Personally, I would prefer to live in a world where Seth Rogen and James Franco aren’t our foreign policy drivers. Everyone who works at Sony probably feels the same way right now, and quite a few busy people at the State Department, too. North Korea is a loose cannon with a long history of erratic foreign and domestic policies, but the aftermath of the Sony hack has seen America making equally temperamental choices. America is playing down to a lunatic’s level and ignoring lessons it might have learned from 9/11. The notion that America’s free speech is being messed with because The Interview is in distribution limbo is the kind of histrionic overstatement that citizens of a superpower make when they don’t have an accurate self-image.

Prior to the hacking incident, I saw a trailer for The Interview and had a visceral reaction: putting this film out is a terrible idea. I work as a screenwriter now, but my college degree was earned at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service with a specialty in comparative studies of Asia and Europe. My thesis was on power in the Asian region. I lived and traveled extensively in Asia. From an admittedly dated knowledge base, I feel confident saying that anyone who thinks they won’t get a response from North Korea for depicting the bloody assassination of its leader, images that will be exported globally through the American marketing and distribution machine, is truly living in a fantasy world. If the tables were turned and a film studio in an adversarial country depicted the violent assassination of our leader as comedy and, most importantly, had the power to share that film worldwide, we’d be disgusted and outraged. America has resources and official diplomatic channels to respond to that sort of propaganda attack. We’d start by demanding an apology. In the case of The Interview, America is the perpetrator and we’ve gone after an isolated, unstable dictatorship. Sony foolishly picked a fight with a cornered, rabid dog and dragged the entire country into the alley with them. America has no choice now but to stand behind a questionable film on principle. This is not a strong position.

Satire has a goal. It’s not toothless. Americans frequently, maddeningly blur the line between satire and bad behavior. In the worst cases, racism, misogyny and hate are passed off as comedy. In the middling cases, comedy promotes the status quo, which generally isn’t a good thing. For material to be satirical the writers must have a firm grasp of the issues, be skillful at self-examination, and have the goal of shifting people’s perceptions toward greater clarity. The South Park series comes to mind as an example of great satirical writing, as does The Simpsons. Tropic Thunder was an incredible satire of the film industry, with an edgy script that pushed far beyond discomfort into outright offense and insult. Those writers put Hollywood under the microscope and dissected with aplomb.

In contrast, bad behavior is poking fun at something — a person, an idea, a philosophy, a moral precept — without self-examination. While I don’t know Rogen or Franco personally and I have not watched The Interview, I struggle to be optimistic that Rogen has written a politically self-aware satire of America’s relationship to North Korea. I really enjoyed Rogen’s frat comedy Neighbors, and his upcoming Sausage Party sounds like it will keep his fans happy, but they’re two of many reasons I expect The Interview is no Catch-22 or Dr. Strangelove. The synopsis reads like a couple of stoner writers thought “dictators are stupid and wouldn’t it be funny if…” Well, the answer is no. America assassinating the leader of a foreign country isn’t funny at all and we shouldn’t be in the position of defending it as humorous or entertaining. Now we’re stuck promoting an image overseas that we’ll wield our considerable power in defense of our right to spend Christmas Day laughing at Kim Jong-un’s dismemberment at our hands. The film is a propaganda attack on North Korea’s sovereignty, intentional or otherwise, and one that America really doesn’t want to instigate. There are too many other fires burning.

In touting the release of The Interview as a symbol of our right to say or do anything we want, the American public is trading free speech for common sense and confusing comedy with xenophobia. Further, the aftermath of the initial data dump generated an ugly public conversation about celebrity emails and then about censorship and the perceived cowardice of the victims of the attack. In this way, the public and the media abetted the attackers. To suggest that Sony is “caving” or “capitulating” to people who are threatening violence to their employees and the general public is essentially to say that Sony should ignore their hostage situation. Until Sony is “released” or has outside protection, the company has no way to push back against their attacker. “Free speech” as a concept is not remotely in danger. Individuals and a company are in danger. Sony employees have already been terribly compromised by this cyberattack, and they’re under continued threat. Sony made a mistake with this film, but the company needs the country’s support to get through the situation. It’s important to grasp how effective we could be in pushing back against cyberattacks if we’re all on the same page. Instead, the hackers have forced us to get behind The Interview, a movie that promotes a threatening image of American foreign policy. No one wants to be in that situation. That’s the precedent we don’t want to set.

People who worry about the future of free speech in this country can rest easy. The fallout from The Interview potentially has more long-term positive affects on free speech than negative ones once the danger is over. For one thing, our awareness of how to wield American power in a technologically interconnected world will be greatly increased. We can learn from these mistakes. The film industry needed a recalibration in how it assesses its output and true reach. While this incident may make the Hollywood community fearful initially, the way the country stands behind Sony and deals with the hackers will ultimately embolden executives and talent to make smarter, sharper political films once they’ve shored up their vulnerabilities. Defiance is the backbone of change.

9/11 threw America into a state of fear that divided us. We continue to be divided, and easily distracted. It’s time to regroup so we can address crises like these successfully. America’s power lies dormant in a unified voice we’ve forgotten. Without it, we continue to be vulnerable to even the weakest dictators.