Meditations on Mass Madness

When mental pathologies have seized your surroundings, what is the appropriate response? I recall that some days after the attack on the World Trade Center in September, 2001, I returned to Staten Island from Manhattan (the latter island having been cordoned off until food supply and similar concerns necessitated its reopening) to the home of my college friend where I had been boarding while attending a UN event that week. My host, caked in dust from the towers, had preceded me there because he had managed to reach his car from his office in the Wall Street area and drive across the Verrazano Narrows before the bridge was closed.

The night after I returned, we went out to dinner with friends, and I confess, it was a bit of culture shock. Our friends were consumed with anger, directed mainly towards muslims, but almost any immigrant would do. Stopped for a traffic light, we heard shouts and cat-calls of other motorists yelling anti-Arab slogans. Flags streamed out of the windows of passing cars.

If President Gore had not been thwarted by skullduggery at the ballot box and a rogue Supreme Court, I wondered, what advice would I offer in this situation?

That was simple, basic, and obvious. Turn the other cheek. Love those who spitefully use you. Go on TV and tell your people to calm the f**k down. Democracies can’t be destroyed by hijacked airplanes. Such attacks only build support for you.

What destroys democracies are things like destabilizing and invading Iraq, which had been against Al-Qaeda; invading Afghanistan which had nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden but borders Russia; expediting the escape of Saudi royals who likely funded the attack, and then immunizing them from investigation; opening torture “black sites” at Bagram and Guantanamo; flouting the Geneva Convention and other international laws; and destabilizing the entire Middle East in general. Those are all things that make matters worse.

Perhaps Lieutenant Colonel Brandon A. Salter, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines deployed to Los Angeles on June 10 knows this. After all, his rifle platoon was deployed twice to the Helmand Province, Afghanistan. As part of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, he was responsible for leading and executing helicopter-borne assaults, but in their most recent role, from the deck of USS Harpers Ferry, he had provided humanitarian assistance/disaster relief after Super Typhoon Krathon in the Philippines.

If I were Col. Salter, the class move and one for which he has full authority, would be to order the 2/7 Battalion to Los Angeles in Blue Dress Bravo, not Marine Corps Combat Utility Uniform (MCCUU). Blue Dress Bravo is a white hat, midnight blue coat, standing collar (no tie), and ribbons. It is what is prescribed for White House guard details. No sidearm is worn.