We live in difficult times, but the political capacity to address the difficulties may be emerging in America, none too soon and in the right place.

The Republican presidential nomination debates reveal how far the GOP is from addressing the concerns of the American public. It seems, as a consequence, that President Obama’s re-election is likely, even with the persistent tough economic situation. He makes sense. The Republicans don’t. They offer the 999 plan and other fantasies as economic policy. Obama proposes sensible realistic programs, the jobs bill and the like. The re-election, further, may very well have very significant consequences. The Obama transformation, which I have reflected upon in an earlier post, may proceed and deepen.  I have this hope because of Occupy Wall Street.

OWS is already a resounding success, and it has the potential to extend the success for months, indeed, probably for years ahead. We at Deliberately Considered have been discussing the occupation. Scott and Michael Corey, like observers elsewhere, are concerned that the occupiers don’t have a clear program. They seem to be a hodgepodge of disparate misfits, anarchists, druggies, vegans, feminists, trade unionists, environmentalists and veterans of left-wing battles past, with no clear unified goals. The political causes they espouse seem to be as varied as they are as a group. They express a sentiment and sensibility, but they do not propose any policy. Yet, I think it is crucial to note that there is a simple and telling coherence in the protest and that there is a discernable achievement already that is being deepened as the occupation persists.

The occupiers are telling a simple truth. America is becoming an increasingly unequal society. The rich are getting rich and the poor (and working people) are getting poorer, especially the young and people of color. The occupiers call upon the media, the political class and the population at large to take notice, and notice is being taken as the occupations spread around the country and the world.

In the U.S., popular discontent is no longer identified with a tax revolt and with people who think the primary task of government is to do as little as possible. The rich can no longer hide behind the title, “job creators.” Public opinion polls point to the popularity of taxing the super rich to fund public services and jobs development for the vast majority. And as the occupation persists, this simple message will be underscored.

Persistence through the winter is likely, building on the achievements already linked to the special power of the ground zero occupation. Cost versus benefit balance applies. Something approaching sacred space has been occupied, down the road from the “Ground Zero Mosque,” across the street from Ground Zero of 9/11. Whispers there are heard around the world.  What frustrated the local Muslim community is the great resource of today’s occupiers. The police forbid bullhorns, but the park itself has become a global microphone, enabling the people now occupying it and occupiers to come, to be heard, to show their concerns to the world. The power of showing, the power of monstration as Daniel Dayan puts it, is a great resource. The costs of staying for a few hundred people are relatively low. And the benefits of staying are great. Occupying provides a life time experience of what Hannah Arendt calls the lost treasure of the revolutionary tradition, making a difference in public, public freedom, acting with great consequence in a world that provides few chances to do so. As this treasure is mined, American politicians, Republicans and Democrats, will have to respond, as they have had to respond to the Tea Party. There is a new and qualitatively different popular pressure. And this I think will help Obama succeed where he hasn’t thus far.

He sought to demonstrate that a democratic government is a way that Americans can address their pressing problems. He has tried to rebalance the relationship between state and market in the American political economy. A moderate Democrat, he has been denounced as a socialist by Republicans. With the Tea Party active and progressives complaining in the blogosphere but not much more, the political center moved right.

Now with the winds blowing from Zuccotti Park, a new popular pressure is emerging. The President will be criticized to be sure. But the pressure to pass a serious jobs bill will either yield results before the Presidential election or shape it. There will be serious popular demands for taxing the super rich and pressure to develop healthcare reform, to escalate the disengagement from Afghanistan and Iraq, to enact serious immigration reform, to work to de-militarize American foreign policy.

There will be pressure on the President to fulfill his promise, which will enable him to do so.

I think that the form of Occupy Wall Street expresses its content, as Scott Beck showed in his earlier post on the occupation. I observe, further, that the way people use social media contributes to this form, as does the setting of the occupation. And I believe deliberating about the movement and connecting the debate to other political, social and cultural activities are keys to the democratic contribution of the movement to broader politics in America and beyond.

