All my life I've heard people of my parents generation ask one another where they were when Kennedy was killed. Now everyone in America, young and old, has another question to ask - Where were you on 9/11, when the towers fell?
I was asleep here at the ranch. My father called from in town and still talking to him my mom told me to turn on the TV. Nothing I had gleaned from listening to their snippets of conversation gave me the slightest idea, or the least bit of preparation for what I would see.
Smoke, and god damned lots of it, rising from Manhattan. Pieces of ash and debris blown out over the water, circling in the skies on rising currents of heat like alien birds. And just one tower.
I was full of disbelief, but I had no doubt. I've talked to people since that awful day four years ago who didnt think it was terrorism immediately, or even until some "authority" figure told them. The first words out of my mouth were "The god damned sand niggers finally did it".
I'm not a racist person, I dont judge people by skin color, creed, or faith, not individually, not as a group. But individuals I do judge by their actions, and Mohammed Atta and his 19 comrades were sand niggers. I'll stand by that declaration till the day I die.
Then of course, I had no idea who personally had done it, but the logical assessment was some of the same people who had tried to bring the World Trade towers down before.
That was a day un-rivaled in emotion - horror, shock, hate, love, all of it and back again. Aimless at first, just shocked into high vibration in all directions, and then focused, hard.
That day, we loved the firefighters who went up those flights of stairs. Those men with families and lives who did their job and walked up into that maelstrom of hateful fire, and never walked out again before the towers came down. They were the best of us that day, everything good and strong and un-askingly brave in the people of America, was in the FDNY, NYPD and Port Authority that day.
We loved New York and her people. We were horrified for them, and grieved with them.
And our hate was a pure elemental thing, and as the intel grew about who was responsible, it was focused like a cutting torch. Hate is never beautiful, but god damn it was something that day. There was purposefulness to it, direction and it demanded action. It was pure, burning white flame. Undiluted by politics, foriegn policy, political agenda, party line attitudes, or anything else. We were not trying to pander to the feelings of the sensitive in this world, the people who said we'd brought the attacks on ourselves. The American Muslim community was not an entity we thought about offending, they were either like every other American and filled with the same rage, shock, fear and love as the rest of us - or they didnt deserve to be American. We were righteous and our path was clear of such trifles and bullshit.
And now, four years later, all that has changed. It has become important to pander to the people who feel we deserved being attacked, and to constantly check ourselves lest we offend the Muslim community by saying some truth that is offensive to them. We are kissing ass to the weak and cowardly, and we have said "hate it bad - we cant use hate against our enemies". And now thats true, because any hate thats left is all the wrong kinds - we let that purest flame burn out before we could use it.
And now we're on a familial revenge fantasy quest in Iraq, hunting boogers and wasting time, resources and lives instead of taking the war to terrorism around the globe. Iraqs connection to terrorism was miniscule and flimsy compared to other nations, and the war there has as much relevance to the Global War on Terror as arresting a homeless guy in the alley outback of the bank has to catching the bank robber.
We've lost ourselves in all of this - We've allowed many of our freedoms to be sold down the river with the Patriot Acts, and we're allowing our government to play games and tell lies about it all without much question. And those who do question, those who dare to dissent, are called unpatriotic, un-American, seditious, etc. Hell, even those who didnt vote for the President in the last election are called that. We have lost ourselves, we have lost our true patriotism, we have lost our vision, and we have lost much of our freedom in this quagmire we've created out of the General War on Terror.
Instead of actually fighting terror, acting with that burning fury, and actually making a difference, we've screwed around and ended up here.
And its no better on the home-front - even 9/11 cannot be kept pure, it is a vehicle for political agenda's of all sorts, none of them in the least involving the terrorist attacks of that day. For example - http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006791
Now while I disagree with Ms. Burlingames stated political views, particularly on dissent and calling into question un-Constitutional things like the Patriot Act, the idea that the 9/11 memorial will be about everything touchy-feely-human-rightsy but 9/11 pisses me off to no end. Its a travesty.
We have forgotten - We have lost ourselves.
This Day
How soon have you forgotten?
Forgot how we wept,
As they came to their end and slept…
Have you ignored, like the stench so rotten?
You choose not to waive the flag,
Because that’s not right anymore,
We don’t remember what it was for,
You chain smoke and you bitch, between drags
You say Its just those right wing crazies,
Who are patriotic these days,
Just to mask their wars in so many ways,
To hide the dead children and burning daisies
You lie through your teeth,
But you swill at the trough,
And when asked to leave you scoff,
You lie, you see, so you can seethe
And you forgot how we bled,
This day past,
And all the rest, the blood not the last,
You forgot and your morality fled.
Go away from us in peace,
We’d ask not your counsels,
For what good are you scoundrels?
Damning yourselves to the fleece.
I remember and I mourn,
Not to make war,
Nor excuses for,
And I wear with pride the fools scorn.
Forgotten this day,
And ever the follow,
Forgotten gallow,
But not by all, not this day.
Going Up
Going up
Into a world of wonder
Smoke and clouds of doubt
Nothing else to be done
Thoughts forward and up
110 stories
and where’s the fire?
People running
Dying
and Hiding
and still they go up
Calm like warriors
Scared like little boys?
and still…
Falling
Slowly wheeling, down, down, falling,
More charred remains, more haunted calling
Lives in their own hands and falling
Lovers locked in final embrace leaping, into the cold high air,
Down, down, and through the licking flames glare
When did they die?
Or more importantly, Why?
What angry gods of wrath and destruction did it appease, this blood sacrifice?
Why must men, fall for mice?
Its all falling... falling... Its all falling now.
Someone knows but the rest of us... the rest of us are all left asking, How?
Ashes falling, and twirling, and dancing on the wind,
Bones and flesh and bodies, falling but who among them sinned?
Wipe at your dampening eyes, and bow your heads in shame and sorrow,
And look whats been done, what has been ruined for the children of the morrow.
Falling... falling... arms stretched out... falling...
Looking heavenward, and crying with silent lips... for reason within madness, and for one more slip of mortality...calling
