SUPER-EMPOWERED ANGRY MEN
There is a portion of Thomas Friedman's The Lexus and the Olive Tree that keeps coming to mind as I try to make sense of the terrorism situation. I've been telling friends to go out and buy this book, because he makes loads of interesting observations while making his case that Globalization is Good. These passages below are all from the book, and mind you, were published in 1999:

In the Marx Brothers' classic movie Duck Soup, there is a scene in which Chico and Harpo are talking to the evil, calculating European statesman Trentino, Groucho's political rival, who has hired Chico and Harpo as spies. When Chico and Harpo come to Trentino's office to report on the progress of their spying, his secretary walks in with a telegram. Harpo grabs it out of her hands, examines it closely and then rips it to shreds, tosses it to the floor and shakes his head. Stunned and surprised, Trentino turns to Chico with a quizzical look, as if to ask: "Why did he do that?" And Chico answers: "He gets mad because he can't read."

That scene reminds me of yet another trend in reaction to Americanization-globalization - the one that is actually dangerous. It is the reaction of those who are either not up to Americanization-globalization or don't want to be up for it in cultural, economic or political reasons, and want to rip it up every time it is shoved in their face. These are the Harpos - angry men and women who, unlike their leaders, don't want to have it both ways. They don't want to bow to Americans and then criticize it behind its back. They want to have it one way, the old way, their way.
…

Finally, there are the really angry and really violent Super-Empowered Angry Men who don't use just E-mail. These are Harpos with real guns. They sense that there is a world-ruling system that they are not, and never will be, part of. In their view, the United States, IBM, The New York Times, Wall Street and the global economy are all part of one power edifice that needs to be brought down. These violent Super-Empowered Angry Men include the Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth) sect in Japan, the Osama bin Laden gang in Afghanistan, the Unabomber and the Ramzi Yousef group in New York. …

Ramzi Yousef is really the quintessential Super-Empowered Angry man. Think about him for a minute. What was his program? What was his ideology? After all, he tried to blow up two of the tallest buildings in America. Did he want a Palestinian state in Brooklyn? Did he want an Islamic Republic in New Jersey? No. He just wanted to blow up two of the tallest buildings in America. He told the federal district court in Manhattan that his goal was to set off an explosion that would cause one World Trade Center tower to fall onto the other and kill 250,000 civilians. Ramzi Yousef's message was that he had no message, other than to rip up the message coming from the all-powerful America to his society. The Economist once noted that "it used to be said of terrorists that 'they wanted a lot of people watching and not a lot of people dead." But not the Super-Empowered Angry Men. They want a lot of people dead. They are not trying to change the world. They know they can't, so they just want to destroy as much as they can.

- posted by Amy @ 10/22/2001 11:07:00 AM