Dear god, if there is a god, please help me, if you can help me.
~~ Ganesh Baba

An 85 year-old Buddhist monk . . . had been living in a cave since 1939, after spirits of the mountain appeared to him in a dream and asked him to become the mountain's protector. In the course of our conversation, the monk asked me, 'Who is this Chairman Mao you keep mentioning?'
~~ Bill Porter, from Road To Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits

I feel sort-of fortunate that I happen to be studying Taoist texts this fall, for a book I'm writing. When human political affairs become so complex and ugly that an honest, thinking, feeling person might not easily find her way to a solid ethical stance, or might not wish to choose sides, even when his tribe's native land is under attack and/or attacking, one could do worse than seek a still place within from which to contemplate the eternal and ever-chaotic flow.

And so, perhaps unduly influenced by ancient Chinese hermits, I declare myself neutral, stuck-in-neutral, neutered even. Hey, this is no time to front – call it what you will.

Don’t get me wrong. I prefer our 21st Century global capitalism that at least maintains some allegiance to those grand enlightenment themes like choice, democracy, pluralism, separation of church and state, the right to be irreverent or ironic, and the rights of women to sing, speak, laugh, look outside, and wear skimpy clothes, it's all preferable to an ancient philosophy that seeks to dictate absolute conformity to a particular interpretation of a singular religion. I made that choice clear years ago by living in Northern California instead of the Bible Belt.

And we can argue about the causes of this conflict until we're red, white and blue in the face. Some say it's blowback for US militarism and imperial arrogance. Some say bin Laden and his ilk are fundamentalist headcases bent on killing all infidels, and that's a mighty big chunk of humanity. But as the Peppermint Twins wisely advised, "Stop! You're both right!" I subscribe to the critique of US militarism and imperial arrogance, and to the fear of fundamentalists bent on killing all infidels, particularly ones who also happen to believe they go to a real sexy heaven (sexiness on earth being virtually verboten) when they die a martyr. I also subscribe to the claim made by some liberal war supporters that the critique of US arrogance has little immediate relevance to the question of how to contend with the situation at hand. In fact, I have enough "on the one hand" but "on the other hand" thoughts rattling around my brain to make my head spin like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. Talking about my deep confusion may be self-indulgent, but I suspect that there are many like me; not ready to hail the war, and not ready to march in protest either.

Yes, I know, in my lifetime (born 1952) the United States of America has committed acts of war – involving either launching an invasion, sending in shooting troops, dropping or planting bombs, or assassinating national leaders – in nineteen nations, and has committed violence by proxy in many more. I know that we are the only nation on earth with military bases all over the globe. I know that our military spends more money than the rest of the G7 countries combined and twenty times as much as the eight countries we call "rogue states." And I know that we sell most of the armaments used by most of the conflicting parties engaging in various slaughters the world over. Even if mainstream political analysts can justify most of these actions, one at a time, when this information is taken in as a whole, they ought to at least admit that we sure stand out among the nations of the world. Surely this "burden of empire" schtick is a bit much!

In the past, I've railed against the smugness of ordinary Americans who – with minimal attention – stood in quiet support as our government lobbed the odd occasional bomb into foreign lands with all the casualness of Jenna Jameson giving blow jobs. I warned that smug Americans might some day get their comeuppance.

But I wasn't expecting a sort of Spanish Inquisition!

Paradigm Shock

Indeed, like many dissident Americans who believe(d) that the biggest current political problems were global warming, excess global corporate power, and the police stateist machinations of the war on drugs, I'm dealing with total paradigm shock. These issues continue to be important, and the US Government is not my friend in their regard. But there's no getting around it. The forces that are almost certainly behind the 9/11 brutality have expressed some serious interest in spreading a demented fascist fundamentalist rule as far and wide as possible, by any means necessary. Many among us have mocked those who've perceived this sort of threat in the past as victims of an unseemly paranoia that attacks only unenlightened control freaks. But those bin Laden speeches and interview and TV broadcasts are real. You didn't hallucinate this one, acid boy. This guy has declared war on every American, Jew, Pagan . . . and every infidel! That's everybody who doesn't agree with him – as big a portion of the human population as the non-Aryans our German buddies wanted to off or enslave back in the day. Of course, when I heard this quote from Mr. Laden a few years ago, it seemed abstract. Now there's a fucking hole in the middle of New York City. This ain't just some Jasper coming down off a three day speed binge, deciding he should rule the world, and then taking his frustrations with his powerlessness out on his wife and kids. These guys are serious, tactically adept, and reasonably well-equipped. They are clearly equally happy to kill pacifists, corporate executives, soccer moms, goths, anti-globalization activists, skinheads, Sally Fields, dogs, cats, Arab Americans, and firemen.

There are those who will still insist that the main motivation of these terrorist fighters is their frustration with US Military presence and aggressiveness in the Islamic region, compounded by US financial and political support for Israel, and Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. According to this view, if we bring our imperial troops and dollars back home, they'll leave us alone. Maybe. Wanna bet? Consider the terms of the wager.