...Almost as soon as the bombs exploded on Boylston Street the calls were heard to move on. “Repair the sidewalk immediately,”
exhorted one commentator, “fix the windows, fill the holes, and leave
no trace—no shrines, no flowers, no statues, no plaques—and return life
to normal there as fast as possible.” Anything less would be a victory
for the terrorists, who should not be allowed, as if it is within our
power to disallow it, to leave “even the smallest scar” on our cities
and our psyches. “The best response to a tragedy such as the one in
Boston,” declared another commentator, “is to go on with your life, eyes
open.”
The advice was perfectly anodyne—but who, except the victims of
the atrocity, was preparing to do anything else? A security expert
pronounced that “this is a singular event,
and not something that should drive policy.” His certainty that there
was nothing to be learned from the attack was expressed long before we
learned very much about the attack. There was a lot of uplift, too, in
the discussion of the horror, which was understandable, since there is
nothing as comforting as cliché; but it seemed similarly panicked by the
prospect of a rupture in quotidian American existence, of a disruption
in the inertia of a good life. Some of this silly balm consisted in
local chauvinism: suddenly everybody was singing the Standells. “They picked the wrong city,”
President Obama said, along with many others. Which city would have
been the right city? He also proclaimed proudly that “Americans refuse
to be terrorized.” But Americans were terrorized, on the day of
the bombing and on the day of the manhunt; and they were right to be
terrorized, because what they had in their midst was terrorism.
Moving
on is of course one of the quintessential expressions of the American
spirit, and of the American shallowness. Our religion is the religion of
movement; stillness offends our sense of possibility. We dodge the
darker emotions by making ourselves into a moving target for them. We
feel, but swiftly. This emotional efficiency, this cost-benefit calculus
of the heart, is at once a strength and a weakness: you cannot be
damaged by what cannot sink in. And so we acquire resilience through
transience, and stoicism through speed. We cling desperately to the
illusion of our immunity, even after it has just been disproved by
experience, and to the fiction of the pastness of the past: we call it
“closure,” which is just a decision not to care anymore, and not to let
experience intrude any further.
We need desperately to know that our
insulation is intact. Hence the haste to get the marathon massacre
behind us, to hold the memorial service and plan the next marathon. We
are sometimes so anxious not to overreact that we underreact. Perhaps
some people worried, in the aftermath of the Boston bombings, that if we
lingered too long over the outrageous fact of what had been done to us,
if we were patient with fear and tolerant with anger, then we, I mean
our government, might be tempted to do something, and some airborne
division might be dispatched for some more shock and awe. After all, if
any past is not past, it is 2003. (The worry is plainly ridiculous, as
our government prefers highly analytical inaction.) In any event, we
decided that every detail of our lives before the bombings was now
sacred. Americans do not like to be inconvenienced by history.
We
sometimes comport ourselves as if history is itself an inconvenience.
I remember reading these vicious lines by Frank Bidart, in 2002 in The Threepenny Review, in a poem called “Curse” about the terrorists of September 11:
May what you have made descend upon you.
May the listening ears of your victims their eyes their
breath
enter you, and eat like acid
the bubble of rectitude that allowed you breath.
I
greatly admired their wrath.
Sometimes anger is apposite, a sign that
you have accurately understood what has befallen you; and the absence of
anger a sign of intellectual or moral confusion. Most of the curses I
heard during the week of Boston’s ordeal were directed at the allegedly
heavy hand of law enforcement! The same with fear: it may have a basis
in reality, and when it does it should be respected. Sometimes it is
fearlessness that is unintelligent, and its consequences are not always
laudable.
Only a stupid society would come away from
the events in Boston with its sense of its security unshaken. Only a
stupid society would refuse to acknowledge that its safety, and its
peace of mind, may be affected by resentments and metaphysics that come
from far away—from what Fouad Ajami recently described, in connection
with the Tsarnaev brothers, as “the seam between countries and cultures.”
Even though we must harbor no fantasy of invulnerability, we must not
be glib about our vulnerabilities. Keep calm and carry on, sure—but also
think strategically, and make adjustments, and learn lessons.
Are there
really no policy conclusions to be drawn from Boston? I do not believe
it. The professors of risk, who peddle reassuring probabilities and are
more anguished about whether cigarettes should be seen in the stores
that sell them, measure evils only quantitatively, which has a certain
consciousness-lowering effect.
Vigilance, increased and
intense, is not a victory for the terrorists. Mourning, and the time it
takes, is not a victory for the terrorists.
Reflection on all the
meanings and the implications—on the fragility of our lives—on terrorism
and theodicy—is not a victory for the terrorists. A less than wholly
sunny and pragmatic view of the world is not a victory for the
terrorists. What happened on Boylston Street was not a common event, but
it was not a singular event. There is a scar. Taking terrorism seriously is not a victory for terrorism.
Me:
...I didn’t like it much better second time round. “Why?” nobody asks.
