Rememberance

I told myself that I wouldn't write a 9/11 post.  There are certainly those more lucid eloquent.  And reminding those reading this of what was quite possibly the worst day of their lives, also gave me pause.

What changed my mind was talking to some of the kids I work with.  They're all college-aged, and most hadn't even completed their first decade of existence in 2001.  They don't really see what the big deal is.  To them, those deaths are as remote as any other they hear about in the news.  I can't really blame them for that.  It's impossible to feel a sense of loss for something one has never experienced.  They have no idea what life was like before 9/11, anymore than I have any idea what it was like before Pearl Harbor, or Hiroshima.

Like most, I remember that day vividly.  Though, to some, it seems like yesterday.  To me, it seems like a million years ago - Another lifetime.  In truth, I suppose it was.

I was living in a small town in northern Arizona.  As it happened, I had stayed home sick from work that day. I was about to become much more ill.  I'd gone back to bed after calling in sick to work, and was in that place between wakefulness and sleep, when you're not sure whether you're either.  My wife decided to stay up and make coffee.

I thought I heard my wife's voice repeating, "Oh, God no."  Something in her voice - fear, shock, grief, and something that to this day I can't put a name to - brought me fully awake.  I walked into the living room, and saw my wife standing there, frozen, in front of the TV.   I noticed the TV just in time to see video of the plane hitting the first tower.  That video, among others, seemed to play on an endless loop during the course of the day.

It took a few seconds.  There was a disconnect between what I was seeing, and my mind's desperate attempt to find some other - any other - explanation for it.

We sat on the couch, barely speaking.  Barely breathing.  We watched as the second plane hit,  then the Pentagon, then flight 93.  We watched as people waved from smoking windows.  Then as some of them fell, choosing their fate, rather than having it chosen for them.  Then, as the towers themselves fell.  It seemed like things were snowballing out of control.  I wasn't worried for our own safety.  After all, what self-respecting terrorist would attack Chino Valley, AZ?

I remember the sound of my wife crying.  A combination of empathy, a pretty good imagination, and the flu, caused me to retreat into the bathroom a couple of times to throw up.  But I wasn't angry.  Not yet.

It was about mid-afternoon, and the news was showing people on the streets - relatives and friends of those missing, pictures of their loved ones in hand, desperately searching.  The looks on their faces was heart-wrenching, and haunt me to this day.  I was angry, and I wanted justice for them.

No, that's wrong.  I wanted vengeance.  I wanted them all dead.  I wanted to see their collective heads on a pike.  My rage was such that it wouldn't let me even ask who "they" were.

I had heard Osama Bin Laden's name before.  I'd even felt sympathy for the way we left him hanging during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.  Our foreign policy is consistent, if nothing else.  What sympathy I had, evaporated with the attack on the USS Cole.

I understand their anger, even their hatred of us.  The rage I felt for a relatively short time has been theirs for a lifetime.  And it would have been so easy to hate them, coming from a culture foreign, alien, and of which I had little knowledge. 

For most of the people on this planet, life is hard, brutal, and short.  As Americans, we've been spared many of the horrors that others face daily.  Though, I fear those times are coming to an end. There are those in this country who believe that we have some sort of divine right to a risk-free existence, as if there were truly such a thing, or should be.  The  irony is, that these same people are the ones putting what safety and security we do have, at risk.  They do this by their revisionist history (or as I like to put it, lying), and vilification of the ideals that made this country great.  They would have it replaced with a sort of corporate theocracy - their twisted vision of utopia.

As I lie awake in bed that night, I worried about how we would respond as a nation, and how it would change us.  Some things ended up being worse than the scenarios that were going through my head.

Three months after 9/11, my mother died.  Two weeks after that, my father was diagnosed with lung cancer.  We lost him 6 months later.  The next few years are covered in my last post.  Suffice to say that, for me, 9/11 didn't end until around 2007.

I know that evil exists.  I've seen it.  But I still believe that, as hard as life is, most people are decent, and good, and just trying to do the best they can.  And that's what I hold onto. 

American Media

Ok, so I'm a boomer (although just barely, thank you).  I remember Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, John Chancellor, and others growing up.  They just reported the news.  They did it without spin, innuendo, and to the best of their ability, truthfully.

I'm not usually prone to nostalgia, but like so many other things, the decline of American journalism was too subtle for me to notice.  I was too busy with the day to day business of living to take notice.    I bear some of the blame for neglecting my duty as a citizen, and assuming that simply voting was enough.  It's my country - my government, and I should have more informed and involved.  I don't know if I could have made a difference, but at least I'd have the comfort of knowing I tried. 

So here we are.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last Wednesday.  While doing so, she made some long overdue comparisons of the American media to Al-Jazeera.  She said,

“In fact viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it’s real news,” Clinton said. “You may not agree with it, but you feel like you’re getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners.”

Perhaps she was following the lead of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Juliette Kayyem, who urged cable providers to carry al Jazeera in her recent oped, “Let us see Al-Jazeera”.

I figured it out about a year ago.  I'd had it with the right-wing lies of Fox, the left-wing cheerleading of MSNBC, and the fluff of CNN.  The only real news I was getting was from the Daily Show.  As much as I like Jon Stewart, it wasn't enough.

