you talkin' to me mcarthy?

The Fourth of July made me feel exceptionally un-American. The only moment of note was when I was trying to edge my way through a crowd and the National Anthem started playing, at which point a security guard literally yelled at the crowd "Stand up!". It was not the slow rise of the crowd that offended me, but the militant bark from an armed guard commanding everyone to do so.

I also realized that patriotic songs have become a din that is so grating on me I cannot muster even a slight smile. It is bad enough that I have to hear I am Proud to be an American, in every musak, sappy remake they can think of, but I have to hear them, year round with the same frequency that holiday songs are heard from October through December, and it is all because we are post 9.11.

I am tired of the term 'Post 9.11'. I am mostly tired of it because it is being used to explain every ill of society. Like we , as a people, do not have enough depravity within us to create problems without terrorism as a catalyst?

It seems very en vogue to grapple with terrorism, to wallow in it. I want to smack the repective public upside the head and yell "We have no idea what terrorism is!" The past couple years have been a torrent of 'ripped from the headlines' television dealing with terrorism, but I only recently realized how saturated my theatre experience had become with this subject this past year. I have seen, or been a part of at least a dozen shows that have wrestled with the issue. Some were great pieces of theatre, but in my present frame of thought, the theatricality of it is paling in comparision to the realization that as a community we chose to set our artistic sites on being held hostage. Is it because we are in DC, the epicenter of fear mongering? Is it because, although we had a horrific induction into large scale terrorism, we just don't really know what it is like?

Modern day America has so little experience with terrorism, that it's constant use as an excuse has me disgusted. We are insulated. We take our one experience and keep it aflame. A new age 'never again'. But it is not like that. In Iraq, civilian deaths are numbered somewhere between 38,000 and 43,000. Civilian deaths. Current day America has no concept of loss on that scale. We have not lived through anything that remotely compares. I feel two faced for being American.

I recognize that we must be wary of terrorism in the same way that I am wary of walking to my car alone at night. We have to be smart. We have to outsmart. We have to be cautious and aware. We do not need to bury oursleves in a hostage mentality, it feels cheap to do it in the face of those who actually live it. It is not ours and I hope it never will be.