Jenny Davis in her post last week makes cogent points about the role of social media in social movements in general and in Occupy Wall Street in particular. Her key observation is very important. Digital activism is not only a means to the end of embodied social action. It also is an end in itself, a new type of politics that can make the previously hidden visible and can contribute to what she calls “the zeitgeist,” what I would prefer calling the prevailing common sense. I would add that it can constitute a space for free action, a public, a point made by Judith Butler in a recent lecture. This is especially telling as David Peppas and Barbara note in the two comments to Davis’s post, because the occupation doesn’t have a simple meaning or political end. The act of protesting, as well as the act of posting, makes the world look differently, and looking at the world differently is what is most needed at this time, to face up to stark social realities that have been ignored and develop the capacity to act on this. It is interesting how the way this happens is structured by social media actions, no longer a monopoly of the mass media, while the power of the movement, is quite material. It’s embedded in a specific geography and its link to political culture.

The place of the occupation in an important way contributes to its power. Situated in lower Manhattan, the New York Stock Market and the World Trade Center have been symbols of advanced capitalism and American economic power in the global order and have been actual centers of the order. And, thus, to my mind, Occupy Wall Street is the ground zero social movement.

Ironically, mine is first of all a “pedestrian observation,” based on very particular experience. In recent weeks, I walked around the area on the tenth anniversary of the attack with my friend, Steve Assael, who survived the 9/11 attack, including a stroll on Wall Street. And last week, I walked and observed the very same area when I went to take a look and to support the occupation at Zuccotti Park, passing by the site of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque as well.

Because it is at the symbolic center, the media are paying attention to OWS. A relatively small social demonstration is capturing global attention, exciting political imagination. In the U.S., apparently the Tea Party has met its match. A report yesterday indicates that Occupy Wall Street is more popular than the Tea Party. Occupations of public spaces are spreading around the country, and, as the old slogan goes: the whole world is watching. Occupations are going global, eminating from ground zero to London, Seoul back to Los Angeles and Washington D.C. and many points in between.

They have been watching in Gdansk. I was surprised by the interest in the Occupy Wall Street demonstration when I lectured there, and surprised and pleased to read that an important figure from that city, indeed the city’s most important historic figure, Lech Walesa, the leader of the Solidarity Trade Union, is planning on coming to NY to support the occupation.

As reported in an unlikely source, The New York Daily News:

“Walesa has warned of a ‘worldwide revolt against capitalism’ if the Wall St. protests are ignored.
They are protesting the ‘unfairness’ of an economy that enriches a few and ‘throws the people to the curb,’ he said in a recent interview.

‘That’s why union leaders and capitalists need to figure out what to do, because otherwise they will have to contend with a worldwide revolt against capitalism.’ ”

The news is spreading through mainstream media and publications. But I think it is also important how social media are spreading the word. I don’t read the Daily News. It’s the American classic tabloid, similar to Murdoch’s NY Post, though not as bad. I got wind of the report through a friend’s (Elzbieta Matynia’s) Facebook page. The world is watching the world as mediated by our friends and our interpretation of things. As Davis observes:

“This sharing, of course, is rarely (if ever) done in a neutral manner. Rather, Tweeters and Facebookers accompany shared news stories and web links with commentary that reveals a particular bent, or interpretation of the content. The content is therefore not just made visible, but impregnated with meaning in a web of social relations.”

The Ground Zero occupation is leading to a global response. An articulate critique of the global order of things is being expressed in simple bodily presence and demonstrating expressions, capturing the attention of the world that is watching and acting upon what it sees, with the potential of changing the terms of public deliberations. Those who are concerned about jobs, inequality, global warming and much more have found their voices and are making visible their very real concerns. Indeed, I believe, in the U.S., the Tea Party has been directly engaged. Both OWS and the Tea Party reveal the power of the politics of small things. In this sense, they are quite similar, but there is a major difference. OWS is grounded in the reality based community, while much of the Tea Party concerns are based on fictoids, as we have been observing here at Deliberately Considered over the last year. As an unreconstructed enlightenment partisan, I think this suggests the long term power of the newest development on the global stage. As I observed in concluding my comparison between OWS and a social movement in South Korea, the candle light movement, a candle is, indeed, being lit.

In this second post of three, DC contributors continue our discussion about the killing of Osama bin Laden and its implications,  seeking to formulate critical perspectives, moving toward judgment and political positioning. -Jeff

Michael P. Corey, A Direct Accounting

In simple terms, it appears that a JSOC strike team was dispatched on what was for all practical considerations a kill assignment to eliminate the head of Al Qaeda and retrieve all available documents. The mission was a risky way to accomplish the first objective; the only practical way to achieve the second; and had the potential to cause the least amount of collateral damage. It is unclear if this was done as a military operation or civilian operation. It is also unclear what was used as the moral, ethical and legal foundations for killing.  It demonstrated the resolve of the Obama and Bush administrations to seek out and kill Osama bin Laden, and presumably other terrorist leaders.  For the most part, the decision making and operation have been represented in the United States as difficult, courageous, and heroic, and as might have been expected, there have been political overtones on all sides.