My first stop was NPR, but their perspective was inherently American.  The BBC was the next step.  It's been the standard for exceptional journalism for years, though I often had to wade through a lot that I found less than relevant.  Then I found Al-Jazeera.  It was an eye-opener.  I was outraged at some things.  They would have people on that were blatantly anti-American.  In some instances I could understand why they felt the way they did. Our foreign policy over the last half-century has been less than honorable.  In other instances, their guests were simply the mirror image of the extreme religious right in this country.  Opposing views, but the same hate.

Then I took notice, not so much of the content, but how it was presented.  Whether pro, anti, or neutral, the reporting was just that, backed up by empirical data and sources.

It was then I realized how far we'd fallen.   The American media isn't in the business of providing factual information to people.  It's in business to sell the attention spans of those watching to other corporations.  I'd like to think it's more complex than that, but it really is that simple.

No ethics, no integrity.  Just money.

Somewhere along the way, big business decided that every human thought, every human endeavor, was theirs to profit from.  No regard for privacy, or ethics.  No thought as to what is morally or socially acceptable.  It's whatever one can get away with.  If it happens to be against the law, well, that's what lobbyists and campaign contributions are for.  Perhaps it's always been that way.  It's just more pronounced now.

This is America with Republicorp running things.

No more middle class.  Just the stockholders, and those that serve them.

Time and Distance

So, we have a little over a week's worth of distance from this tragedy. One goes through certain stages in a situation like this. Shock, disbelief and grief initially. Then anger and outrage, aggravated as I witnessed the transparent attempt by those on the right to deflect blame from themselves, and assign it to others. It only got worse as the days wore on.

There was Sarah Palin's video (which I could only watch in 30 second intervals, punctuated by a lot of drinking.), in which she portrayed herself as the true victim in all of this. It was such an embarrassing, self-serving display of insensitivity, that any presidential aspirations she may have had probably ended right there. Then again, Arizona recently elected a governor who can barely form complete sentences, and those she can form are often lies. I never underestimate stupidity. Palin's latest quote is, "I will not shut up!" There's a surprise.

Then there was Trent Humphries, co-founder of the Tucson Tea Party, who had the distinction of being the first person of the extreme right to actually blame the victims for the crime against them (I would have bet money on Fox). Immediately after which, he began to express fear for the safety of himself, the Tea Party, and his family (in that order, I assume). Before this, many, including myself, hadn't even heard of him. I believe his initial inflammatory statements were designed, at least in part, to rectify that situation. The most recent incident happened at a town hall meeting, at which Eric Fuller, one of the victims of the shooting, was arrested after taking a picture of Humpries, and muttering "Your dead." It's my belief that Mr. Fuller should have stayed home. The trauma of being shot, and watching those around him brutally murdered was only a few days old, and I think he was still in shock. I also believe that Mr. Humpries knew this, and deliberately provoked a man he knew to be in a fragile state of mind. When Humphries was asked if he wanted to press charges, he declined (smartest move yet).

"I am more worried about our community," he said. "This doesn't need to be about Trent Humphries. This doesn't need to be about politics."

Right. What is it with sociopaths always referring to themselves in the third person?

I could call Humphries a subhuman slug, but it would be doing a disservice to slugs everywhere.

There are others. Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, all whose comments I found to be offensive and tiresome.

It's my belief that everyone of conscience, no matter their ideology, asked themselves the same thing at some point after the shooting:

"Did I do anything to contribute to this?"

In the end, the answer isn't nearly as important as having the decency to ask the question in the first place. And in what may be the few positive things to come out of this, it became painfully easy to spot those who didn't look inward. Whose first thought was to protect themselves and their ideologies. They fear to look into their own hearts, because of what looks back at them from the darkness. It is, more than anything over the last two years, the greatest measure of their lack of integrity and character. And that's a good thing.

Because now we know who they truly are.

Haiti

I have been absent as of late.  No excuse except my own inherent laziness.  I hope this finds everyone who reads it well.  Sadly, 2010 has already witnessed its first disaster.

By now, everyone has heard about the earthquake in Haiti.  I'm sure everyone has also heard the responses from folks like Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh.
Their lack of compassion and common decency should be self evident to everyone.

I won't respond to it, mostly because Jon Stewart has already done so with his usual good humor and common sense.

Luckily, most Americans are decent and compassionate, as evidenced in the great outpouring of support and help from those who have little to begin with.  Those that don't feel this way all seem to be posting on Craigslist's R&R
section.  Let them.

This morning I watched an interview with former Presidents' Bush and Clinton on Face the Nation.  They have been appointed by President Obama to coordinate and expedite relief efforts.  Both men are a great example of putting aside political differences for the greater good, and America is fortunate that they, and those like them, are willing to serve when called.

And so, I urge everyone reading this to check the sidebar and give what you can to the Red Cross.  We live paycheck to paycheck, and have done so.  If we spend a couple of weeks eating more beenie weenies and top ramen than normal, we still have many, many blessings to count.

On aging...

A few days ago, I posted a little rant on the perils of aging. Something that is now referred to at work as the Gepetto Incident

My people have a President

I caught this on CSPAN yesterday. John Hodgman (PC guy) at the Radio & TV Correspondent's Assn. Dinner. I noticed the conspicuous absence of MAC guy. Off someplace being cool, I suspect. Linux girl really should have been there, though.