Freedom is Slavery

By Scott Stoll

"Where are you? Are you okay?" My mom was frantic.

"I'm fine, mom. It's only been six days. I haven't even left the country; I'm in Yosemite." I had spent three years preparing my endeavour to bicycle around the world.

"You haven't heard what has happened, have you. I turned on the news -- you know I always watch the news while getting ready for work -- and they showed an airplane crashing into the World Trade Center. I thought it was a commercial for a movie. Then, as I'm watching -- on live television -- they showed the second airplane crash into the tower. I called your father -- he's an engineer, you know -- and he said, 'Those buildings are going to collapse; they'd better get the people out.' And, I watched -- I was late for work; I didn't even know if I should go -- all those people jumping out the windows -- I couldn't believe they were showing this -- on live television -- and then one building fell over and then the other. All those people.... Scott, I think you should come home."
After the phone call, Dennis, my companion, and I gathered in the lodge with several hundred people. We watched the buildings crumble into dust over and over. "There is going to be a war. I think our trip just ended," I said.

The remains of the World Trade Center burned for days as we cycled slowly towards Mexico. A plethora of plots to blow up bridges, poison water supplies and release genetically engineered viruses surfaced in the dark waters of the media, as if the media were co-conspirators waging psychological terror-games and polarizing the West and Middle East. "If we quit our trip, the terrorist win," Dennis rationalized and we agreed we might be safer abroad than at home.

It's been several years since Mexico and terrorism has been one of the defining characteristics of my world travels. Observe the following snippets:

In Amsterdam: I entered a Chess cafe, people were scattered among a checkerboard arrangement of square coffee tables. I asked a balding Dutchman with a Dutch-Boy haircut and spectacles if I could play the next game of speed chess.

"Where are you from?" he asked.

"America."

"Ah-mere-ee-caw," he said in seesaw mockery, and then in a derisive tone meant to correct my geography, "The United States,"
"-- of America," I asserted.

"A Yankee." The Dutch don't mince words so he begins his diatribe, "I hate America. The people are okay: I hate the government."

If I were more eloquent I would have quoted a document from a famous rebel -- or, is that terrorist? -- to the British crown: Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right [and the duty] of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

I simply said, "In America, the people are the government."

"Then I hate Americans, too. I will not play you. You are fascist pigs."

"Have you ever been to America?"

"No, why should I want--"

"Then how do you know these things?"

"Newspapers. Televisions."

"Do you believe everything you see on television?"

"It can't all be wrong."

"Half wrong -- there are two sides to every story. Newspapers' business is to make money -- not to report news --"

"Then how do you explain Iraq?"

"Let's go to McDonald's; I'll to buy you a Coca-cola --"

"Bwah! Americans. Bush is an oil-hungry megalomaniac --"

"-- and we'll talk about how many people the Dutch enslaved and murdered in Africa and Indonesia."

"Your days are numbered. You won't be able to compete with the European Union or China," he says with pride and jealousy.

In Egypt: I was zigzagging between pedestrians and cars in a Cairo intersection. Two men had collided and were shouting. A policeman was asleep in a chair on the corner. An Egyptian was following me. "How long have you been in Egypt?"

"Too long." I said, deflecting potential scams.

"Where are you staying?"

I tell him the name of the hotel across the street from mine.

He detected my accent and asked, "Asama Bin Laden or Bush?"

"Who do you support?"

"Bush is a tyrant. Bin Laden is the friend of the people."

"How is a Muslim who kills children a friend of the people?"

Other Egyptians have said: The destruction of the two towers has been predicted in the Koran -- I praised Allah -- We danced in the street. He said, "It is not about the holy religion of Islam. It is about America shitting all over the Arab nation."

"So, you're going to shit all over me; and everyone is going to shit in everyone else's backyard until the whole world is shit."

"I fought in Iraq with the Americans. We are happy to take your money to fight. Your soldiers are very bad. They are soft like children. Without machines, you are nothing."

I ducked into a watch repair shop to evade being followed to my real hotel by my fluent antagonist. He shouted, "You will lose this war. All Arab nations are against you."

Inside, two elderly men greeted me reticently. "Canadian," I tested.

They expose craggy smiles and slap me on the back. "Friend. Canada."

I fled Cairo's turbulence for the tranquil waters of the Red Sea. On route, at the numerous military checkpoints, I was singled out of the tour bus and interrogated: American! Where you go? Why you here? How long you stay?

Unable to obtain a visa to Iran, war blossoming in Iraq and fading in Afghanistan, I skipped to Mumbai, India: Less than twenty-four hours after visiting McDonald's, an American icon, in Central Station, it was destroyed by a terrorist bomb.

In a small city in Nepal: Debbie and I cowered in a shop, peering out of the smeared window as a mob of protestors burned photocopied effigies of the American flag and President Bush. "C'mon, I want to see this. If anyone asks, I'll say I'm Canadian." Debbie held my arm back, "They might not stop to ask."

In Vietnam: Posters and murals depicted American soldiers dying and B-52 bombers plummeting in flames.

In many countries: I haven't been able to see the stars and stripes flying in the United States Embassy because it has been removed or hidden by the makeshift barricades.

And, what I despise the most, the American tourists who say in some variation: You must be stupid to be walking around telling people you're an American -- I never admit it. I'm getting out of America as soon as possible. I hate our government.

Quoting America's most famous terrorist again, Thomas Jefferson: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

I argue a few points: As history has proven, these truths are not self-evident, most people consider life, liberty and happiness relevant to themselves at the expense of society. Nor are these civil rights truths: these ideas are human inventions that are designed, when practiced by all people, to raise humanity out of the Middle Ages.

During my travels, I feel caught in an Orwellian universe. I paraphrase his satire, 1984: We are killing hundreds of ideas a day. How will it be possible to commit a Thought Crime when people won't even be able to think?

"War is peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is strength" are the doublespeak slogans of Orwell's Ministry of Truth. They are also meant s atirically; however, I agree that freedom is slavery.

Freedom is slavery to the duty each person has to virtue.

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