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GenePool
Humor
Dear President Bush
I have heard on many occasions over the past eight weeks how important it is to return to a state of normalcy, and how by doing so, we ordinary American citizens will be fighting terrorism in our own way. I am writing to inform you that regrettably, I am unable to attain normalcy at this present time. I hope this does not impact the war on terrorism too seriously.
Please understand, I have tried. The very first thing I did was look up the word 'normalcy', insofar as I don't believe it is actually a word, and it occurred to me that returning to a state of something that doesn't exist would be somewhat foolish. It turns out the correct word is 'normality' although 'normalcy' is now an accepted bastardization, having been invented in the 1920's by, of all people, a Presidential candidate.
When looking up the word 'normality' I found it to be a noun meaning "the state or fact of being normal." This did not help, as I found 'normal' to be defined as "conforming, adhering to, or constituting a usual or typical standard, pattern, level, or type." I found this exceedingly vague, and not at all useful.
Confused as I was, I did not give up on attaining this nebulous condition right then and there, because I am an American, and Americans do not quit easily. Instead, I considered the spirit of the message, that perhaps what you were really asking of us was to go about life as we did prior to September 11, and basically pretend it never happened. I gave this a shot for a while, but it soon became clear that not everybody in Washington is on the same page about this whole 'return to normalcy' thing. John Ashcroft, in particular, should really be spoken to. He keeps telling me to be in a state of heightened awareness. I'll have you know that before September 11 I was almost never in a state of heightened awareness, so this by itself contradicts my continuing efforts to attain normalcy. It is also very confusing, because I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be aware of. If he had said "look out for a large hairless man with a mole on his left cheek and holding a machete" I could do that. In fact, I think I'd be very good at it. But the only way I can be aware of everything, non-stop, is to take a lot of speed, and I believe your administration frowns on that. I'm not even sure what the point is of telling us to be aware. Is this so that if, say, a building blows up in front of us we don't look too surprised on camera? "Oh, that," we'd say in interviews, "I figured that'd happen. No biggie."
So just pretending nothing happened was clearly not an option. Still, I felt I could find room for interpretation within your normalcy request. Perhaps, even while maintaining a heightened state of awareness, I could go about my day like always: going to work, coming home from work, picking up the kids, etc. Unfortunately, I found several problems with this plan. First off, my daughter keeps asking me if we're at war right now. She never asked me this before September 11, and no matter how many times I try to pretend she didn't say anything, she keeps asking. It's also not an easy question to answer. I mean, technically, we're not at war because that requires an act of Congress, and they're still waiting for their chambers to get swept clean of anthrax.
Worse, we're going to war against a military tactic rather than a sovereign nation, and trust me, that simply doesn't translate well to a ten year old. I looked up the word 'terrorist' to see if that would help, but it didn't: 'terrorist' is defined someone employing "the systematic use of terror, violence, and intimidation to achieve an end." I knew kids in high school like this. (Would you like their names? Maybe it would help?) I guess I could tell my daughter we're going to war against terrorism and hope that she thinks that's a country somewhere, because otherwise I'm not sure if I can explain how we know when the war is over. (How do you know when you've won a war against a concept? Ask Donald Rumsfeld; maybe he can answer this.)
And it doesn't get any better when my daughter asks about Osama bin Laden. I'd like to explain that the war that isn't an official war we're waging against a concept rather than a specific nation is nevertheless being fought in a specific nation against an army headed by a regime we don't even recognize as a legitimate regime to get them to hand over the man responsible for attacking us even when they don't seem to know exactly where he is. But I'm not sure she'd understand. And if she takes it further and asks just how we're going about doing this I'll have to explain that we're bombing the bejeezus out of them at all hours, threatening them, and sending in special forces, thereby using terror, violence and intimidation to achieve an end. I'm fairly certain she will find this very confusing as well.
Another obstacle is my being a writer. As a humorist, I generally rely on irony and sarcasm to make my point, and this is considerably more difficult right now than it was before September 11. Back then, there was no shortage of material at hand to make fun of, because Americans can be pretty damn silly at times and the media usually went out of their way to tell us about it. Now the news is full of genuinely serious stories that are nearly impossible to make fun of. You're harder to make fun of now too, Mr. President, although I do thank you for continuing to push your missile defense initiative in the face of incredibly obvious evidence that acquiring and launching an intercontinental ballistic missile is most definitely the hard way to kill lots of Americans. When I heard you were still trying to get that going I said to myself, now there's a guy who knows how to return to normalcy, by golly. (That 'rogue nation' bit you do just kills me.) And, I have been told by several media outlets that irony is dead, which I find hard to believe, because irony is a literary device, and you can't kill a literary device, although again, we should really consult Donald Rumsfeld on that to be sure.
For all these reasons, I regretfully inform you that I simply find it impossible to return to any kind of normalcy any time in the near future. I know that this means I am in some small way letting the terrorists win, and I feel really bad about that. Please accept my apologies.
Sincerely,
Gene Doucette
© 2001, Gene Doucette
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