Intelligence Crushed Under Heavy Wave Of Blind Patriotism... Again
Here's a story about some comments made by Maggie Gyllenhaal about the September 11th attacks. Gyllenhaal said 9/11 was "an occasion to be brave enough to ask some serious questions about America's role in the world. Because it is always useful as individuals or nations to ask how we may have knowingly or unknowingly contributed to this conflict;" and went on to say, "Not to have the courage to ask these questions of ourselves is to betray the victims of 9/11."
All of that seems pretty groovy and intelligent, right? I mean, she makes some interesting points, and, if we had an open enough mind, maybe we could all see the truth in her statements. But, unfortunately, any semblance of an America where people truly are free to say as they please has been stamped out under the elephant that has become Patriotism. Gyllenhaal received so many negative comments about her statements on her website that the site administrator had to disallow the ability to comment on her page. He said it had gotten out of hand. Negative comments are not the only thing that I feel has gotten out of hand... We, as a nation, aren't even taking the time to look at ourselves critically. It's one thing to be isolationistic for hundreds of years (which we were) it's another thing entirely to completely ignore not ONLY the rest of the world, but also ignore ourselves. If we want to ignore everyone else, that's fine... but to not even take the time to look in the mirror is an offense to ourselves and to everyone else we're ignoring. And it would be one thing to look at ourselves and be able to say with certainty that we didn't do anything wrong... or anything that prompted the attacks. BUT, to not even allow the intelligent discourse... to stick our fingers in our ears and pretend to not hear what the rest of the world is saying (although it's pretty easy since we refuse to learn other languages) is sickening. Let's at least pretend to care what other people think... or at least pretend to be interested in furthering intellectual conversations as a society. It's what the Greeks, who we stole most of our good ideas from (including democracy), would have wanted.