Euphoric reactions to the mission are consistent with releasing pent up tensions related to terrorism; a national social, economic and cultural malaise, and a loss of national pride. Not releasing the photographic evidence is a good idea. If released, the photographs could have been used as the visual basis for building collective memories and actions by bin Laden’s followers. I’m uncomfortable with a Presidential visit to “ground zero” at this time. The tenth anniversary would have been better as a symbolic mechanism for pulling people together.

Gary Alan Fine, The Human Comedy

Turning on the television last Sunday I was startled to witness boisterous, ecstatic crowds. Americans gathered in the dark outside the White House and in New York’s Times Square to cheer for their team. “U.S.A., U.S.A. “Hoo-yah.” Were it not for the messages at the bottom of the screen, one might have been forgiven for assuming that America’s team pulled off another Olympic hockey triumph.

We’ve won. Not in the battle of sport, but in the sport of battle. Navy seals with CIA support had terminated that most evil of Hitler’s spawn, Osama bin Laden. Rot in Hell, Osama!

I wanted to be joyous, but I could not rid a sour taste. Yes, the killing of Osama bin-Laden was legitimate. His commitment to attacking secular, Western institutions was profound (his firm pro-life stance didn’t make him any more cuddly). You live by violence, you die as you live. And perhaps without a jazzy figurehead, radical jihad will be a less happenin’ ideology. Perhaps soon I won’t have to untie my shoes or have government agents inspect my privates when I travel.

Still, bin Laden’s death justifies a piece of his global critique. Bin Ladenism recognized the arrogance of a unipolar world, seeing hubris in America’s global overreach. We deserve a modest, respectful foreign policy, but often we are an international pufferfish, deadly when aroused. With our power, we set the terms for international conflict that – surprise! – benefit our strategic capabilities (smart bombs, good; anonymous attacks, nasty). We set the rules of intervention so that justice is ours. Hello Muammar!

The stance we select fits our discursive morality. And this choice might be the least bad of those flawed, authoritarian systems that we have bolstered. But should the cheering crowds be correct that Osama will rot in Hell, he surely will learn much in the University of Hell’s distinguished graduate program in International Relations.

Bin Xu, Presidential Performance

Obama performed well during his visit to Ground Zero. He performed well by fitting himself into instead of manipulating the scene. Political figures’ performances enjoy much less freedom than we usually assume. Try to imagine we mentally airbrush Obama out from pictures of the commemoration and focus more on the scene. We would find Ground Zero now is not filled with relics, dusts, and corpses, but giant cranes and the unfinished memorial hall. Relief instead of anger, and even a little festive mood are expressed in firefighters’ peaceful smiles. We perhaps could also hear murmurs of suspicions and laughter of jokes in the background. Will the President imitate his predecessor by exploiting death, tears, and triumph to divert attention from various problems, such as the birth certificate issue and the grave economy, or to strengthen his bid for reelection? In a nutshell, this is not a stage for a “tough guy” delivering a bullhorn speech and calling for revenge. It demands a low-profile and ambiguous performance to close the wound.

Now we put Obama back in to the pictures. He did not deliver a formal speech. Nor did he do any grandiose symbolic practices. He placed a wreath and observed a moment of silence. He quietly shook hands with relatives of the victims. When he did speak, informally, with the firefighters, he smartly called attention to “justice” that “transcends politics” and the sacrifice of “your brothers” in Pakistan. Therefore, as in the Vietnam War Memorial, this lack of conspicuity kept the whole commemoration open to various interpretations, which surprisingly reached a minimum consensus on value of individual life and dignity. What he smartly did was simple: tuning his display of emotions to match the emotive demand of the scene. As Goffman observes, “Not, then, men and their moments. Rather moments and their men.”

Benoit Challand, Judgment

Juan Cole is right in saying that showing pictures of Bin Laden would give him undue charisma down the line. But it is sad to see the spin doctors active in the last days justifying very shallowly that “justice has been done” (so what comes next?  Let us get rid of the remaining Guatanamo prisoners to satisfy the needs of the populus juventusque?), that torture (let us call a spade a spade) has produced marvelous intelligence results, or that the killing was simply self-defense in a moment of “split second” decision? On the other hand, it is remarkable to read the reactions of survivors’ families and their ambiguous feelings about the killing of Bin Laden. This suggests that paying tribute to the memory of the victims of 9/11 can be done in more complex and subtle manners.

