A little known fact about the human mind is that it will believe just about anything in a time of panic. In the wake of the September 11th attacks, the American mindset became gullible to the promises and lies which their own government fed it, “They say its some terrorist, some/barbaric/A Rab, in/Afghanistan”. Through years of experience, Amiri Baraka saw right through what was coming down the newswire, and within a month of the attacks he had an epic poem to remind us not to take things at face value. Governments which he had lived through and battles which had occurred in his lifetime had taught the author about the capabilities of those in power and the outlets which were at their disposal. The media, for one, played a big part in how the Americans absorbed the attacks, keeping our eyes off of the domestic and economical terrorism which was running rampant while the country went on to wage two wars. Amiri Baraka took the chance in this poem to list things that should have been common knowledge for American school kids but never made it to the curriculum, as well as strong conspiracies that most have never even heard. This poem raises quite a few questions that are worthy of further research in order to fully understand, it is a seedbed of new information and is was written to bring an end to the American naivety.

Amiri Baraka has lived his life in a revolutionary and politically charged era of history, using his poetry to help start movements and open eyes. He has exercised his freedom of speech and expression to produce many works, and has used poetry as his form of political activism. After the September 11tth attacks, Baraka wrote a poem that, according to his website biography, “headlined him in the media in ways rare to poets and authors.” “Somebody Blew Up America” was Baraka's insight on the events that happened in America that day, not far from his home in New Jersey. “Who invented Aids, Who put the germs/In the Indians' blankets”, He had seen many conspiracies played out in his own country during his lifetime and learned of many more from before his time and abroad, so accepting the facts as they were given to the American people seemed to be a task more difficult for him than writing the poem itself. Baraka was one of the first Americans to cry out about the foul play and loose ends of the attacks, “Who knew the bomb was gonna blow.” It seemed like he was on the inside track, as if he knew that we had handed the reins over to the ones who fixed the horse race itself.

Amiri Baraka would not accept the information given to him from the American media outlets, but seemingly knew the American people well enough to know that they would. His language in “Somebody Blew Up America” is meant to invoke thought and bring back memories of the indecent domestic terrorist incidents of the past. An attack on American soil by foreigners had enraged us so much, we had forgotten about the domestic Ku Klux Klan sects running about in the south burning crosses and exposing an air of discrimination that had never quite left the South, “Who got the tar, who got the feathers/Who had the match, who set the fires”. Instead, we went abroad and searched caves and destroyed countries looking for the culprits, an effort that is still being waged and has yet to produce any sort of victory, “Who killed and hired”. In the days after the attacks, while Baraka was putting his pen to paper, many of us either participated in antagonistic attacks on foreigners or were the victims of such attacks, “Who say you ugly and they the goodlookingest”. The country had nearly lost it's composure, and the government capitalized on this paranoia by instating laws to pry into our privacy and using to word 'terror' to convince the citizenry that all was for the greater good. George W. Bush used 'terror' to get re-elected, 'terror' also dispatched hundreds of thousands of troops to the wrong country, 'terror' did a terrific job of giving Americans a bad name everywhere else in the world, and in the end, 'terror' is the method the American government used to develop intelligence for the future.
Politics is well-known to be a game, and according to Amiri Baraka's poem, the American people are on the losing team. Behind every great conspiracy is at least a shred of truth, tracks covered up by more tracks running in the opposite direction. The poem written by Baraka points out many of the domestic issues that we as Americans tend to look past, having either forgave or forgotten or both. “Who killed Malcolm, Kennedy & his Brother/Who killed Dr King, Who would want such a thing?/Are they linked to the murder of Lincoln?“ Amiri Baraka is merely invoking his countrymen to see that this one act of terrorism has sparked an era of ignorance towards what we have previously done to ourselves and each other in this country. He lists each conspiracy to make us think, each question of “Who?” having more then just one possible answer. He reminds us that there are people out there making money off of our plights, citizens who benefit and profit from the top while we suffer at the bottom. “Who own the oil/Who want more oil/Who told you what you think that later you find out a lie”. It is a common view in the Republican party to focus more on our country's foreign policy than our domestic problems, the political equivalent of looking good in front of your guests but beating your children. When the 9/11 attacks occurred, the American people were so infuriated, confused by the catastrophe that it took years for them to actually realize the many other countless domestic issues that had occurred as a result. Many of us know this now, but at the time this poem was written, nearly a month after the attacks, the gears had only begun to spin into action. “Who run the army/Who the fake president/Who the ruler/Who the banker/Who/ Who/ Who.” What Baraka is trying to show us that even though our country suffered a fatal blow at the hands of international terrorists, we turned a blind eye to the domestic terrorism that had always and would continue to put our country in far deeper turmoils in the past, present and future.

Since the September 11 attacks on the United States, Americans scurried to figure out who had done it, while blindingly pointing fingers. Amiri Baraka wrote his poem «Somebody Blew Up America» in order to draw attention to something Americans had not thought of while engrossed in CNN news reports. The fact that the history of the country was based around many corrupt and hypocritical events, but also that it is quite possibly that the enemy was actually America itself.  Within our country, Americans who had prospered from previous international conflicts got away with even more audacious acts while the rest of us had to learn to accept that our privacy and our freedoms were being taken away with each passing day.  Amiri Baraka tried to catch his audience in the wake of panic in order to steer us in another direction, he tried to make us less gullible.  In his efforts, he gave us theories and facts and reminded us of our American history.  To the best of a normal man's abilities, Amiri Baraka even showed us the direction our country was heading.