Friday, September 28, 2001

Excess patriotism blinding Americans to lost civil liberties
Commentary by Justin Zaun

Turn off your televisions, folks. They are transmitting distorted signals.

Broadcast media members are riling up the masses with incessant flag-waving and rah-rah, America chants, sandwiching its cheerleader news coverage with equally repulsive advertisements.

General Motors has substituted its previous slogan with “Keep America Rolling” while Ford now claims that “Ford Drives America.” The current issue of Time features a firefighter posing above a Touchstone Energy logo on its back cover. That’s the America I remember before Sept. 11: “The United States of Advertising.” I suppose the honeymoon is over already.

We’ve merged our diverse pool of minds into a collective pom-pom squad for Team U.S.A. Somewhere amid the prayer vigils, Hope Bears, ribbons and the Wal-Mart flag blitz, we’ve veered off course. It’s to the point where I can’t keep up with what ribbon signifies which cause. So, today I’ll just pin on my “Not Enough Sleep Last Night” ribbon.

CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and the like have become a necessary evil for anyone interested in collecting news. However, their news slinging methods come equipped with jaw-droppingly biased commentary prefaced with animated flags and pro-war rallying cries.

What else has ended is our freedom to offer a critical analysis of anything relating to the United States. Reason has been replaced with patriotism. We’ve allowed Johnny Terrorist to transform our society into a hypersensitive, intellectual police state. The message is: “If it’s not a comment draped in patriotism, brother, keep it in your pocket.” Well, to hell with you.

A flag is merely a symbol — a cloth. And, you know, this recent flag adoration is motivated more by the self-serving interests of 11th-hour patriots above all else.

You’d get the same narcissistically proud effect by walking around saying, “Look at me. I have a flag. I’m a good American.”

Then there’s the issue of presidential approval. Presidential support is relative to the situation. We’d support Charles Manson as a commander-in-chief, if we were all pissed off enough. We want revenge and so does Bush. Or is it, Bush wants revenge because we do? No matter.

Remember friends, G.W., our presidential John Wayne incarnate, was only a few botched votes away from witnessing Al Gore receive a 90 percent approval rating.

Let’s keep his legendary status in perspective.

The U.S. government, while generally good, is far from perfect. See Kent State, Ohio. See Khartoum, Sudan, where 13 cruise missiles wiped out a pharmaceutical plant. Of course, when we bomb someone, we’re acting in accordance with liberty and justice.

But, when we’re bombed, it’s considered a grave injustice.

And it’s patriotism that’s responsible for our agreeable demeanor in relation to freedom and sacrifice. Few people display any resistance to suggested governmental intrusion, such as reading our e-mail and tapping our phones.

Unreasonable change and heightened security will only serve to slow the novice terrorist. I’m not willing to sacrifice any freedom for a rag-tag collection of terrorists.

And you cannot tell me that the Taliban is a legitimate threat to us when it comes to a military battle.

It all boils down to this. Don’t mistake skepticism and critical analysis for pessimism. Our country is facing a peculiar situation with an uncertain enemy and intellectually arresting dissenters coupled with anger-driven patriotism, which is dangerous.

Currently, the media is pandering to and egging on the public.

America is more than a flag. Maybe if we maintain a critical eye and a clear mind, we can successfully leap this historical hurdle.

Justin Zaun is a columnist for the Oklahoma Daily at the University of Oklahoma. This column was distributed by U-Wire.