Another 9/11
This is how it looked on September 12, 2001, from the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. Strong men and women were just starting to comb through the wreckage for body parts, which, for some of them, would be the first day of months. The smoke, the most concentrated smoke I had ever seen, was like a solid mass. This white mass was not unlike the image of the sun that remains visible after you close your eyes, when you accidentally look at it too closely. What I had seen nearly every day for years was missing, and now burned.
On the day after, it was like attending a funeral. On the day of, the bizarre sight was seeing the smoke, but also seeing just one tower still standing next to it. It was like seeing half a mountain. If there was anything that could convey the impermanence of man or his creations, it was the sight of one World Trade Center.
If you had asked me then, on the morning of September 12th, whether retribution would be paid for this act - not whether we would be spreading democracy or even taking action to protect ourselves - I probably would have said, “How could it not?” It was as clear as that smokey day. I would not have thought badly enough about Americans, even of those in government, to imagine the nauseating webs they would build in their minds to replace the clarity of that morning.
Two webs were built around the terrorist acts, an attempt to file them as standard imagery of one of two political philosophies. Now, we need to die for other people’s chance in hell at “democracy”, or cower at home and cover our crying eyes, either or both because of those two missing towers.
Does it take another 9/11? Could it take another 9/11 for us to do anything about this? Who the fuck am I even talking to? Does anyone remember?
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_I_ remember.
But you remembered …better.
(Been a while since I stopped by here — I dropped out after a dry spell of no new posts a while back, but today particularly I remembered your writing back then. Good to see you back/still at it.)
So. What do we do?
I remember too.
I saw Bush giving another speech over at the site this morning. It offended me deeply that he has the gall to even show his face there again after failing so miserably to defeat the bastards that did this.
He has no right to even be there for betraying all those people that the motherfucking fundie islamofascists killed that day by failing to:
1. Identify the enemy.
2. Kill the motherfuckers.
Hell, I think it might take us getting nuked a few times before people wake the fuck up. And even then I don’t think we have a single person in power in this whole fucking country that has the balls to do the right thing. No one.
You have to wonder whether the United States is capable of electing people to government who will not continue to drag it down the toilet. If that were possible, I think we could easily tolerate and reverse others’ previous inconsistencies and fuck-ups. Someone could make the case to people who don’t understand it that these “lone” terrorists can only do anything substantial with the support of particular governments.
But then again, why should we need a politician to make that case? Anyone who gave a shit could have found this out since 2001.
It’s this latter point that makes me reluctant to push forward, day after day, and treat everyone I meet as an innocent lamb that I should help by explaining, “I’m sorry, dear, but there are people who want to kill you. And here’s what you can do about it.”
Maybe if I had special access to cosmic secrets I would feel differently. But I’m not convinced that people want to understand. I will (because I’m not physically capable of doing otherwise) continue to try, and who knows, maybe just discovering one person who seems to have a breakthrough will inspire me. Right now, I’m tired of preaching to the choir as well as to the deaf, dumb, and blind.
P.S. I’m glad you guys remember.
Well preaching to the choir seems a bit needless, even if it’s an occasional reinforcement.
On the other hand, preaching to the deaf, dumb, and blind is hopeless.
If only there were people in between, the ones who have the capacity to reason, and merely need to be prodded in the right direction. The ones who sense something is wrong with the world, but can’t put their fingers on it. Where are Cheryl Brooks and Eddie Willers?
“Net” wrote:
” If only there were people in between, the ones who have the capacity to reason, and merely need to be prodded in the right direction. ”
Hey, guys. They’re out there. It seems weird, but I’ve seen it. People who just go, “Oh. I hadn’t thought of it that way. Gee.” Consider: many people just don’t invest the time to figure stuff out on their own, where it doesn’t seem to pertain to themselves immediately. So they just have the default view: the one on TV; the one around them.
Of course, I have my own personal experience too. Those anarchists you saw on TV in St. Paul a week or so ago? That was me, not so many years ago. I had never seriously thought these things through on my own; I just ran with the first thing that came along and satisfied my teen angst ™, …and then it was really pretty much a non-event when Ayn Rand came along and whacked me on the forehead with the cosmic 2X4 10 later. No big deal. Gee, I never really thought about it that way. Huh.
“The ones who sense something is wrong with the world, but can’t put their fingers on it. Where are Cheryl Brooks and Eddie Willers?”
I hope they didn’t already meet the fates spelled out for them in the book. In which case, we’re in a further-along chapter than I thought.
Thank you for your anger.
I share it as well.
I most definitely have not forgotten.
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