My post on the announcement of the killing of Osama bin Laden and the reaction to it stimulated a fascinating debate. As a way of continuing it, I asked the contributors to Deliberately Considered to add their observations and judgments. I invited each to write a short note responding to the following:

What is the meaning of the killing of bin Laden and the American public’s reaction to it? Is the Obama administration correct in not releasing photos of the bin Laden’s body? And what do you think about Obama’s visit to “ground zero today?  I asked them to respond to all three of the questions, any one or any combination.

A number of the responses seem to be shaped by the specific location of the contributors. I first post these. I will post the rest over the weekend, and will add my reflections on the contributions and on reader responses on Monday. Again, I invite Deliberately Considered readers to add their judgments. It would be particularly interesting to know how people see this global media event from a variety of other specific locations, here in the U.S. and around the world. -Jeff

Ahmad Sadri, Illinois

As the news of the killing of Usamah Bin Laden broke I was on a live radio show (WGN’s Extension 70, Chicago.)   I was asked about my impression. The most prominent feeling that I had was relief.   I wasn’t relieved because UBL had been killed by American SEALs.  The man had little influence on the operations of Al Qaeda. He had been made irrelevant by the Arab Spring that is the farthest possible thing from the demented dreams of his militant Islamism.

I was relieved because the execution of UBL was a denouement for a vendetta.  Americans have been consumed with rage because the perpetrator of the horrific acts of terrorism on that bloody Tuesday ten years ago was never caught.  It is my belief that this public fury was partly responsible for the biggest blunder of American foreign policy: the invasion of Iraq.  The haughty neo-cons that planned and executed that war were high on an ideological ego trip, and they relied on the reservoir of festering collective anger as they sold their “noble lies” about Saddam’s WMDs.

Probably many of the readers of this blog, their political leanings notwithstanding, have cringed at the sight of the celebrations that followed the demise of UBL.  But, these triumphalist exhibitions signaled a cathartic moment in American life. It was befitting that President Obama remained silent at the laying of the wreath on Ground Zero.  But the anger of the masses had to be satisfied in a mob scene… and, I hope, it was.

Laura Pacifici, Rhode Island

I am embarrassed, to say the least, by the way in which my generation responded to the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death. The Washington Post reported that just as Obama declared that “justice had been done,” students across the country gathered together to celebrate the news by cracking open beers and chanting “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” on and around their college campuses. Prompted by statuses on Facebook such as “Party on the White House lawn,” students from universities in Washington, D.C. (American University, Georgetown, Howard University…) took the news as an opportunity to celebrate in the streets. But universities in D.C. were not the only ones to experience these sorts of celebrations. On my campus, Brown University, a friend informed me that individuals in a dorm next to his were playing “Born in the U.S.A.” and gathering for drinks.

Jubilance of this kind is not only inappropriate but also offensive. We were horrified to see Bin Laden supporters celebrating the death of Americans on September 11, 2001, and here we are doing the same about Bin Laden. The death of Bin Laden certainly was symbolic of our (momentary) triumph over Al Qaeda; it may have even offered the closure that the nation and those personally affected by 9/11 needed; and for some it offered legitimacy for our ongoing military presence in the Middle East. But as an Associated Press article points out, “It’s one thing to be satisfied that the world’s most wanted terrorist has been killed by a U.S. Navy SEAL unit in Pakistan. But where does satisfaction end and gloating begin?”

While I may not approve of the reaction that some college students had to this news, it is true that my generation has a unique relationship to 9/11 and the subsequent missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. While our parents’ young adult years were defined by the Vietnam War, we have come of age just as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan developed. It is odd to claim these events as our own given our lack of involvement in the wars (especially compared to our parents’ involvement in Vietnam) and our general apathy to its ongoing progress. But perhaps what we saw on Sunday night in the reactions to Bin Laden’s death was some subconscious recognition of a vested interest that we, in my generation, have in seeing that America successfully kills the enemy who has defined the history of our lives so far.

Chris Eberhardt, China

At about 11:15am Beijing time (10:15pm NY time) I received the following text: “bid laden dead. americans are said to have body”. I checked the NY Times, there was no mention, but the BBC had something. I forwarded the text to a friend from New York. That evening it was the cover story in the Beijing papers, and those I overheard gasped at the news.

