destruction of the environment to feed our rapacious hunger for oil, gas, and the luxuries produced by petrochemicals.
Yes, according to this version of current events, we are by far the bigger demon. And look what the demon hath wrought now, in presumed defense of our fair land against the terrorist marauders. Thousands killed in Afghanistan, probably far exceeding our losses in New York.
But if you look carefully at this story, you have to question it too. The bigger bully is not automatically responsible for the activities of the smaller one! The global economy has been blamed, but Osama bin Laden and many of his cohorts are benefactors of the global economy, not its victims. Calling these men the "shadow" of our unified Western gestalt is another misrepresentation. Jung, who promulgated this notion of the shadow element in consciousness, did not tell us that our dark sides are admirable or lovely, he simply proposed an approach for dealing with these buried elements instead of continuing to repress them. Applying psychoanalytic theory to the collective realm is not always appropriate or accurate.
Personally, I have struggled with both of these story lines. At first I felt, too, that something must be done to stop future attacks, period. My friend Simon, a Brit, had pointed out (on behalf of empire, you might say) that our failure to deal harshly with previous terrorist incidents was responsible with their growing confidence. As a teacher I know that some kids just don't respond unless punishment is swift and harsh. I've heard too many kids say, "They didn't do nothin' to me. Just some community service." Unconvinced that anyone had the balls to sock it to them, they just figured they could get away with more stuff. That is the way some people think, after all.
In her brilliant analysis of terrorism, The Demon Lover, which has been re-released for its timeliness, Robin Morgan argues that the hero and the terrorist are indeed two sides of the same patriarchal figure dedicated to the politics of thanatos -- death. In explanation, she quotes the U.S. State Department's definition. "'Terrorism is premeditated, politically motivated violence, perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine state agents.' Some of us might find this a fairly workable description of rape, battery, child abuse, homophobia, sexual harassment, economic exploitation, educational discrimination, and religious manipulation.'" (36) In other words it's all the same, and she goes on to show that terror wreaked on a civilian population, whether by gangsters, revolutionaries, religious fundamentalists and national entities is the product of patriarchy. "The terrorist is the logical incarnation of patriarchal politics in a technological world," she writes, and, "The terrorist is the son practicing what the father has practiced, and claiming to have found his identity in doing so."
It's not about power. "Power and violence are opposites," wrote Hannah Arendt. "The chief reason warfare is still with us is…the simple fact [as in the event of the Twin Towers] that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene."
Ah, but Morgan's response is, "That substitute has now appeared…That substitute -- that transformative wave at this stage in the saga of the human species -- is women as a global political force."\
Women, Morgan argues, are for life. Women will support a politics of Eros to replace the death-enamored politics of thanatos. I haven't finished the book, so I don't know how we're going to do that, but I'm not going to give up till I get there. It's voices like Robin Morgan's that we so desperately need in this time of multiple layered fantasies parading as "news." We've got to withdraw our support from the "games men play" -- without dissimulation or equivocation. With voices like Germaine Greer, Robin Morgan, Mary Daly and Susan Griffin we've got to cut to the quick with the truth.
We need to let the world know what kind of manhood we're looking for, and until it shows up, do without, if need be.
More later when I finish the book! Blessed be.