Healing My Patriotic Shame

While I lay in bed in the early morning of September 11, with my infant son nursing at my breast, America was under attack.  Or so it seemed.  The morning of 9/11 was one of the most memorable of my life.  My husband called from Los Angeles to tell me that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.  I turned on the television, just in time to see the second plane fly into the second tower.  Mere minutes went by when the towers collapsed. 

Those events were cathartic enough, however, it was what followed that truly changed me.  Like everyone else in America at the time, I truly felt a kinship with my fellow Americans.  A renewed patriotism that I thought would solidify the country, wake us up and bring us together as citizens uniting for good. 

What ensued was a calculated propaganda campaign that divided us with fear.  We were told not to trust our neighbors who are different from us.  Our president went into hiding after 9/11 for 3 weeks, instead of telling us there was nothing to be afraid of, we were given a rainbow of “threat levels.”  We were forced to give up our civil rights when we flew on an airplane in the name of “safety,” and yet none of those violations actually stopped the shoe bomber or the underwear bomber in the ensuing years—the passengers did, proving that it was never our civil freedoms that compromised our safety, but rather the element of surprise.  As I stood in the Islip Airport with the entire contents of my luggage on display for the public, a woman in a uniform opening all of my cosmetic bottles and smelling them, tearing open my brand new purchases from the city and throwing them back in the suitcase, telling me it wasn’t her job to put them back the way she found them, I realized that Bin Laden had won. 
With disgust I watched Obese, uneducated Americans with a burger in one hand and a beer in the other talk about how we are America and we were going to kick the Muslims behinds.   And I was afraid.  Not of Muslim extremists.  But of the ignorance that seemed to be gripping our country.  I was afraid because my president was telling me to be afraid.  And fear comes from weakness, so in essence my government was telling me we were too weak to fight against a few radicals. 

At a time when I needed to hear a recap of FDR’s  “we have nothing to fear but fear itself” speech, I was hearing that the threat was real and that we need to be afraid.  At a time when America needed to come together in solidarity, talking heads were telling me not to trust my Muslim neighbors.  At a time when we should have been fighting ignorance, we chose, instead to fight people.  And we weren’t fighting with our enlisted sons and daughters, who had patriotically signed up to serve our country, but with our own private mercenary terrorist groups.  They had pleasant names like Blackwater and KBR Haliburton.  But I saw right away they were being paid the equivalent of the GDP of some small countries, supplied with unlimited munitions and not required to swear an allegiance to our government.  What would happen if someone hired them to attack us?  The Muslim extremists had killed 3,000 of our own in their worst attack ever.  These companies were capable of taking out tens of thousands of people on a mediocre day.  And I was confused as to how they weren’t considered terrorists.

In short, I realized that I had a certain amount of shame toward my own country.  Once I had been so proud of the U.S.A., but our subsequent behavior after 9/11 has made me unable to call myself a proud American anymore.  What could have been and should have been America’s shining moment, when we turned tragedy into triumph has turned into a magnifying glass of what a failure we are.  The twin towers still remain un-built, we still can’t take our own water onto a plane and even though we’ve killed Bin Laden, we are still at war.  I am different because 9/11 has left me with the wound of patriotic shame.  I am different because I never had a desire to be a proud American.  I just was.   I am different because before 9/11 I expected my son to grow up in a strong America that valued freedom and equality. 

And yet, I still have hope that we can regain our former glory.  But that entails change, not from our government, but from me and you.  It entails work and dedication- the same work and dedication our forefathers had when they started this country.  It takes you and me, turning off our televisions, getting together with our neighbors and respectfully discussing the America we want to have and then going out and doing our part.  We still have the ability to vote for whomever we like for office.  That means we need to do that.  We need to make a pact that we won't vote exclusively for our party.  That's for lazy people and losers.  If we Americans are to be winners it means that each and everyone of us need to lodge our own personal campaign for a better America.  It means we need to all come together in agreement that we will not vote for the person who spends the most money.  We will not vote for anyone who has a commercial on television or a sign on the side of the road.  We will form neighborhood coalitions who will go and find out who's funding the candidates and vote for the one who is getting funding from his/her constituents only. 
Is anyone out there with me on this?

