suit up

We have a war to fight. It's time to do your part. There will be no more waffling and hemming and hawing and claiming that there are other priorities you have to attend to. We have a fight like no other on our hands and each of you need to step up and do your part.

The terrorists have struck at the heart of our very being, thrown in the gauntlet and spit, quite literally, in our face. Currently, the terrorists are winning this war. Their objectives are being met. Their goals achieved and their purpose unthwarted. In response we must, each and in our own way, redouble our efforts and do our part to win the war on terror.

The opening salvo is to get on the phone. Now. Do not delay. Call three of your closest friends. The ones you have known since you were smaller and stupider. You may not have spoken to them for several years, but track them down, one by one. If these friends live nearby, invite them to your home. Do not take no for an answer. THIS IS WAR GODAMMIT! Have your team assemble at 1900 in your living room.

The provisions for your mission should be acquired prior to the arrival. A selection of cheeses and wines and crusty breads, juices and mineral water and soft drinks and a hoppy, crisp beer should carry you through the first leg of the mission. If these items are not available, Krispy Kremes and Cold Duck will work as a last best hope for success.

When your team arrives distribute the rations.

Initiate the aural assault on terror code named "Bubble Gum Shield." Mid career Bee Gees, ABBA, Duran Duran, Tommy James, Johnny Rivers, Motown, the Beatles, Steve Miller, Pizzicato Five, Spice Girls, hell, Shonen Knife (any happy yappy group of Japanese Girls banging on guitars will do). DO NOT incorporate the Smiths, Morrissey, or Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds into operation Bubble Gum Shield; they will compromise the mission objectives.

Sit with your team in the greatest comfort. Sit on the floor leaning against the couch. Sit on pillows. Recline on your sides and prop your heads up on your hands. Infuse the atmosphere with a pleasing and unobtrusive scent. DO NOT TURN ON THE TELEVISION.

Your enemy, the terrorist, knows that the 24-hour constant barrage of news and information, the need for a news organization to transform any morsel of information into a missile of terror is their greatest weapon. It's a media judo. They have turned our strength into our weakness. Turn the fucking tube off. You're sitting with friends and Friends reruns will continue to rerun.

Talk about old times. The good old times. Don't talk about the game you lost or the boy/girl who broke your heart or the chances you missed. Talk about the puppies. Consider the kittens. Talk about the summer afternoons lost to youth and amazement. Laugh inappropriately loud. Touch one another. Tell each other great things, great wines, great adventures, great meals, great places, great moments. Teach each other to tie a one handed bowline.

We cannot let the terrorists win. The moment your are so much as anxious, they have scored a victory. Dismantle the Department of Homeland Security, it is a white flag. Advocate the Department of American Merriment with a cabinet level Secretary who reports to the President the progress in getting Americans happy. No doubt s/he will be fighting off pharmaceutical lobbyists who will shower him/her with feelgood pills and elixirs. But we must fight the true fight and accept no pyrrhic victory.

A national initiative of parades and picnics. Concerts in parks and official days of puddle splashing. Your team can help to organize this. It's not playing the ostrich to believe that the terrorists are not a threat. It is the only realistic response. When they see all the ice cream we're serving and games we're playing, may be they will want ice cream too. Maybe they'll want to play tag too. And if not? We can still firebomb them back to the dark ages.

There are so many wonderful and well-trained men and women at our disposal. We don't need to be afraid. The terrorists rely on spectacle to wow us with their powers. The flu kills more and costs more every year. We don't have to fear them. We don't need to "be ready." So return your plastic sheeting to the hardware store. Or better, use it to make a water slide in your front yard -- that's what you can do for the war effort.

There will always be drunks on the road. There will always be angry people. There will always be those people who make their religion into a weapon. From their cabins and caves they will try and teach us a lesson on how to be afraid. We must be strong. We must remember: there will always be cotton candy and smiling babies; good friends and good books; reasons to laugh and fall in love.

Idiots sending mail bombs and anthrax and blowing up U-Hauls and flying planes into buildings are not excuses to forget what it is to be an American. It's never a reason to restructure the way we live our lives. Isn't that, in some way, what these whack-jobs wanted in the first place?

It's time to suit up. On September 11 aboard flight 93 a group of Americans, knowing they were going to die, decided, instead of resignation, to counter assault their attackers. They gave the fullest measure of devotion to our ideal of freedom and liberty. They were more afraid of what would happen to all of us if they did not act, that what would surely happen to themselves if they did. They did not die so that John Ashcroft could peek at my library records. They did not die so the Bush Administration could assemble the infinite wheel of fear that we call DHS. They did not sacrifice their lives so I could check in on the current "threat level" on the crawl of Fox News.

The ordinary men and women on that flight fought and died as heroes and patriots so we could all have county fairs and lazy Sundays; so we could live without fear in the sure knowledge that each of us, when faced with a task far beyond our ability and call, can rise up and take ownership of the freedom that America once offered.

It's now up to you. You choose who wins this war. Will the American spirit rise above the stumbling blocks placed before it? Or will we succumb to the safety of fear? Life cannot, in this context, be about preparing for the worst possible event. We cannot wrap tyranny in a flag and call it patriotism. We cannot lash out at old adversaries and pretend we are making the world safer; the world is safer.

Fascism was put to the grave. We stood down from the Cold War as victors. China is selling us lots of things. Nations of the Third World are becoming first-rate sources of affordable labor. We're dealing with cabins and caves when it comes to the forces that want to "destroy" our way of life. The greatest, the ONLY, real threat to America is America. If we use a bazooka to kill a fly, we'll only miss the fly and blow some holes in the wall of our happy home.

It's time to suit up. It's time to get active. It's time to fight for what Franklin D. Roosevelt called "freedom from fear." The second we are afraid the terrorists have won. The second we buy into the farce that we live in a "different world" and have to play by "different rules," the terrorists have won. Once the structures of civility are dismissed as quaint relics of a bygone era we might as well drape ourselves in the heraldry of a Christian crusade, because it's anything but American. We are not like other people. We cannot react like other nations do. We are too large and too proud and too strong to belittle our strength with schoolyard politics.

Gather your team. Your plans should be strategic. Your mission is to bring joy to America. Your goal is to laugh and cry out with enthusiasm. It's a long hard battle before you. Many will resist you; insist that we must be afraid. We cannot fear the unknown. We must have the courage to live free.