These anniversaries of 9/11/2001 make me angry. It's not simply that I despise the terrorists that scarred my hometown and murdered my neighbors. It's not simply that I recall what it was like on that fateful day, or the moody weeks that followed. What infuriates me is the way that Bush exploits the tragedy every chance he gets. I remember the goodwill that was directed at my city and its inhabitants, and by extension the United States. And so, here we are five years later, with no development at all on ground zero. The Iraq war only gets worse with each passing month, despite strenuous propaganda efforts to the contrary by the powerful and perpetually power-hungry Bush/Cheney administration and its neoconservative echo-machine lapdogs. Precious few of the 9/11 commission's recommendations having been implemented. Meanwhile, our civil liberties have been stripped so gradually and casually that one has to make a concerted effort to realize just how far we've fallen from the freedoms whose protection our elected leaders purport to be of such paramount importance to them. I haven't even scratched the surface.
Tomorrow is the primary election in New York State, and in less than two months we'll have a general election that will likely result in a Congress of rather different balance and constitution. Or one can only hope. Our republic has developed far too monolithic a government to be good for our democracy. With more than two years left of this presidency, we're in dire need of a legitimate opposition in the legislative branch. I fear that the Democrats have strayed so far from their core principles, and are so wishy-washy in their attempts to reclaim them, that they may not find their way back in time. And yet the GOP, far from having strayed, has been stretched so far from its basis as to be unrecognizable and perhaps even unsalvagable for what it once was and stood for. So I hold out some hope, however marginal, that the Democratic Party may just recover its soul, and help edge us back toward an America to be revered.
Let's take a brief look at what kind of war the Bush gang have unleashed upon us. This reminds me of a couple of strips from This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow: why we're going to war and a patriot's guide to debating the war on terror. But I'd like to draw your attention, if you have the time, to a speech that MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann closed his program with tonight, moments before Bush took the airwaves for his presidential address. I'd be interested in your comments.
The pain of 9/11/2001 hits me at odd times, in a way that is utterly oblivious of political agendas, media cycles, and time periods that have been predetermined to have some numerological significance. I probably felt it most strongly, since the event itself, in Summer 2004. At that time, I found myself working downtown in an area that was familiar to me during my college years, when the Twin Towers served to anchor my sense of direction. Now that I was back, I felt this dark shroud of sorrow hanging over me in the empty sky, the overbearing sun of the New York City summer serving as a searing reminder of how unexpected, raw, and awful that morning was. Springsteen and Mahler streamed into my ears, and my mind was occupied by thoughts of how lucky I was. The people I love were spared physical trauma, but none of us could help but be affected in other ways.
We endure varying degrees of psychological trauma to this day, and overcome it to the extent that we can in our day-to-day lives, but we will always carry it with us as long as we live. It's important to point out that we New Yorkers, and the honorary New Yorkers who lived through this wretched catastrophe with us, have a strong sense of perspective on the threats that we clearly face from terrorism. Our heads are screwed on straight and we approach the situation with a calm, clear mind, for the most part. Our police department is doing remarkable things, not least of all with intelligence gathering, picking up where the federal government is too incompetent to contribute to its obligation. And yet in my travels through these United States, from cities to midwestern farm towns, I've noticed that the more remote the threat, the more palpable the fear of terrorism. And why is this? Because we have leaders who stand to gain too much from stoking this fear than to actually lead us from the fear and toward the positive spirit of America that has served as a beacon of hope to waves of immigrants for as long as our country has existed. However, as we are not going to get this from the current administration, we best summon that hope within each of us, and do our best to spread it, one person at a time, until there's enough momentum to swing the pendulum back toward the light.
