V: Coming of Age in an Imperfect World
Two days after the war has gone to Afghanistan: There are camo-clad troops in Penn Station. They are there for one purpose:
To have their picture taken.
Even at 10 a.m., past the morning rush, clots of them are matched in number by the TV cameras and newspaper photographers. This I notice after a train ride that included a long stop in the tunnel under the river, which I spent persuading myself was not due to a disaster ahead of us, and thinking how simple, and how destructive, it would be to carry a small bomb onto a train and set it off in that tunnel.
I guess having their picture taken is as good a thing as any for the Guardsmen and women to be doing, creating an illusion of security. I can't see that they increase actual security--how would they? By looking for people who look suspicious? The men who turned those airplanes into guided missiles didn't look suspicious. They did look Middle Eastern. But then again, the previous record-holder for most vicious terror attack on U.S. soil didn't look foreign. Timothy McVeigh wouldn't catch their eyes.
A friend rode a train from Boston to Washington D.C. this past weekend. She was sufficiently appalled by the absence of security on the train that she was afraid to take one back. She flew. She was nervous, until she boarded the nearly empty flight to find her fellow passengers were all Western-looking women.
I guess it's nice to be, by virtue of my sex, above suspicion. Apparently fundamentalist Muslim men are the only people in America who are violently disaffected.
But itıs really just closing the barn door after the horse has fled. Security theatre, Cory Doctorow likes to call it. The illusion of safety, because real safety, 100 percent guaranteed no bad thing can happen, (1) doesnıt exist, and (2) isnıt something you could take a picture of if it did exist.
I am willing to take certain chances in exchange for retaining my civil liberties and my freedom of movement. But I understand: what chances am I willing to take with the lives of my nieces and nephews? I hate to see Arielle denied the opportunity to visit art museums, but am I willing to take her there? Would seeing a line of armed militia there make me feel safer? No, because I know better. But each of us has to decide for ourselves what we are willing to risk in this new world.
Theyıve lived through this in other countries. (I once was confronted by a machine gun wielded by a pimply teenage soldier in Scotland when the walking tour I was on passed too close to his checkpoint at Edinburgh Palace in the fog and rain.) But as a nation, we are adolescent: like teenagers, we have always thought we were immortal, that nothing bad could happen to us.
We were wrong. And now we are growing up quickly.
And we are different: this nation was founded on a set of values that include freedom of thought, freedom of action, freedom of movement. For us to give up our freedom means a good deal more. Are we willing to let the actions of someone else take that away from us?
Growing up isnıt easy.
I haven't lost anyone, but I feel diminished, maybe even a little bit broken.
Catharsis. Fellow writer Ben Adams said that's what all my short stories have, a trademark emotional catharsis. But I have put away my pen, stopped writing fiction for the time being, and maybe a very long time; I don't know. This reality has vastly overcome my ability to imagine.
V: Coming of Age in an Imperfect World