For one, the
premise isn’t earned: the anecdotal “Let’s move on” exhorted by a few
commentators is hardly a firm for the premise of a deeply engrained American
impulse here to get past it, forget it, assume again delusions of relative
imperviousness, get closure, and make the passed past, in a word or two “Move
on.” How does Wieseltier propose to demonstrate, provide the metrics by which to
gauge, the accurate, singularity of American sensibility here.
For two, why the condescension towards what would be a
universal desire to get some purchase on some relative sense of normalcy, to get
back to daily life, to a “good life” or the best life lone can manage?
For three, consider the logical fallacy of the excluded
middle between the binaries of moving on or dwelling with, absorbing,
internalizing this latest terrorism on American soil. How does the desire for
such normalcy in the wake of it entail just moving on without dwelling on it,
considering it, absorbing it, internalizing it? Why can’t the desire for some
daily normalcy coexist with dealing with the terror?
For four, why the snotty condescension to Americans,
Bostonians, and the President wanting to vaunt the muscularity of Boston in the
face of the attack? Isn’t that standing strong and municipally proud a good
symbolic fist in the face of would be terrorists and their enablers, however
ineffectual? And why the snotty condescension in the phrase “the silly balm of
local chauvinism? Why “silly?” As just briefly explained, it’s understandable,
all to the good, and it’s people seeking meaning and healing via civic pride and
via certain touchstones of iconic local popular culture. /// For four, what’s
with the pedantic mincing, chop logic and slicing of the meanings of words and
phrases? Is this man so indwelling in his own convoluted head that he cannot
recognize the attempt at invigorating sentiment in “They picked the wrong city?”
Does he want to suggest Obama was in some way implying that there might have
been “a right city? Does he want to suggest that Obama is saying Bostonians and
Americans were not terrorized when he said “Americans refuse to be terrorized.”
Is he buried so deep inside his own convolution and presumed superior sense of
things that he fails to understand Obama’s words as a call to strength, as
encouraging the refusal of the public to be cowed by these acts? Does he want to
suggest that these words are a call to mindless obliviousness, immune from
accommodating th meanings and consequences of what happened?
For five, the entirety of the second paragraph is a
highly impressionistic paean to nothing so much as Wieseltier’s patently self
congratulatory assertion of his own profundity, superior sensibility, and
brilliance in diagnosis of the American sensibility. Evidence please to shore up
that diagnosis, of the lack of a sense of living history in the American mind,
of dodging the darker emotions, of clinging desperately to “an illusion of
immunity, of the panic-stricken desire for indifference, that Americans aren’t
lingering enough over the bombing, and all the other items so sneeringly laid
out. And what of the utter abstracted stupidity that closes the second
paragraph: the surmise that perhaps some are worried if Boston is too long
lingered over America might be moved to reiterate some iteration of attacking
Iraq—...some airborne division might be dispatched for some more shock and
awe... Is he really positing that as an imaginable possibility, or is it just a
disingenuous rhetorical ploy to give context to a snivelling swipe at Obama—The
worry is plainly ridiculous,-- (as though anyone sane is harboring such
worries)—as our government prefers highly analytical inaction...? (To be noted
that this is about the 9.569th time Wieseltier has faulted Obama for
not doing more war like things, without ever once hinting at one concrete detail
of what these things might include.)
For six, evidence please: for the lack of righteous
anger, for intellectual and moral confusion, for the curses directed at the
“allegedly” heavy hand of law enforcement. My Canadian’s sense of the response
from the wall to wall cable television coverage, from such of the American
conversation within earshot via American radio, from reading news papers and
magazines, from watching the investigation unfold, the beginnings of the
administration of criminal justice, the mooting of the related questions of rights and liberties
in the specifics of the case, from seeing these questions raised, from, most
genrally, sensing the burning desire to
have satiated the overarching preoccupation with “Why?” with “How from the
shadow of thought to the act?” is a screamingly loud refutation of the entirety
of Wieseltier’s diagnosis and his “superior” recommendations. Recommendations to do what
specifically? Why nothing really.
For seven, evidence please of this society’s sense of
its security left unshaken, of its stupidity to be inferred therefrom, of its
fantasies of invulnerability, of the refusal to try to draw policy conclusions,
of an Administration, as representative of its people, and its agencies not
trying to do their best to cope with, deter, defend against terror at home and
aboard, all lost in a complacent miasma of inactivity. For six, I have no doubt,
I assume, I would bet on it, those is whose duty it is to consider what the
policy consequences of this terrorism might be are doing their due considering.
But please Wiesletier, so sure of the nascent policy consequences waiting full
birth, gives us a hint. What policy consequences occur to you that you’d care to
detail? I’m equally certain, assume, would bet on it, that one this question,
you have nothing to say.
So I’ll finish where I began a few comments above: ...
this is one of stupidest, most supercilious, overwrought, going nowhere things
Wiselseltier has ever written in these pages...
