In his address to Congress, George W. Bush stated, "They hate our freedoms"-a phrase that sought to explain everything and was readily embraced by the government, the public, and the press. I propose that 9/11's failure to initiate a national inquiry and debate about our foreign—and for that matter domestic—policy is rooted not only in our profound sense of entitlement and, until then, a belief in our God-given invincibility, but racism and sexual anger. Born of genocide and slavery, our democracy staggers beneath a failure to acknowledge and address its own defining brutal impulse. In fact, we had long betrayed freedom's marvelous promise, and have, perhaps irretrievably, contaminated that promise. In other words, we were not betrayed by Bush, but already complicit in his lies. The questions that needed to be asked were voiced by only a few, who were tagged as neurotic and unpatriotic, and ignored.
Ours is a nightmarish land, both fearful of all it does not know and proud of this ignorance. Too many of us believe in miracles but not in evolution or global warming, the Second Coming but not social justice. We need to understand why.
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