If there Were No America

I had relatives living on the South Indian coast when the tsunami hit. Within minutes I was on the phone trying to find out if everything was alright. It was. It turns out, we were far enough away from the beach to escape serious damage. The water's advance had stopped just down the road. The neighbors attributed it to the favored status by the gods of the legendary Indian singer, Yesudhas, whose house stands at the end of our block, at the corner of 4th Seaward and Balakrishna.

What has come to be known by its date, 9/11, happened a few years earlier. The news of it spread like a wildfire around the world. I was working at the time. It was a brilliant, clear day. We could see the smoke rising from numerous vantage points on the NJ side of the Hudson. After my shift I went home, shaken. That night I received phone calls from three continents …inquiring.

Today, the lettering announcing 'tsunami relief', painted on the side of the boats that were donated by the West to the fishermen who had lost their livelihoods, is fading. The new boats still go out every morning at daybreak without fail as they have done for a thousand years. In New York City, there's still a giant hole in the ground. No foreign nation has come forward to lend a hand.

I've long wondered what would happen if there were no America. Who would send food to the starving, blankets to the freezing, building materials and expertise to the homeless, hope to the oppressed? Surely none of the would-be giants of the new world order one hears so much about these days would be so inclined.

And, maybe, in the end, it won’t really matter all that much. I was talking about it with my wife just last night – about how vulnerable we all are; how even what we consider to be the ultimate in stability, terra firma, is just a brittle crust that’s floating on a sea of lava; that the whole universe could at any given moment decide to make us the target in a shooting gallery; that our own lives are only a heart attack away from being snuffed out.

So what do we do? Faith. We must live on faith. Attacking a people’s faith is the quickest way of rendering them helpless. Yes, by God! We will get our country back!