By Benjamin Humphries
USA: hated and loved
I realize I have argued to everyone I know that I am totally non-patriotic. Sept 11, though I never would speak it, disturbed me. I feel terrible that the state of the world has come to this. I love people, I love humanity, and I have always had faith in goodness, but the fact that anyone could get mad enough to kill thousands of innocent people to make a point really hurt my view of the world. It opened my eyes to the fact that there are people out there who hate us in every sense of the word. I can admit that they do have reasons not to like us. This country is on top, we’re the winners, and we let everyone know that if they step out of line, we can kick their butts. I know there are many great people in this country and in the world, but I also realize that our country has done wrongs as well. We’re not perfect.
One person is never perfect, except maybe in the eyes of another, but a whole nation of people is far from perfect. At times, the least perfect of them rises to power, and mistakes can be made that others will not be able to overlook to see the goodness that lies in so many of us.
I do love the United States, though I do not own a flag. I never waved a flag before the accident and I don’t wave one now. Not because I truly dislike the flag or what it stands for; I believe that this country was founded on wonderful ideas by beautiful people. The country has made many mistakes and continues to make new ones, but we’re still young. The nation was officially founded only a couple hundred years ago. The country, the whole world has a lot of growing up to do.
The Taliban is far from innocent, and to tell the truth, I am against war in all its forms and believe that two wrongs don’t make a right, but I do not express sympathy for them. Hard for me to admit. I also have to add that I don’t believe they deserve death. It’s not my place to decide who must die, but at the same time, innocent people don’t deserve death. I see how the Taliban must go, as long as there is a threat of another attack; I don’t want anyone who will make such an attack running around gathering a large following.
America has been hated for years. The threat has existed as long as we’ve been a country, from various sources. I am not afraid. I am only sad. I’m sad that this world can create such injustices, such hatred, such fear. We are beautiful creatures, humans. Too many humans have turned their backs on what makes us great as a species. We have the ability to create such beauty, but we are irresponsible and destroy the very beauty that nourished us in our early stages of civilization. We destroy rainforests, pollute oceans, kill fellow creatures for sport. We are scientifically minded and can create the greatest and most powerful of telescopes to look into space. But we also use our ingenuity to create weapons of mass destruction, which cause mass fear to those in other countries. We have had an actual nonviolent war to create and advance machines of warfare faster than our enemies. Humans can imagine, love, create, communicate without limits, but we still find ourselves clinging to border limits of countries. We refuse to see ourselves as equals all sharing a single planet and instead create invisible lines, on the other sides of which everyone is surely totally different than ourselves and very well may be hostile, so we’d better be careful.
