The Panic Button

By Eric Martin

(Commentary first appeared on Z-Net www.zmag.org)

A few years ago got up in the middle of the night feeling quite strange. Before I new what had happened I was regaining consciousness on the bathroom floor and was taken to the local E.R. The right side of my temple was pounding, I was very frightened and was certain it was only a matter of moments before something even worse happened to me. Consumed with the thoughts of my own death, I was barely able to tell the nurse my name, much less my symptoms. The nurse told me I had two choices. 1) Take some deep breaths, calm down and help the medical staff figure out what the problem was. 2) Revisit both unconsciousness and the floor as a result of the hyperventilation my panic was causing.

Physicians and nurses do not encourage their patients who have gone into mental shock and panic modes to maintain that state of mind. These reactions paralyze the patient's ability to think both rationally and analytically, and can prevent medical staff from addressing the patient's ills quickly. However, this is exactly the treatment being prescribed to the American people by media pundits and government officials alike concerning the shock over the tragic events of September 11th.

The shock of course comes is a variety of forms. One form I have experienced is that of colleagues who objected to a teach-in at my college designed to place the attacks into greater political and historical perspective. It appears that for some, the emotional impact of September 11th is so great that they are unable to engage at this time in an analysis of this brutal initiation into the 21st century. This makes perfect sense to me, as individuals we are digesting the information at different speeds. However, this restriction of analysis is also being applied to those of us who were not completely taken by surprise. "Now is not the time for a political or historical analysis," we were told. Some of us who have chosen not to follow the total emotional immersion treatment have been, not surprisingly, tagged as cold, callous, or un-American.

But restricting public discussion of the events of September 11th in favor of only "hugging and weeping" provides it's own analysis of what occurred. This interpretation argues that the massive death toll can only be understood as an assault on American values such as "democracy" and "freedom." However, it ignores the massive gap between internal perceptions of "democracy" and "freedom" and the way these values are presented in our foreign, military, and economic policy throughout much of the world.

In contrast to total analytical paralysis, I have also encountered another form of shock from September 11th. The students in my world history classes were utterly confused over what was occurring, and they nearly unanimously voted to scrap the material we were scheduled to discuss in favor of considering the events of September 11th in a deeper political and historical context. They chose to deal with their grief by delving further into the sometimes painful question: why?

Of course, there were many conflicting opinions about the meaning of the attacks as wells as the course we as a nation should take. My freshman, to a large degree, understood the motive behind these attacks just as Bush explained it to them on the night of September 11th. "America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world." A day later Bush's analysis of motive was that the hijackers and their supporters "hate freedom." So far, the mainstream media, which my students are glued to, has offered no other explanation. Virtually every student in the class had something to say as we took on the role of investigators and attempted to connect some sort of motive to the attacks.

This proved to be a valuable exercise, but not because students left class with any answers. Rather, they left with questions concerning areas as wide as: the role of the U.S. in the world, media treatment of the attacks, the potential political (mis)uses these tragedies could be put to, and perhaps most importantly of all what to do with all the emotions that have been summoned over the course of the last several days. Despite criticism at the faculty level, it was my experience that 18-year-old students, with very little knowledge of the world outside the U.S., were extremely interested in discussing the wider political and historical contexts of Sept. 11th when invited to do so. In fact, according to my 1:30 p.m. class, this was the only class where they were asked what they thought about the events going on all around them.

I have also experienced another type of shock in recent days at a much more personal level. One of my roommates who is black and gay declared, "I am sorry this happened, but I have never felt safe in this country." However our other roommate, with a brother and sister-in-law who live in Manhattan, watched the second plane explode into the second tower while in the emergency room for an eye trauma. Katie broke out into tears, and spent the rest of the day at her parents establishing communications with their New York family members. But it was not only the safety of her family members that frightened her, Katie is 30-years-old and grew up as a child wondering when the rain of nuclear missiles would begin to pour. The four hijackings and the images on t.v. brought back these apocalyptic visions for many. Over the next two days Katie and I talked a lot about both dealing with the personal fear of death generated by the events and some connected issues of U.S. policy. We also paused a lot to just talk nonsense when the emotional burden became too heavy.

At 7:30 p.m. on the 14th I got a call from Katie on her cell phone, in tears. As she walked from work to her train station in Boston, just barely keeping her anxiety levels under control, Katie made her way through a crowded street of people when they suddenly burst out honking, waving flags, and yelling "U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.!" over and over. This time it was not the fear of being killed by a terrorist that had penetrated her psyche, it was the frenzy of the war drums. "Are they cheering because they want to kill people?" she asked me on the phone. She had been taken unaware by a planned demonstration for 7p.m., some were planning silence, others noise. I asked her to take some deep breaths, relax, and try not to think about it too much until she got home. This is certainly not an easy task as the mass-hysteria and the demand for blood becomes louder in the subways we ride in, the bars we drink in, and the streets we live on. Katie understands many of the connections between the tragic events of Tuesday and the military/economic policy of the U.S. What has induced her second wave of shock is confusion over why more people don't see these same connections.

As the drums of war beat faster we must realize that now is exactly the moment to engage the issue with those around us. We may have very little time to inoculate as many people as possible from the mass-hysteria and the blind, unquestionable sense of nationalism that the shock from September 11th is beginning to manifest itself as. In a few more weeks, the media's political and commercial super-saturation of "your either with us, or against us" will have achieved the desired impact. But what is more democratic than an insistence that issues be discussed among citizens? What issue is more important than deciding whether or not to engage upon a campaign of war? We need to encourage those around us to take some breaths, calm down and analyze the context surrounding September 11th, or we risk revisiting a similar (or perhaps worse) situation in the future as a result of decisions made with our fingers on the panic button.

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