Rock a bye, baby

Before the semester starts, I usually get a call or two from a concerned parent, who wants to know how I’m going to keep their child safe in the big bad metropolis of Los Angeles. I do my best to reassure parents that I give a safety orientation and screen the host families and check in with the students to make sure everyone is doing okay. For some parents, that is enough. Some, however, want me to give them an absolute guarantee that nothing bad will happen to their child. I can’t do that, at least not in good conscience. We haven’t lost one yet, so we’re doing well so far, but something could happen. I do remind parents that when it comes to rape, a frat party is a far more dangerous place for a college-age young woman to be than south L.A. Still, this is reality, not Mr. Roger’s neighborhood. No matter what precautions we take, something bad could happen.

This is my take on the response to 9/11 and our current Presidential elections: we don’t want solutions; we want someone to sing us lullabies. We want to be told that there are no monsters under the bed or over the sea or in ourselves. Once we are presented with incontrovertible evidence that such monsters exist, we want someone to Do Something and tell us they won’t ever bother us again.

We want someone to tell us that the world is safe and bad things won’t happen. The only people who can tell us those things are people who are lying or deluded. Some think that terrorists flew planes into buildings full of people because they were jealous of us or wanted to destroy freedom, justice and the American way. Some think that our insensitive and arrogant foreign policy made us a target. Those are both factors, but I propose another reason: We were attacked because we are the world’s only superpower. If you were a terrorist wanting value for money, who else would you target?

Reason #127 why I could never get elected to much of anything: I think that eventually we will get hit with another terrorist attack, no matter what we do and no matter who is President. I don’t know how or when or who or how bad it will be, so don’t anybody send John Ashcroft to my door. When it happens, it won’t be Bush’s fault, and it won’t be Kerry’s fault. It will be the terrorists’ fault.

Don’t get me wrong – I would like for us to figure out that poverty is an excellent breeding ground for extremism, and put more resources towards effective, grassroots development in countries that need it. I wish we would rethink our support of pro-U.S. leaders with sketchy human rights records. I wish we would demand more accountability from multi-national corporations. I wish we would change our cozy relationship with Saudi Arabia. I wish we had never invaded Iraq. However, even if our foreign policy was perfectly just, which seems unlikely to happen, we might still get hit. Once you decide that blowing up civilians with bombs is a good way to solve your problems, you don’t generally look at the world with a lot of nuance.

There are people in this world who place their cause above their regard for human life, and they don’t play by any rules. Just ask the people of Beslan, Russia. That sort of thing is hard to combat. It’s not like a middle school is a strategic target. Take a look at the horror in Darfur, Sudan. (BTW – props to the Bush administration for declaring it a genocide. Can we do something about this now? Kofi, honey, what exactly is the U.N. waiting for – burning bushes and angelic visitations?) There is frightening evil in the world, and sometimes it will touch us, not matter how hard we try to hide in shopping malls and 500 channels of satellite T.V.

In A Prayer for Owen Meany, one of my favorite favorite books, Owen says this: “To get Americans’ attention, you have to tax them or draft them or kill them.” 9/11 got our attention, and I wish that it would have sparked a greater compassion and awareness of the violence that so much of the world must deal with every day. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t investigate and prosecute terrorists. If there is evidence that someone is involved in terrorist activities, then by all means, let’s arrest them.

I just wish that we would do a little more reflection about what it means to keep our humanity in a violent and unfair world, about what it means to be just when so many are unjust, and about the long hard solutions to oppression and the growing gap between the rich and the poor.

But all I hear is lullabies....

Rock a bye baby in the treetops.
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall.
Down will come baby, cradle and all.

Comments

[bobbie]

the image of dick chaney singing anyone a lullabye is enough to give me nightmares!

[anj]

all I can say is - spot on Christy. excellent piece of writing.

[Christy]

Bobbie -
I think John Ashcroft is the singer in the bunch - you know he wrote a song and recorded it, right? I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Anj - glad you liked it.

[Brian]

Christy - great post! I think you'd enjoy this with Benjamin Barber on NOW with Bill Moyers. Barber is a political scientist at the University of Maryland and he's talking about his new book that deals with fear and our response to terrorism. His interview was near the end of the show, so you need to scroll down to the end to find it.

[Nancy]

I found this article yesterday concerning the history in Sudan while reading Slate:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2104814/
This definitely gave me a different perspective than the one given by the mass American media.

For those of you who don't know, Slate is an online magazine. Although I don't always agree with their analysis, they are one of the few newsmedia outlets that bother to include background and history when analyzing a situation. For that reason alone, they are worth cheking out. Plus, they have "Bushisms" and "Kerryisms", which always bring a smile to this face.

[Christy]

Brian - I'll check out the article.

nancy - YOu're right - slate actually gave some background information - how novel. I'll have to check out the Bushisms and kerryisms for entertainment.

[jenell]

I lived in a D.C. ghetto (African-American) for 4 years, and the only time I was in sexual danger was at a grad school party, in a very bad situation with strangers -- who were white men working on their graduate degrees.

I was also once serenaded with a spontaneous rap, as I was dressed in white and walking down the street to my wedding. The rap was a wedding gift from a mentally ill homeless man who I'd known for several years. Such a gift is given only in the ghetto.

[jenell]

OK, to be fair, I should add this point. There were also, in the life of my household, bike tire stealings, Christmas card thefts, strange sexual come-on lines, and a few rare and terrible violent events. These things, too, happened only in the ghetto.

[Christy]

Jenell -
I think it's not so much that nothing bad will happen in the ghetto - because bad things do happen and have happened to friends of mine. It's just that in more well-dressed places, there is an illusion of safety. The whole world holds some danger, no matter how much we pretend it isn't true. The whole world holds beauty as well, although you have to learn to see it in the ghetto.
Hmmm...Christmas card thefts? That's a new one. I wouldn't think that holiday wishes would have much resale value.