I asked my students the next day if they thought bin Laden was dead, eight students said no, and the ninth said he didn’t care. My students asked me if I thought he was dead, and I replied that I believed the news more than they did. I asked them if they would believe the news if it was announced the Chinese army had killed bin Laden, the answer was the same.

Like others, I watched the pictures of revelers with a bit of amazement, but what stuck with me more were the images of enhanced security in New York and Washington, D.C. I saw more guns (not pistols either) than I’ve seen in over a year being here in Beijing, and Beijing is not short on police or military officers.

I think it’s telling that security went up, and not down afterward. In Beijing almost every day I put my backpack into the subway x-ray machines to prevent domestic terrorism. But there is a certain level of inner peace living here in China, that I’m not sure is possible again in the United States without dramatic changes in foreign policy, not simply killing someone who objected to US foreign policy.

Andras Bozoki, Hungary

(Directly answering the questions posed.)

1. The meaning of killing of Osama bin Laden is that the U.S. is ready to ‘pay back the loans’ by any means necessary. It sends a message to future terrorists that their crime will not be forgotten and forgiven. It also means that the U.S. defines the war on terror literally as a war where enemies are killed. (So this is not framed as peace-time activity with its procedure of legal justice.) It’s war, not peace. Democratic, human, and national pride is as important (if not more) than the procedures of the criminal code.

2. The U.S. administration should come up with clear evidence that Osama is indeed dead, otherwise many people will simply not believe it. A picture circulated about the dead the Ceausescus in Romania in 1989 as well which served as proof of the execution. However, if the picture is too brutal, it might have a boomerang effect, and it might provoke strong anti-US sentiments. I understand the US government not publishing the pictures (although some newspapers will certainly), but then it should present some other forms of evidence.

3. I had no time to follow the details of Obama’s visit to Ground Zero from Hungary. I find understandable that he wants to pick the political fruits, on the terrain of symbolic politics, of this successful military operation. By this move, he can win the hearts of millions of US citizens. He can recapture his popularity, and by doing so he can make a significant step towards his re-election next year. This is a pragmatic political move that is usually done by politicians in similar situations.

Anna Paretskaya, Wisconsin

Here in Madison, there actually hasn’t been much public reaction to Bin Laden’s death, definitely no celebrations like around the White House — either because 9/11 and anything that relates to it (except the two wars in which many local kids serve and die) is far removed for most people here, or because local developments (which are still happening) take up most people’s time and energy. I think that same as Wisconsin events are muted and remote for most people on the east coast, so does Bin Laden’s death seem somewhat of an “east coast affair.” Do we even live in the same country?

Nahed Habiballah, Palestine

Killing Bin Laden is seen by many as an act of revenge. Because it was inflicted by a superpower does not change the fact that such action was based on primal instincts: “an eye for an eye.” What is alarming about this action is that it legitimizes killing instead of legal prosecution. Such prosecution would be more sensible, yielding the possibility of true justice and information through interrogation, as opposed to killing.

Moreover, the way the Americans conducted the operation has given a green light to use excessive force, suggesting that all measures should be taken to quash the enemy and all means are legitimate. The following piece from Ha’aretz reflects this sentiment.

“The paradox is fascinating. Barack Obama is winning a war George W. Bush went out to fight. Obama’s democratic America is winning thanks to the dirty war it is conducting in Pakistan, without the High Court of Justice and B’Tselem.

What is forbidden to Israel in the war against terror is permitted to the United States. That is how victory was achieved. That is how the twin towers’ blood score was settled. That is how a liberal from Chicago has greatly improved his chances of winning a second term in the White House.”

What was unsettling to many Muslims was how Bin Laden’s body was dumped into the sea and the allegation that it complies with Islamic burial, while in fact it does not (according to Islamic tradition, only those who die at sea and are a day’s travel away from the land).

Lastly, Obama’s visit to ground zero had clearly the re-election campaign in mind, even though he wanted to portray it as a victory for the U.S. How is it a victory when Bin Laden was able to escape the greatest army in the world for nine years? Obama gave Bin Laden more value when he presented him as a U.S. rival.

