Fifteen Years
Last edited Sun Sep 11, 2016, 06:51 PM - Edit history (1)
(I've posted this a couple times before; updated because...well, I think you can guess why)
It just doesn't seem possible. In some ways it seems like just yesterday.
I was finally getting my first break, and nearing the door to the lounge--dodging the mess, because the store was undergoing remodeling at the time--one of the managers was saying something to one of the guys in sporting goods about "And now I heard the Pentagon just got hit". I had no idea what he was talking about...
Then I got into the break room and saw the television.
The World Trade Center was on fire. I was stunned into silence save for one gallows joke about "Well, at least this means they'll stop talking about Gary Condit for a while" (And if you can't even remember who Gary Condit is, that just sort of makes my point. He was the top story on 9-10 as he had been for weeks)
I saw one of the towers fall, and went numb. I couldn't process it. My fifteen minutes on break came up, and I went back to work. Within an hour, the store was almost deserted. When my shift ended, I joined the line to get my car gassed up--rumor had it gas was about to go to $5 a gallon, so get the $1.95 while you can. It took longer than we thought, but gas eventually did make it to almost $5.
It really hit me that evening. I live about a mile north of Indianapolis International Airport (or at least we did then; over the last decade they basically moved a couple miles west), and whenever we have relatives or other company who don't come from here, they often comment about "How do you get anything done with all the airplane noises whenever they take off?" Well, most of the time, we don't notice because we're so used to it.
That evening, I noticed the eerie silence of the airplanes not taking off and landing.
That morning, after the attack, the management set up a radio near the Service Desk and the Bob and Tom Show was on; they're nationally syndicated, but their home base is right here in Indy. Understandably, the canned laughter and jokes about Kristy Lee's boobs had fallen to the wayside. I remember Tom Grizwold commenting "What kind of twisted value system approves of something like this?" and couldn't help but agree. Maybe he meant Islam, but that's not what I agreed with.
The "twisted value system" that caused that day is the supreme arrogance that comes from saying "My politics, the exact way I worship God, is so superior to yours that I consider you subhuman and unworthy of continued existence. And not only that, because you don't worship God in the exact same way I do, I will kill myself just to speed along your journey to Hell and mine to Heaven." The twisted value system that says crashing airplanes into buildings full of office workers is somehow a good thing. And let's be clear, it's not an Islam thing: that same twisted value system tells a Good Christian Soldier it's okay to blow up a federal building with a truck bomb or to go into a church (a church) and open fire on a doctor who performs a medical procedure you don't like, or to shoot a congresswoman you disagree with in the head, and take out a bunch of others in the process--including an innocent child who would have celebrated her fifteenth birthday today.
It's the twisted value system that says that because we were attacked, it's okay to go invading other countries even if they had jack shit to do with that attack.
And in the aftermath, that twisted value system has only strengthened the worst of our political leaders. Compassion, empathy, tolerance, education, intelligence, an understanding of science--in this twisted value system, these things are liabilities. In this twisted value system, a dry drunk who makes up words like "Misunderstimate" and a grifter to whom "What newspapers do you read?" is seen as a "gotcha question" are great, but an openly racist thin-skinned bully who can't open his mouth without bragging about how awesome he is and says creepily sexual things about his own daughter is even better!
There were moments of light. The spirit of unity right after the attack. The shining moment eight years ago when it looked like the mantle of greed and mendacity was being cast off. Five years ago, American soldiers finally located the fiend behind the attacks and shot him in the eye as he was jacking off in his not-so-hidden Pakistani compound. For a very brief time, that seemed to remind us all of what we had, and what we lost.
But it passed quickly.
When sociopathic billionaires can buy our political process, and those who speak against them doing so are called unpatriotic traitors; when police gun down unarmed teenagers based on their skin color and are loudly defended for it; when armed insurrectionists threaten to shoot government officials and are treated as peaceful protesters while real peaceful protesters are treated like dangerous terrorists; and the elected governor of a State of the Union can speak of the fear of a routine military exercise like it's some kind impending invasion with the same seriousness that radio hosts with tin foil on their heads take it--that twisted value system has infected too many of us too deeply.
Terrorists attacked us in hopes of destroying us. They knew three office buildings weren't going to do it--it was what we'd do in reaction to the attack that would do it. And we pretty much did. Massive deficits incurred by one justified but bungled war and one completely unnecessary, unjustified, and just as bungled war. The same war crimes we tried Axis soldiers for after World War II are now actually considered justifiable and even commendable.
Many of the same architects of those failed policies, instead of being in jail, are on our TVs every Sunday trying to convince us to drive off the cliff into the chasm of perpetual warfare yet again. They aren't even coming up with new arguments, just the same recycled crap they shoved down the throats of scared people thirteen years ago. We clearly didn't spend enough blood and treasure the first time--this time we have to get it right!!! And even they look rational in comparison to the major party Presidential nominee who basically threatens to nuke anyone who makes fun of his tiny tiny hands on Twitter.
The corporate swine are doing well, but nobody else is.
And the silences about it save for a few places such as DU is just as eerie as the lack of jet takeoffs that warm Tuesday night.
We shot the man who ordered the attacks on us. On the whole, he probably died pretty happy; he's almost won.
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