San Francisco's Domestic Terrorists

For several weeks now, my City has been under terrorist attack. Many people remember the attacks on New York in 2001. Although I wouldn't claim that the attacks on San Francisco this month were quite as severe, I would argue that they exceed the qualifications of terrorist actions compared to those perpetrated in September of 2001.

The logical definition of terrorism is actions or threats which cause "terror" in those to whom the actions or threats are directed. Terror should be qualified, of course, to mean something more severe than mere inconvenience or change in habits. Terror in men is the conscious confirmation that life as it needs to be led is impossible - that the actions of an outside force are causing a threat to one's life and the pursuit of that which furthers its goals and success.

The goal of San Francisco's terrorist population is the destruction of life. The results of their actions have been the destruction of the motors of the City. Everyone touched by the actions of the terrorists have seen their lives changed in a destructive way. This is what is meant by terrorism, and why they as individuals and as a group can be classified as nothing else. Their actions surpass the terrorist nature of those of the September 2001 terrorists in many ways, if not (yet) with the latter's destructive results. Their actions have touched me personally in ways the September 2001 actions never could have, both due to the proximity of the activity and the nature of the terrorists themselves.

In 2001, the terrorists were foreigners. They were seen by all rational Americans as the enemy, and their intent was universally acknowledged as life-destroying and inhuman. The terrorists on the streets this month are not being so simply identified, and it is truly frightening: their actions destroy life, and destroy wealth (the two are essentially the same); their ranks are filled with American citizens and often everyday, middle-class ones at that; they are not perpetrating actions against highly visible and widely-recognized monuments, and thus their actions are not as visible from outside their immediate locale. Yet the destruction can be seen and felt severely by all who live and work in this City. Strangely, however, the outpouring of unity and solidarity which took place after the 2001 attacks has not materialized from these.

San Francisco's domestic terrorists have atrophied the men who keep the motors of the City running: the men who built this city and continue to make it prosper. Like mucous and bile in the throat of an asthmatic, they block offices and transit routes to prevent business from functioning, to prevent commerce from commencing each business morning. They make small business and shop owners spend their time guarding their goods and storefronts rather than selling their wares and interfacing with customers. They cause restaurants and coffeehouses to close, hemorrhaging revenues and turning tip-dependent wage-earners away from their jobs day after day. Their destruction of real property results in funneling wealth away from its owner's intentions and preventing the creation of new jobs and new commercial endeavors. Their activity focuses on destroying the city and every logical function of the city: they are shutting down the human market of the mind in favor of the law of the jungle.

They are threatening death to the City by causing all available resources to be funneled away from real law enforcement and toward the waging of a war by police. The enhanced police presence creates a hostile environment in which productive, law-respecting individuals must fear for their person every time they pass a team of tired, overworked officers, made nervous by a dozen straight hours of provocation and mistreatment by terrorists. They further slow the production of wealth and the maintenance of every man's life by standing in the way of such basic needs as eating and sleeping - for life cannot be successfully lived in an environment of dark shop windows and unending helicopter bleatings and siren screams. Citizens of every third-world dictatorship will confirm the difficulty of enduring in such a world.

As I walk to work in the morning, traffic is backed up and roads are closed off. The sidewalks are closed and I have to reroute my steps. The police are everywhere and I trace my every move, their hands on pistols, suspicious of everyone and everything. Their faces are drained, their limbs sore from days of overtime controlling crowds and fighting abuse. How can I know their ultimate ability to distinguish me from the terrorists? I wonder. Have I done my part to distinguish myself? Is any American doing his part? Why are we living in such terror and fearing every moment when the simple act of ending our tolerance of these terrorists and ending our sanction of their activities would end their destruction? Why do we allow them to live, when their goal is the destruction of our lives, and of life in general?

I continue to wonder this every morning when I awake to hear them praised. Praised for the bravery of their "position" or "opinion". Praised that they are showing the "courage" to destroy my life and the life of my City. I was afraid of the world I lived in after the foreign terrorists destroyed a few blocks of New York in 2001. I'm more afraid of it than ever today, when those blocks are in the City in which I live, and the terrorists are home-grown and sanctioned by the government, the media, and most of my neighbors.

The fact that their actions makes them worse than the conventional definition of terrorists (as qualified by the events of September 2001) makes a new description necessary perhaps. They need to be described as what they represent, physically and philosophically, from what their voices advocate to what their actions perpetrate. To San Francisco's domestic terrorists, in the name of your hatred of life and all that makes it possible, I dub thee: The walking dead. I never thought it possible that I would hate any of my fellow men enough to arrive at such a conclusion, and I hate you even more that you have brought me to this today...