Are We Just a Bunch of Sisyphuses?

I was listening to Lucky Bitch Radio yesterday and Wanda had as her guest, Lady Bunny. Now I have heard of Lady Bunny, seen the pictures and the various and sundry video clips of this famed drag queen and was expecting something similar.

I was bowled over. Not only is this drag queen deliciously raunchy, indulgent, and tragically fabulous but she is also eloquent and very well read when it comes to current events, analyses of popular culture, and the decline of western civilization, but I digress.

During the podcast the topic of 9/11 came up. I know right, groan groan how many times do we have to discuss that day? Hasn't everything already been said? Well, maybe not. Lady Bunny brought up a question that I have had in my head for a very long time but have never vocalized for reasons of being labeled as a sympathizer with the terrorists, but who am I to care about labels, especially when the couldn't be further from the truth.

So here's the question, the million dollar question that no one seems to want to ask and yet the answer to could possibly hold so many solutions to our current predicament. The question that I think was hastily overlooked and cast aside and replaced with a vicious streak of vengeful bloodlust. A question that I myself overlooked to embrace my carnal desire to seek revenge on those who attacked us but lingered in my head from the start of all of this:

Humans are to a certain extent capable of senseless acts of violence but I have to believe that we have some shred of good left in us as a species, that we do not go around killing people for no reason. With that in mind we have to ask ourselves, as a nation, what did we do to these people to motivate them to want to kill us?

Terrorism is unlike conventional warfare in that it isn't really about land or technological superiority so its almost a distillation of what is at the core of all war, ideology. So why aren't we using our heads as weapons? To write off terrorists as "evildoers" doesn't answer the question, its simply a distraction. One the best teachers I ever had would incessantly yell at us in analytical literature class, "Don't tell me what! Tell me WHY!" You can kill people all you like, but ideas and reasons are beyond bodies and can't be destroyed by bullets and bombs. If we fail to realize that then all of this will happen again and we'll be trapped in a Sisyphean cycle, pushing that boulder up the hill only to have it roll back down again. It would do us more good to use our resources to find and treat the cause of this problem rather than waste time and lives treating the symptoms.