Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 21:21:19 -0400

At work I had the misfortune to sit right by the only TV in the building and I had to watch all of it happen. We got the TV on as soon as people heard on the radio (mostly from Howard Stern) that the second plane had hit. I would have preferred not to have ever seen it, only to have read about it. I don't want to watch people die. I was badly shaken and was thinking about the fear and pain and death the people on the planes and in the buildings must have felt, about severed limbs and blood and piss and gore. They kept showing it over and over and I wondered about the victims' families, watching endless replays of their loved ones' deaths. It can't be healthy to see this so many times. When I came home and told David he turned the TV on and the explosions and crashes and screaming played over and over all night, and were still going when I turned the TV off.

Now I keep hearing how innocent and helpless the U.S. was, how we did nothing to provoke anyone, how we were as sweet and innocent as little kittens.

And how much money do you put in your 401(k) and what companies is that money invested in? What international treaties and internal policies do those companies quietly push through our government, backed by our military, regardless of ethical or humanitarian considerations or even of basic human decency? What messes have been made out of your sight, where you don't smell the effects or die young from them? How much did you or the investment company complain when the profits weren't high enough to suit you? How much and how long do you complain when gas prices go up? Who have you voted for during the past 50 years? Did you look at what they really said and would do or did you just listen to the soundbites and think about your own pocket?

How many innocent civilians has our own government killed in the past thirty years, in Vietnam and Cambodia and Iraq (we don't even let then have chlorine to purify the water now) and Libya and even Yugoslavia? How many death squads and terrorists did we train to kidnap and torture and kill and bomb people in Nicaragua and Colombia and fucking Afghanistan? How many guns and helicopters and airplanes did we sell to hideously repressive governments in Colombia, Afghanistan, Israel, Indonesia so that they could shoot their innocent troublemaking rabble-rousing activists who wanted outrageous things like representative government, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of religion?

Not that any of the people in the World Trade Center that morning, or on those planes (I'm really not so sure about the Pentagon), personally decided to go out and kick a crippled kid for Exxon on a regular basis or anything. But they enjoyed the fruits of their government having done so and paid their money to have it done and as disgusting as the attacks were, they aren't beyond belief. If I had been in a part of the world that spent a long time on the receiving end of our kind of aid, I might not think it was so horrible. I might wonder why we could dish it out but not take it. Turnabout is supposed to be fair play, but sometimes it really sucks.

Now I have to listen to people I otherwise like (and of course the ones I despised to begin with) chanting simple memorized slogans about how innocent we all are and how this is entirely the product of religious extremism rather than genuine political anger. The attitude around them now is a festival or carnival or a sporting event, they don't seem to think of severed limbs and blood and screams and piss on the TV again, or think that as usual it's right when *we* do it. And I've seen almost exactly the same level of activity and emotion from a lot of these people for basketball games as I see now for all this jingoism and death.

I'm stuck in basketball season in some weird North Korean version of the U.S.

When I go outside to drive to work, there are cars with little flags on them, the same kind that the same people put on their cars before any game, only American flags instead of Wildcats. At work they've decorated with red, white and blue streamers and balloons and the little lighted signs that have repetitive messages crawling across now say "God Bless America". People made a point to wear red, white and blue and there were flags on the desks. Logging into our network brought up a flag wallpaper.

And one of the bastards still stole one of the collection envelopes full of money for the Red Cross.

("Wear the team colors to the game tomorrow and put a little flag on the antenna of the car. We'll decorate the school and later we'll have a tailgate party outside the stadium, with beer and hot dogs, and a couple of us are going paint our faces and put on those funny wigs...")

When I drive to work the highway signs give the messages about construction but alternate those with "Remember 9-11-01". The radio stations are playing lots of "patriotic" music (and for once "The Star-Spangled Banner" actually seems like a good choice for an anthem). Lots of Jimi Hendrix, unless you listen to talk stations for the traffic report, and all of them switch to the news every few minutes no matter how little of any consequence has happened since they did that ten minutes ago. They did the same thing when the basketball team got a new coach.

("Attention, citizens! Our Beloved Leader has wisely determined..." "Go Big Blue! Go Big Blue!")

I wonder whether someone will get drunk and confused tonight and switch from "USA! USA" to "Go Big Blue! Go Big Blue!" I'm starting to think they don't know the difference.

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