Posted on 11/13/2001, 4:38:12 PM by hawkeye101
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have Americans feeling helpless and disoriented, former White House press secretary and journalist Bill Moyers said Monday.
"How do we carry on a normal life when abnormal things are happening?" Moyers said in an interview before a speech at Drake University.
Moyers, a press secretary for Lyndon Johnson and a journalist who has worked in both print and television, delivered the Martin Bucksbaum Distinguished Lecture Monday night at the Knapp Center. He appeared with Martin Marty, a professor emeritus from the University of Chicago and an expert on religious fundamentalism.
Moyers said Americans struggle with an overload of negative news and feel they are helpless to do anything. America's sense of security was as much a target as the World Trade Center, he said.
"The real goal of terrorism is to invade our psyches," Moyers said. "To turn each of our imaginations into a private Afghanistan."
Moyers said there are indications that more people are volunteering in order to fight their feelings of helplessness.
Many Americans are asking, "Why do they hate us?" Moyers said. He said the general response to that question has been constructive. He said people are sobered by the prospect of war, and are neither cheerleading nor actively opposing the effort.
Marty said he has focused more on Americans' "inner landscape" than on the physical damage the attacks brought to the United States. "I'm seeing a fundamental shift from security to insecurity," he said.
Marty said the insecurity many Americans are experiencing for the first time has been the norm for most of the world's people.
"We joined the human race," Marty said. "Most humans have been slaves, serfs and peasants."
Marty said the United States must work to make alliances with moderate Muslim nations and guard against seeing the war in Afghanistan as a holy war - even when the enemy sees it that way.
Moyers cautioned against singling out Islam as an intolerant and violent religion.
"We have our own American Taliban," he said, referring to Christian evangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. "We have to be very careful about hijacking God."
Moyers also said journalists have not been able to cover the war in Afghanistan as well as past wars because they do not have access.
"We have to deal with the official version of reality," he said.
He is an ass.
Being human means being a slave, serf, or peasant? No thanks.
Moyers, you are a worthless Clymer.
Bootlicker to multiple demo scum presidents.
Major bootlicker to Clinton, and his regime, who let the Taliban thrive.
Moyers, you are a traitor, and you are, in part, responsible for the Taliban.
Because YOUR POLITICAL PARTY, THE DEMONRATS, ALLOWED THIS ALL TO HAPPEN.
WITH YOUR ENDORSEMENT AND BLESSING.
ESPECIALLY ALL YOUR AMERICA HATING, WHITE-PEOPLE HATING, RACE-BAITING AND FEEL-SORRY CRAP TOWARD FOREIGNERS.
Not Falwell, et al.
Moyers, you girliman jerkwad.
Our Taliban is the crowd espousing political corectness which includes the likes of Bill Moyers and any stupid enough to listen to him!
"That's our job."
Who are these quislings asking these irrelevant questions? Nobody I know, that's for sure. I, as an American, don't care a whit if, why, or how they hate us. Burn flags all day, chant in the streets, knock yourselves out.
But when you take out our buildings, and civilians, and mail bio-agents; hell, when you even threaten to do it, or think about doing it... then it should be known around the world that you will die swiftly and terribly.
I'm pretty sure that the only question I'm asking, is, "Why When do they hate us die?"
Yeah and Hitler liked the Jews so much he sent their kids to camp in the summer.
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