Irit Dekel, Germany

The cover story this week of the German center-left weekly, Die Zeit, is on Bin Laden’s death. Editor Josef Joffe, in a piece entitled, “Death in the spring,” claims that clearly killing Bin Laden does not imply the sinking of his “murderly business,” and that the Al Qaeda franchise cannot be decapitated by this act. Nor were the offshoots of the second generation of the Red Army Faction. However, Joffe argues that the success of the American SEAL commando was more than a staged victory, because it highlights two encouraging implications: the winners of this “global war on terror” are not elite armies but civilians who helped catch Bin Laden. Second, like Jeff in the opening post about reactions to Bin Laden’s death in the US, Joffe claims that killing Bin Laden after ten long years is not an accident but a culmination of the Arab Spring, a fundamental change of the times. The message from Tahrir Square is that a democracy leaves no room for Bin Laden, and diminishes the attractiveness of terror.

Wolfgang Günter Lerch at the centrist Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung, in his article “The World of Yesterday,” claims that Bin Laden symbolizes above all is the “world of yesterday,” having nothing to do with the Arab Rebellion and the struggle for freedom, even if he is seen as a martyr by his followers.

It is probably not by accident that both of these articles’ titles alluded to the shaky, post-war and pre-war times in Spain (Death in the Spring by Rodoreda) and Austria (The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig). The readership of those papers recognize the context, relate to the metaphor, and can then reflect on the content on yet another level of engagement. In the US, staged celebrations of course do not mean that they are unreal, or not reflected on, rather, as Laura Pacifici argues, that they are made for a certain public, at a certain time and place. I hope that this message of an epochal change will be more reflected on, and is celebrated too, and that after the festivities their energy will be channeled to the real work of making this change possible and realistic, by the same generation that made the Arab Spring possible.

My recent reflections on the debate over the Park Islamic Cultural Center have been fueled and inspired by my personal experiences surrounding the September 11 attacks and their aftermath.

After 9/11, I despaired.  As I put it in The Politics of Small Things, it hurt to think.  I knew that the people who attacked the World Trade Center really were a threat, but the political responses to the threat seemed to me to be wrong.

The attack hit very close to home.  Two close friends were in the Towers, one survived, a childhood friend, Steve Assael, but one was killed, Mike Asher, my closest adult friend . On that fateful day, I didn’t know what had happened to either of my friends.  In the days, weeks and months that followed, as I attended to personal consequences of the attacks, I was dismayed by the public response.

A war on terrorism was declared which didn’t make much sense, as the very real threat of Al Qaeda was not sufficiently recognized by anti-war critics.  Terrorism and anti-terrorism seemed to be replacing Communism and ideological anti-Communism (the most radical and resolute form of which were Fascism and Nazism), and many who were critical of these tendencies were not realisticly facing up to the challenges of the day.  Simple Manichaeism again overlooked global complexity across the political spectrum. There did not seem to be any alternative, as the Republican President was getting carried away, pushed by a broad wave of popular support, and the Democrats in Congress, and reporters and commentators in the media, dared not question the patriotic effervescence.

My book, which was dedicated to Mike, was an attempt to explore how alternatives on the margins did provide grounds for hope.  Specific small interactions provided alternatives to faulty grand narratives, people meeting each other on the basis of shared concerns and commitments, speaking and acting in each other’s presence, developing a capacity to act in concert, i.e. constituting political power in the sense of Hannah Arendt.  I knew how important such power was in the development of the democratic opposition in Poland as it formed and supported the development of the trade union Solidarity.  I examined how the same sort of power developed in the anti-war movement and the Dean campaign, opening space for the cultivation of critical opinions and policies among people who were concerned about the state of world affairs.  Obviously, the same sort of power supported the Obama campaign, as I have explored on earlier posts.

I was very impressed to see how a focused political campaign provided coherence to a broad array of dissenters, observable in anti war demonstrations and on many websites.  But the strength was not just the unity. It also was grounded in the diversity of experiences, opinions and actions that made up the movement.  People concerned about a broad array of immediate circumstances came together in opposition to the Bush administration and its policies.  But as important as the opposition was, their primary concerns were perhaps even more important.  A broad coalition concerned with a broad set of issues, foreign and domestic constituted an impressive social movement and political campaign leading to the election of Barack Obama.

And herein lies the significance of the Park 51 Islamic Community Center.  It is a local example of the politics of small things.  Those involved have rejected civilizational conflicts and are promoting civilized inter-religious and inter cultural dialogue.  They have planned a community center in their community, with places for people to hear lectures, discuss problems, play and exercise, and pray.   They are clearly open to discussion, already engaging in it with their fellow New Yorkers.

