The Rage and The Pride (La Rabbia e l'Orgoglio) by Oriana Fallaci
English | Italiano

He doesn't delegate his duties to others, no. He doesn't waste his time with bullshit and greed. He doesn't split himself between the tasks of a mayor and those of a minister or deputy (is anybody listening in the three cities of Stendhal—Naples, Florence and Rome?). He ran over there immediately, and immediately entered the second tower, at the risk of being turned to ashes with all the others. He only made it out by a hair and only by chance. And in the space of four days he put this city back on its feet. A city with nine and a half million inhabitants, mind you, and almost two million in Manhattan alone. How he did it, I don't know. He's sick like me, the poor man. The cancer that comes and returns has got him, too. And, like me, he pretends to be healthy: he works anyway. But I work at a desk, for God's sake, sitting down! He, on the other hand...He looked like a general who joins the battle in person. A soldier who charges with his bayonet: "Come on, people, come on!!! Let's roll up our sleeves, move!" But he could do it because those people were, are, like him. People without airs and without laziness, my father would have said, and with balls. As for the admirable ability to unite, the almost martial compactness with which the Americans respond to disaster and to the enemy, well: I have to admit that then and there I was astounded as well. I knew, yes, that it had exploded at the time of Pearl Harbor, that is when the people huddled around Roosevelt and Roosevelt entered the war against the Germany of Hitler and the Italy of Mussolini and the Japan of Hirohito. I had caught a whiff of it, yes, after Kennedy's assassination.

But that had been followed by the war in Vietnam, the lacerating rift caused by the war in Vietnam, and in a certain sense it had reminded me of their Civil War of a century and a half ago. So, when I saw whites and blacks crying in each other's arms—and I mean in each other's arms—when I saw Democrats and Republicans arm in arm singing "God Bless America", when I saw them drop all their differences, I was flabbergasted. Just as I was when I heard Bill Clinton (someone for whom I've never harbored much tenderness) declare: "We must stand behind Bush. We must have faith in our president." I felt the same when those same words were forcefully repeated by his wife Hillary, now senator for the State of New York. And when they were reiterated by Lieberman, the ex–Democratic candidate for the vice–presidency. (Only the defeated Al Gore remained squalidly silent). I felt the same when Congress voted unanimously to accept war and punish those responsible.

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