Wrapped in the Flag, by Erica Jong

Wrapped in the Flag
BY ERICA JONG

There's a story that circulates in New York about the morning of the World Trade Center disaster. A wife calls her husband on his cell phone and asks, "Where are you?"

"In my office, of course," comes the reply.

"Your office just collapsed in a terrorist attack."

The husband falls silent, lying on a hotel room bed with his mistress.

"Hello?" says the wife. "Hello?"

How the story comes out, I can't say, but my husband who practices divorce law, says that divorces are up in New York since 9/11. Apparently the threat of Armageddon leaves people far less tolerant of bad relationships.

Child psychiatrists inform me that kids in New York are significantly more anxious since 9/11 and that no one really knows how to reassure them. Psychological tests on school kids have confirmed this. A fog of anxiety hangs over the city. We are all waiting for the next attack, wishing that somebody knew something about how to prevent it. In the absence of "credible information" we have wrapped ourselves in the flag. Full-size flags, mini-flags, flag decals have blossomed all over the city. Models, socialites, and even drag queens are photographed wearing flag-dresses Buildings are draped in them. Vendors are selling them. "THESE COLORS DON'T RUN" goes the boast on a popular tee-shirt.

The flags and flag-facsimiles have about the same effect on Osama Bin Laden as garlic on Dracula, but that doesn't stop people from flaunting them. I would flaunt one myself if I were less cynical. It might not help -- but how could it hurt? The longing for the flag is a longing for an amulet to make us feel as invulnerable as we felt before. We want our innocence back. We want to feel that as Americans, as denizens of the World City, we are immune from chaos and destruction. The truth is we have never been immune. Feeling that we were was merely proof of our hubris. Now New York has joined the human race.

New York has always been my home and I have never thought of the city as invulnerable. When I was child I played on the rock outcroppings in Central Park, pretending to be an Indian maiden and blocking out the surrounding skyscrapers by squinting. I have always had fantasies of New York felled by nuclear bombs, flooded by rising sea level, toppled by meteors if not by terrorists. I always knew our grandeur might well be fleeting. I was fascinated with how New York must have looked to the first Dutch settlers because I always wanted to imagine the city as a virginal Eden. I am a ruins-junkie: Ephesus, Petra, Baal Bek -- have fascinated me because they show how even the greatest of civilizations are going, going, gone. I have always been able to imagine a crater where New York City used to be. Now everyone else can imagine it too.

But, as La Rochefoucauld said: "Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily," so we go on about our lives. As I get on the cross-town bus, I look around for suicide bombers and then quickly put visions of mayhem out of my mind. As I sit down in the theatre, I locate the exits, then switch my attention to the play. As I cross the Triboro or George Washington Bridge in my car, I think how easily they could be taken down by terrorists. The most sustained anxiety comes when I have to leave New York on a plane. During the extra three hours at the airport I have ample time for panic attacks but instead I sit immobilized in a state of numbness thinking if this is how I'm meant to go, so be it.

So -- has New York changed after 9/11? I suspect it has changed but less than people are claiming. One thing has surely changed and that change is not encouraging. Our tolerance for dissent is greatly diminished. Along with our orgy of uncritical patriotism has come a strangling of debate. Just as the attack on America stifled all criticism of the Presidency of George W. Bush, it rewrote the reputation of Rudy Guiliani. His omnipresence at the scene of the attacks seemed to wipe away the history of his mayoralty which was rife with racism and attacks on freedom of expression. All that was forgotten, as he became New York's mourner in chief.

As I watched New York's curmudgeonly critics turn into patriotic boosters, I began to understand why the powers that be need war. War provides a perfect excuse to stifle debate. Those same talking heads who vociferously insisted on their First Amendment right to criticize Bill Clinton's sex life are now arguing that we have to sacrifice freedom of speech for public safety. Bill Maher of Politically Incorrect has been driven off the air for remarking that bombing people from on high is something less than courageous. I never thought I'd live to see the day when parody and satire were threatened in America, but that day has apparently come. The freewheeling lampooning of the presidency that we got used to in the Clinton administration has been muffled in the wake of 9/11. George W. has been truly lucky to have the terrorist attacks happen on his watch. They have provided perfect cover for his environmental depredations and made him seem a hero rather than an inexperienced international leader. A conspiracy theorist might say that if 9/11 hadn't happened, Bush's minions would have had to invent it. (For a web-site that details this theory go to: www.fromthewilderness.com). There is nothing like an attack on the homeland to create a chorus of uncritical support for the leader.

