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About the time I had digested the national suggestion-box format, I read that the Defense Department has turned to Hollywood for advice. They're asking the makers of action, thriller and terror movies to think outside the box about what terrorists might possibly imagine or do next. Steven DeSouza, screenwriter of "Die Hard," and Joseph Zito, writer of "Delta Force One," have been asked to "brainstorm" the possibilities. Then there was Adm. John Stufflebeem, our second in command, scratching his head and saying something like, gee whiz, we thought the Taliban would have folded by now. If letting admirals speak so openly is what it means to live in a free society, I'm for repression. Muzzle the admirals. No free speech for anyone over the rank of sergeant. "Send us your best idea for fighting terrorism, and while we wait to hear from you we will be out consulting with Hollywood scriptwriters." This does not comfort. Nor does it suggest the solution. It may, however, point to the problem. We Americans, who have cell phones that enable us to talk to anyone anywhere and have global positioning satellites that pick up everything everywhere, seem to be out of touch -- out of touch with reality, out of touch with history. We imagined in the stunning title of Francis Fukuyama's popular early '90s tome that we had achieved The End of History. We had come to the apex, the apogee and consummation of human striving and struggle, and what did we find but -- surprise -- ourselves. We, America, were what history had been pointing toward all along. Free-market capitalism and democratic pluralism were what God really intended. We had arrived. Now we just had to wait for the rest of the world to get it. History was over. We had constructed a closed universe, safely sealed off like a tourist enclave in Mexico. All we had to do was figure out how to keep Alan Greenspan alive forever to manage the market and maintain our high-yield portfolios. Life was a maintenance game for those who had arrived. So we could walk away from the table in Durban if we didn't like what we heard, or thumb our nose at Kyoto if it didn't seem good for American business. We could say to the Palestinians and Israelis: We aren't terribly interested in your problems. Call us when you get it figured out. If good is to come from Sept. 11, it may include this: that Americans will rejoin history. We will see that the world is not the steady state mechanism to be maintained at 72 degrees for our comfort and convenience that we had imagined. It is the complex, seething, unpredictable, unfinished world that it has always been. We live in history, not above it. If good is to come from Sept. 11, it will be that we turn no longer to Hollywood to understand what's going on, but to Ankara and Nairobi and Bangkok. We will be more disposed to listen to the places and cultures where people are not living the American Dream and, moreover, have no desire to do so. They have their own dreams. Living in history is different from living apart from it or at its imagined conclusion. Living in history means we are not in charge, that we don't have all the answers, that there is much to be learned, that we cannot grow complacent. The deeper challenge America now faces is conceiving a new relationship to the rest of the world. At this juncture, it is not our challenge to run the world. It is our challenge to engage the world and to give leadership with a humility that has not been much in evidence. We in America are not the end point of history. We are one contribution to the human story -- a brilliant and wondrous contribution in so many ways and in many ways a terribly flawed contribution as well. The great human story, of which we are a part, is a story that will find its meaning and resolution in God's time, not ours. Our task as human beings and nations is to live engaged in history, aware of our limitations, yet ever hopeful and open to the possibilities for greater justice and peace. Anthony B. Robinson is senior minister at Plymouth Congregational Church: United Church of Christ in Seattle. ©1999-2001 Seattle Post-Intelligencer ###
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