The Terror Dream

Sometimes we come across books that are extremely difficult to read. I know I'll never be able to open my copy of Elie Weisel's Night again, but it was an incredibly important experience for me to have gone through. Susan Faludi's, The Terror Dream is one of those books. Her laundry list of facts and anecdotes about the historical rewrite and flat out censorship that occurred in this country post 9/11 was frustrating, enraging and at times painful, but it is important to know exactly what has happened to this country in the past 6 years.

Faludi's overriding point was that, after 9/11, instead of understanding and processing what had happened, as a country, we focused our energy on building a "national myth" surrounding the event. This was a myth, styled after John Wayne westerns, in which men were the heroes and women were the victims and anyone who refused to fall into traditional roles was chastised or silenced. She describes how female liberals were viciously attacked and how pieces by women, even in liberal media outlets like the New York Times, dropped by appalling percentages. She tells of how the media, when unable to find true stories of male heroism, would simply invent them. The chapter on Jessica Lynch was especially striking. The story told to the public of the girl soldier who faced unimaginable torture at the hands of the enemy before being heroically rescued by men was almost entirely untrue. Even though Private Lynch was little actual danger during her stay in an Iraqi hospital, stories of beatings and even rape were fabricated to make her seem less like a soldier and more like a victimized little girl.

For all of her excellent research, one question Faludi seems unable to answer is WHY this was such an automatic and resolute reaction in this country. It may be an unanswerable question, but why are we so obsessed with gender and puritanical values? Why do we retain this Adam and Eve complex of women being the downfall of society? What has to happen for us to move forward?

The sad realty is that everyone loses when the nation reacts to tragedy in this way. We are unable to prevent future attacks because more time was spent rewriting the reality of the events than was spent interpreting and understanding what happened. We are no safer than we were then, because energy was spent creating a culture of hero worship instead of ensuring that firefighters and police officers have adequate pay and working equipment. Most of all, people's actual voices and experiences were lost among all the censorship and storytelling. These voices were valid and important and have never been able to be shared. As I see it, the best way to combat this sort of cultural phenomenon is through education and expression. Susan Faludi's book may be a place to start.