Even writing these words, I feel uncomfortable. I have never been a Bush supporter, yet in the past few months I have found depths of American patriotism in my heart that have surprised even me. I don't want to believe that our haphazard response to earlier terrorist threats was in any way deliberate. My brash and brutish nation often blunders in foreign policy, yet underlying these blunders is a generosity of spirit that I've often found lacking in other countries. America's heart is not pure, but it is great. When I hear criticism of my country from abroad, I wince. When I hear that we deserved 9/11, I cower. America has tried contradictory things -- to be a great power and at once an open society -- and we have failed. But the aspiration to do both is a worthy one even if it is quixotic. 9/11 has exposed our weaknesses as never before but it has also shown our strength. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in New York. But are we simply whistling in the dark?

Just as the post-9/11 baby boom never materialized, neither did a flight from the city. The stock market is slumping but real estate values are soaring. People still want to live here. If we're going to go up in smoke we might as well do it right here at the center of the action. We know now that no place on the planet is safe and no place is really disconnected from any other place. There's a bravado and fatalism in New York now, but there's less cynicism. "Come and get us!" we seem to be saying. "We're not afraid of anything now that the towers have crashed."

The impact of 9/11 has been greater for the populations that have the most fire-fighters and police. Irish-Americans and Italian-American have experienced a direct hit. But even in the usually aloof worlds of media and fashion, the most unlikely people volunteered at Ground Zero, spent New Year's Eve bringing coffee to people who were sifting through rubble and human remains.

Will the changed consciousness last?

Sadly, I think the suppression of dissent may be the most lasting legacy of 9/11. The war on terrorism doesn't seem to be going well. Our airports and airplanes are not safer than before. As Frank Rich wrote in the New York Times "We are the richest, most can-do country in the world, but at home we're pursuing the war on terrorism with a management style that's pure Kmart." It's not as if we hadn't been warned before that there were terrorists out there. We nearly lost the World Trade Center in 1993. Next came attacks on embassies abroad and the attack on the Cole. All the feting of police officers and firemen can't conceal the fact that prevention of the next attack is nowhere as far along as it should be. Patriotism -- ever the last refuge of scoundrels--has come to be used as a cover for our bumbling attempts to thwart the next 9/11. The next 9/11 will undoubtedly come in another form than commercial jets used as missiles. Dirty bombs, germ-warfare, attacks on power plants all are possible and have hardly been deterred by Tom Ridge and his Keystone Kops Department of Homeland security. While uncritical boosterism is being urged on us, Al Queda, originally trained and funded with our tax dollars, is undoubtedly planning the next attack.

Early in the crisis, the Bush administration suggested that times were too serious for Americans to nit-pick about constitutional rights. Ari Fleisher, Bush's press secretary, admonished us to be quiet for the good of the country. Loyalty was equated with going along and shutting up. Now, after a year of foot-dragging and denial from our supposed protectors, a year in which defense budgets swelled, deficits grew, and we got no more secure inside our borders, it's time to suggest that muck-raking may be our only chance to save our skins. As New Yorkers, we have a duty to lead the way.

It's time to stop wrapping ourselves in the flag and weeping at memorial services and remember that what made this country great is its feistiness. We have not only been wrapped in the flag, we have used it as a blindfold. Sentimentality has replaced vigilance. While we stew in a sea of tears, we are giving up the very spirit that made our country great. As Gore Vidal wrote in response to 9/11: "The awesome physical damage that Osama and company did us on Dark Tuesday is as nothing compared to the knockout blow to our vanishing liberties."