In the planned activities and in the way they have engaged the broader community to date, they enact dialogue as the alternative to clashes of civilizations.  This is ground zero of the opposition to terrorism and ideological anti terrorism.  These are important facts on the ground that are in opposition to dogmatic truths of the Islamic and the Islamophobic fundamentalists.  Intelligently thinking about their activities, taking them seriously beyond simplistic ideology doesn’t hurt at all. It is a way that honors my friend and many others who were lost on that bright and sunny September day.

Why is an Islamic community center dedicated to intercultural and interreligious understanding in any way a desecration to the memory of the victims of the attacks?

Why is the planning of the center provocative or insensitive?

There are problems with facts and truth, as I have reflected upon in my previous posts, but there are also problems with interpretation and evaluation.  Given the facts, the community center can only be considered an affront if there is something fundamentally wrong with one of the great world religions.  This center is clearly not the work of radical fundamentalists.  Its goal is dialogue and understanding.  If these are jihadists, all Muslims are.  If we publicly speak and act with such interpretation, we are effectively declaring a religious war, playing the game of the religious fanatics.

And isn’t it odd that it is now, 9 years after the attacks of 2001, and not in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks, that a broad fear of Muslims seems to be sweeping the country? So many major political leaders are complicit in the Islamophobia: from those who are stoking the flames, Gingrich and Palin and their media facilitators at Fox and company; to those who fear opposing the hysteria, Harry Reid and the like?

Even President Obama has not been clear about the problem (more about that in a later post).  I think that Islamophobia, not Islam, now presents a clear and present danger to American democracy, not only because it compromises our fundamental principles, but also because it challenges our security.  See for a report on this issue: U.S. Anti-Islam Protest Seen as Lift for Extremists

The battle between intelligence and ignorance has intensified since the election of Barack Obama, and it often has a surreal partisan edge, centering around the biography and the identity of the President.  A disturbing report in today’s New York Times: “a new poll by the Pew Research Center finds a substantial rise in the percentage of Americans who believe, incorrectly, that Mr. Obama is Muslim. The president is Christian, but 18 percent now believe he is Muslim, up from 12 percent when he ran for the presidency and 11 percent after he was inaugurated.” (link)

This is puzzling.  “Obama is a Muslim.”  “He is not an American citizen.”  Can people seriously believe such things?  Apparently they do.  They ignore the facts to the contrary, either cynically or because they allow their convictions to blind them from the stubborn truth of factuality.  Mostly this seems amusing.  The material for nightly satires on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.  But in that a major source of news, Fox News, regularly confuses fabrication with facts and many people base their opinions upon this confusion, suggests that there is a cultural crisis, a cultural war worth fighting.

It is not primarily a partisan battle, or at least it shouldn’t be.  It is a struggle to make sure that factual truth is the grounds for public life.  It is in this context that I think the case of the so called Ground Zero Mosque should be understood.   The controversy itself indicates a major cultural and political defeat.  The struggle is to get beyond the controversy, and it seems to me that the only outcome must be to build the Park Islamic Cultural Center.

It should be clear to anyone who wants to know the facts that Barack Obama is an American citizen, born in Hawaii, raised by his mother and grandparents, with an absent father from Kenya.  He became a practicing Christian as an adult in Chicago.

It should also be clear that the Islamic Center planned is the work of Muslims who are seeking inter-religious understanding.  It is two city blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center.  It is modeled after the 92nd Street Y, and has been planned in consultation with 92Y officials and representatives of a broad range of religious and cultural groups in New York City.  It is planned to be a fifteen story structure, with a prayer room on two floors, but also included will be a library, a gym and a restaurant.

Far from being a mega mosque in the shadows of the former World Trade Center, in that neighborhood, in lower Manhattan, it is a modest structure.  Far from being a monument of Muslim triumphalism, everything the planners of the center have said and done indicate it is dedicated to oppose such a position; they are against Fundamentalism.

The religious leader behind the project, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is a Sufi Imam, who has worked and continues to work with the State Department, both of Barack Obama and George Bush, in the attempt to win the hearts and minds of Muslims around the world.

These are indisputable facts.  These facts about the planned Islamic Cultural Center are as solid as President Obama’s citizenship.  When political positions are asserted that deny facts, a sensible democratic politics becomes impossible.  More thoughts to come.