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So, it's been a year since I started this journal, and it's been a year since what will forever be known as 9/11.
I was on the Internet when it happened, someone said, "Oh my God, turn on CNN," on TinyTIM and I saw that plume of smoke coming out of the first tower, and thinking to myself that Tom Clancy's publicist had gone a bit too far in his stunts this time. First it had to be a tragic accident, a stray Cesna perhaps. Then the second plane hit, and it wasn't an accident anymore, and now I wanted the Avengers to show up and put things right, even as I started to dial my sister's number in New York and we all started to gather on #filkhaven, like frightened refugees around a campfire, sharing news as it happened.
And what has Dubya done in the last year? He's dropped a lot of bombs on Afghanistan, deposed the Taliban which had no role aside from harboring Al-Qaeda, enacted the widest-reaching legislation possible against fundamental liberties in the history of the US, exhorted citizens to spy on each other, detained people without evidence, without charges, without trials, and now wants to involve the US in another war against Iraq, whose sole problem seems to be that it's an easy target. All this while, charges of complicity in Enron, Haliburton, and other corporate interests go unanswered amid the dog wagging War on Terror, the economy continues to downslide, and the New Patriotism is best manifested in 9/11 souvenirs. And where's Osama? Waldo has been spotted more times than he has in the last year.
You know what I'm going to do today, what I suggest everyone do today, especially my American friends? Go about your lives as if this is not a special day, as if this is just another Wednesday, just another Fall morning or afternoon. Talk to people. Buy groceries. Read a book. Rent a movie. Play with your cat. Because that's precisely what the terror-mongers, and that includes the current administration, want you not to do. Because that's how they both win.
God Bless America.
I was on the Internet when it happened, someone said, "Oh my God, turn on CNN," on TinyTIM and I saw that plume of smoke coming out of the first tower, and thinking to myself that Tom Clancy's publicist had gone a bit too far in his stunts this time. First it had to be a tragic accident, a stray Cesna perhaps. Then the second plane hit, and it wasn't an accident anymore, and now I wanted the Avengers to show up and put things right, even as I started to dial my sister's number in New York and we all started to gather on #filkhaven, like frightened refugees around a campfire, sharing news as it happened.
And what has Dubya done in the last year? He's dropped a lot of bombs on Afghanistan, deposed the Taliban which had no role aside from harboring Al-Qaeda, enacted the widest-reaching legislation possible against fundamental liberties in the history of the US, exhorted citizens to spy on each other, detained people without evidence, without charges, without trials, and now wants to involve the US in another war against Iraq, whose sole problem seems to be that it's an easy target. All this while, charges of complicity in Enron, Haliburton, and other corporate interests go unanswered amid the dog wagging War on Terror, the economy continues to downslide, and the New Patriotism is best manifested in 9/11 souvenirs. And where's Osama? Waldo has been spotted more times than he has in the last year.
You know what I'm going to do today, what I suggest everyone do today, especially my American friends? Go about your lives as if this is not a special day, as if this is just another Wednesday, just another Fall morning or afternoon. Talk to people. Buy groceries. Read a book. Rent a movie. Play with your cat. Because that's precisely what the terror-mongers, and that includes the current administration, want you not to do. Because that's how they both win.
God Bless America.
