Thursday, September 11, 2008

"Celebrating" September 11th


It still makes me sick to my stomach to relive that day. But in a weird way it is good to remember that day. I was horrified, angry, sad, disgusted, so many emotions at once, connected to something, someplace I had no connection to. New York City, the World Trade Center, the Middle East, Terrorism, was just a distant place/thing/idea to me. When the shit hit the fan, it became an epiphany, a realization that the U.S. policies and attitude is not exactly loved by everyone in the world. Our modern days of "splendid isolationism", perhaps still in the back of our collective American minds riding on the coattails of saving Europe from Hitler so long ago, were over. You can only ride so long as a superpower.

That whole day I had the urge to go get my kid out of school and just go home and wait for the other shoe to drop. I felt sorrow for the victims and their families. The horror of the "jumpers" - ones that made the desperate decision to fall to their death rather than burn to death- imagining having to make that decision for myself if it were me. *stomach churns* I imagined what people in other countries that have to worry about car bombs daily have to go through every time they see their kid try to get to school. Subways, commuter trains, buses. We are living like the rest of the world now, but with a bigger target on our backs.

Then anger. Find those fuckers that did this. GET THEM.

And then the President W happened.

More anger as we blindly followed the Piper to Iraq, I saw it happening, everyone did. The deception, the lies, the feeding of our residual anger and blood-thirsty craving for justice to be done. We just let it happen.

Then he was reelected.

Shame, embarrassed to have a President like this. Even more embarrassed for our nation of fools that kept him in office. More anger, despair; this is our country?
WHAT IS WRONG WITH US?

So, 7 years later...
Here are the murderers:


Here are the victims:


This is what is effected by our actions since:

Global economy, global consequences. Where are we today? The memories of those people that perished that day haunt our American psyche, even though we still shop, buy, continue to be distracted with our daily lives. Think about it, think about that day, then think if our policies have changed in the world for the better? I know, all those things are still things we have no connection to. It's just a distant place/thing/idea to us. Kind of like New York City, the World Trade Center, the Middle East, Terrorism, everywhere. Business as usual. Everything but for the here and now.

1 comment:

Allan said...

Great post. After Pearl Harbor, FDR asked use to save, sacrifice and pull together and guess what? We won a war on two fronts, against powerful foes...after 9/11, Shrubya asked us to go shopping and spy on each other and now we are getting stalemated by cavemen.
The GOP still hates FDR.
Go figure.