Conversations with God vs. Divine Right

Michelle Bachmann freely admits that she has conversations with God.  God tells her things.  Rick Perry seems to allude to the same thing.  George W. Bush also said he would speak to God and get messages in return.  Now, I do understand the desire for many people to hold a personal belief in something intangible.  Provided that their faith makes them better people (and that seems to be the case for the silent majority of the faithful) I have no issues with that.* 
However, I do draw the line at candidates professing this level of devotion.  This is mainly because history has shown us so many times how devotion to something that can’t be proven, can be used to manipulate people into perpetrating evil.  But in the case of presidential candidates there is a much more fundamental reason for my outrage.  And that goes back to a doctrine that was in place in Europe during the colonization of America- the doctrine of Divine Right. 
For those that didn’t pay attention in high school, Divine Right is the notion that monarchs of countries were chosen by God, by sheer nature of their birth, to rule.  They were told from a young age that they and they alone could talk directly to God since they were chosen by Him and therefore, the messages they would receive were divine.  They had the same authority over life and death as God. 
Most of the people who fled to the colonies did so to escape religious persecution.  And the antithesis of this idea truly is the foundation of the Constitution.
When people like Michelle Bachmann or Rick Perry tout their “conversations” with God, they are employing a manipulative marketing technique to get people to vote for them.  They’re not saying, “I talk to God the same way you do.”  They’re saying, “I talk to God and He responds back to me.”  In other words, God had chosen him/her to be His messenger and spokesperson. 
That’s fine if they are a minister or a reverend.  But as a political leader, it’s setting the stage for the next step of “you voted for me because God told you to, which means that God must have sent me. Therefore, I’m not stepping down just because I was voted out or my term is up.”  Or worse, “God gave me the authority to execute anyone who disagrees with me.” 
Now I’m not saying that Bachmann or Perry would take it this far, but if we as a people vote for them, then the marketing technique they are employing will have proven to work.  The next thing we know, everyone will start using it.  Sooner or later a despotic type of person will be able to fool the public with his/her religious rhetoric and get elected.  That’s what we need to be on guard for, and as the old adage says, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  Personally, I like democracy and don't want to have to cure what we would have instead. Vote responsibly.

*When it comes to “conversations” with God, I am assuming that the person doing the “hearing” is actually feeling or thinking things and not really hearing a voice from outside their body. I think it's safe to say that anyone hearing voices is most likely mentally ill and probably wouldn't make the best presidential candidate. 

My Decision to Die

For most of my life I have been so ashamed of my breasts.  They developed at a young age and never stopped growing.  In school, I got teased about them.  At home I was tormented about them.  It wasn’t until I was well into my 30s (and with the love of my husband who told me I was crazy not to love them) that I really started accepting them, loving them and then even flaunting them. 

After turning 40 I became diligent about getting my mammograms every year.  But 3 years ago I erroneously understood that the protocol had changed and that instead of every year, I would only need to get them every 2 years.  Since I knew my insurance wouldn’t cover a mammogram that wasn’t necessary, I waited and forgot about going for my mammogram.  I wasn’t too worried since everything always came back clean. 

About 8 months ago or so, I noticed some cellulite on my left breast.  It wasn’t much but just a long streak that seemed to continue under my arm.  I just figured that at 48 years old, it was part of the changes my body would be undergoing. 

Quite by accident 3 weeks ago, I felt a lump in the “cellulite.”  Immediately I called my doctor (whose office was at lunch) and called the imaging center.  The imaging center got me in for a mammogram the next day.  And then I was called back for more imaging and an ultrasound.  Then I went back for a biopsy and last Tuesday it was confirmed that I have breast cancer.   I know nothing other than that at this point, which is why I’ve had plenty of time to worry and plan.  Also, this limbo time gives me the opportunity to write this blog from a very unique perspective. 

Of course the worst diagnosis that I could receive is that I have stage 4 cancer (stage 4 means that it has metastasized to different places in the body and spreads more rapidly than it can be stopped).  And of course, that is the first place my mind goes.  In the past 10 years I’ve had 2 people I was very close to diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.  My husband’s best friend received his diagnosis a year before he died.  He did the whole thing of radiation, chemo, etc.  all the while in tremendous pain and died anyway.   My other friend had been a world class athlete in his youth, was tremendously active and healthy when he was diagnosed with stage 4 rectal cancer at the age of 49.  He fought it for 4 years—and I know he hung on as long as he could for his young family.  But he too, died after years of suffering.    

I have decided that should that be my diagnosis, I will go a different route.  I will refuse to fight.  My doctors will be instructed to just keep me comfortable and let me die.   Now, I don’t blame my friends for trying to fight and it’s not the suffering that really bothers me the most.  What bothers me the most is leaving my family with all the bills after my few years of my survival are over.  They will be devastated when I die, whether or not it’s sooner or later.  Yes, would it be better for my young son to have a few extra years with me?  Most certainly, the answer is yes.  However, those years with me will be nice for him, but they won’t enhance his overall life experience as much as college tuition will. 

Even though I have insurance, this is the dilemma I am faced with today in America.  This is the modern day Sophie’s Choice we must make in this situation.  And yet people like my own mother, are still hell bent on denying a public option.  When I told her about my decision, she went hysterical, crying “please don’t tell me that.  It’s so hard for a mother to hear that about her child.” 

And yet, just a few weeks ago I sent her link to me singing a version of Cee-lo Green’s “F U” that I had rewritten about healthcare.  Her response was to tell me that I sang it beautifully, but she didn’t agree with what I said on it.  If we had a public option right now, I wouldn’t know what choice I’d make if it came to that.   It would be a decision that I would come to with my doctor and my family about the best course of action.  If a public option had existed, I would have had the mammogram after a year, regardless of what I thought the protocol was and probably not have been in this situation in the first place.  If we had a public option, I never would have had to fathom making the decision  between my life and my family’s future.

Now, at this point my demise is speculation and I fully hope that my prognosis will be less than stage 4 and I will live to be an old lady.   But when you are in the situation of limbo, these are the thoughts that must be entertained.