I would like to suggest that we reclaim our ability to argue with our government. In the name of true patriotism rather than mawkish flag-waving, we ought to demand from our leaders why so little is being done to protect us from the next terrorist attack. We ought to demand accountability from Bush and his cronies. We ought to press for complete transparency of governmental mischief in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Why, for example has there been no coverage in the US of the proposed Unocal oil pipeline under Afghanistan which was mooted for years with the Taliban but has recently been approved by Hamid Kharzai's government? American news outlets cover cave-busting bombs, civilian killings, the pronouncements of politicians, but never the economic underpinnings of our presence in Afghanistan. It is as if we forgot to follow the money. It is as if we forgot all we knew about the geopolitics of oil. The most hard-boiled commentators are distracted by flag-waving and have given up their critical faculties. Only mavericks like Gore Vidal have dared to tell the truth and often their truth-telling is not reported in the American press. Even the commonsensical suggestions that I am making here would be essentially unpublishable in the United States. What is more patriotic -- singing "God Bless America" continually or going to the root of the threats that endanger our liberty? The orgy of sentimental patriotism in which I myself have been caught up has distracted most Americans from protecting the strengths of our nation. Here is where flag-waving becomes truly dangerous.

The best way to mark the anniversary of 9/11 is to reclaim our critical faculties. This may not be easy. The patriotic lethargy that has swept America is like Sleeping Beauty's trance, but it will take more than a kiss from a prince to awaken us.

In asking Americans to wake up, I am in no way suggesting the sort of knee-jerk anti-Americanism we have seen in Europe. Attacking America for having "brought it on ourselves" will be of no help to us in arousing the better instincts of our country. There is a huge disconnect between our government's international bungling and the average American's desires for world peace. What I am saying is that Americans are ignorant about history, geopolitics and economics and that the response to 9/11 has only made us more ignorant. In the wake of 9/11 we have a duty to educate ourselves about the role our country plays in world affairs and to take responsibility for shaping it. But it may already be too late. The aftermath of 9/11 has been a grim lesson in governmental manipulation of opinion. We are being prepared for endless war with a shadowy enemy. Only the military-industrial complex stands to benefit .

In the era of Vietnam protest, corporate media was already encroaching on our right to know; by now corporate censorship is almost total. Add to that the fact that the Bush 2 presidency revels in its secrecy: "This administration will not talk about any plans we may or may not have," Bush said after 9/11 and surreally enough, all talk about the legitimacy of his presidency ended with the attacks on New York and Washington. So we have got our work cut out for us in uncovering the information we need to arise from our slumber. The anniversary of 9/11 should be a wake up call for America. Otherwise we may never wake up again.

Perhaps every generation has to learn anew the truth of what David Hume said in 1758:"Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few." This past year has been a frightening example of American passivity in response to governmental manipulation. How can we claim we are making a war in the name of freedom when we have so easily relinquished it at home?

In the absence of any concrete safeguards against terrorism, having failed to catch Osama Bin Laden -- or even our domestic anthrax terrorist -- the Bush administration hopes to distract the credulous American public with a drumbeat for war against Saddam Hussein. When George W. recycled all his father's old oil bidness cronies for his cabinet, we might have predicted this. Everything old is new again. A shaky economy, an ill-considered tax-cut, a crisis of confidence on Wall Street and Main Street? War will fix it. So what if the war is undeclared and unconstitutional? So what if we can't afford it? So what if its outcome may be a world-wide conflagration that can't be contained? Our spirits are, excuse the expression, flagging and George W.'s popularity is slipping. For the sake of his poll numbers, Bush needs to drop some more bombs on brown-skinned people halfway across the world.

The flags that were put out after 9/11 are starting to fade. We need to hoist some new ones. Only a war will do. Only a war will silence the rising murmur of dissent. Mired in budget deficits, a stumbling economic recovery, a meltdown in the financial markets, Bush needs a national emergency and fast. Thank God the last Bush administration left Saddam Hussein in place to serve that purpose. Here we go again. Hoist some clean new flags. Tie that yellow ribbon around that old oak tree. It is beginning to look increasingly as if the Bush administration is planning to celebrate the anniversary of 9/11 with an attack on Iraq. Lucky George needs a war so he can look presidential again and all the flag wavers are lining up behind him. Rumsfield declares Saddam Hussein's invitation to weapons' inspectors "a joke." The Bush administration denounces The New York Times for "leaking" secret Pentagon plans to invade Iraq. War, apparently, is none of the people's business. We are just supposed to wave our flags and hold our tongues. Oh yes, and occasionally sing. "God Bless America" will do just fine.