9/11 - 5 years later
I wasn't in New York on 9/11. I know maybe 3 or 4 people that live there. But I remember that morning in 2001 with awful clarity - Jen and I were at home, and morgan called, letting us know that a plane had crashed into the WTC. We tuned in to CNN...just in time to see the second airliner slam into the second tower. There wasn't any mistaking it, no going back to what we originally thought - that what'd happened was an accident. To quote the Onion back then - "America Under Attack - Holy Fucking Shit."
Like Gareth, albeit at a remove, I remember looking up at the skies and being afraid. Flinching months later when I saw an airliner flying overhead. At the time, there wasn't anything but fear. The world walked up and kicked us all in the teeth for our complacency, and that stupid assurance cost us lives.
And dammit, we didn't learn. A bunch of criminals literally stole the election out from under us, and proceeded to turn what was a horrible tragedy into shameless political gerrymandering, repression and a lovely move towards putting the jackboot on not just America's neck, but those overseas. 9/11 was used to justify a war that's cost tens of thousands of lives. To support states in the Middle East that are no better than the scum that attacked us in the first place. More and more and more. Torture, graft, corruption - you name it.
Ken Olbermann isn't a guy I agree with all the time - he's a little too left-leaning on occasion, but his commentary on the Monkey in Chief's 9/11 speech yesterday was absolutely brilliant. Olbermann knew people in the WTC. On the planes. He's speaking from a position of authority on this, and the charges he levels need to be on ever goddamned major network in the nation. But most telling is who he quotes: Rod Serling.
On a slight, but related, tangent - Serling was the man that created the classic sci-fi/horror/fantasy TV series the Twilight Zone. You've seen him. "Submitted for your consideration." Him. Important to note:
"Rod Serling served as a U.S. Army paratrooper and demolition specialist with the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment, U.S. 11th Airborne Division in the Pacific Theater in World War II from January 1943 to January 1945. He was seriously wounded in the wrist and knee during combat and was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star.
Due to his wartime experiences, Serling suffered from nightmares and flashbacks for the rest of his life. Though he was rather short (5'4") and slight, Serling was also a noted boxer during his military days."
Serling was a patriot. Also a hell of a writer and someone who felt and deeply understood the human condition. Someone who ultimately believes that we could all be better, but that we needed to remain vigilant, lest own own terrible natures turn on us all. Nowhere else was this more evident than in the Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street." Olbermann quotes the closing of that episode. He missed that the new Zone (with Forrest Whitaker) did a remake of TMADOMS during its brief run, and instead of aliens, portrayed a government experiment, a cruel test of 'preparedness' that turned an entire neighborhood against itself and against a Muslim family living in it. The story changes only a little, but Serling's words remain unchanged:
"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts... attitudes... prejudices. To be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and the thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to The Twilight Zone."
I've been thinking more and more lately, as the cheap facade erected by liars, frauds, cheats and criminals in both political parties, in the ranks of government and industry and among the 'common man' starts to crumble, that we cannot allow the world to be this way. We simply...can't. We have a responsibility as people, as human beings, to leave the world better than when we found it. To never cease struggling against the lethal undertow that the wrong in the world generates. Here in America, we're drowning in fear. And like Serling's ideological fallout, the consequences are not solely on ourselves, but on those who will come after. I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but for the few of y'all that read this particular blog, consider it a reflection on things as they are, and a request to change things that might be.
Because, unlike the residents of Maple Street, this message does not come to you from the Twilight Zone.
Like Gareth, albeit at a remove, I remember looking up at the skies and being afraid. Flinching months later when I saw an airliner flying overhead. At the time, there wasn't anything but fear. The world walked up and kicked us all in the teeth for our complacency, and that stupid assurance cost us lives.
And dammit, we didn't learn. A bunch of criminals literally stole the election out from under us, and proceeded to turn what was a horrible tragedy into shameless political gerrymandering, repression and a lovely move towards putting the jackboot on not just America's neck, but those overseas. 9/11 was used to justify a war that's cost tens of thousands of lives. To support states in the Middle East that are no better than the scum that attacked us in the first place. More and more and more. Torture, graft, corruption - you name it.
Ken Olbermann isn't a guy I agree with all the time - he's a little too left-leaning on occasion, but his commentary on the Monkey in Chief's 9/11 speech yesterday was absolutely brilliant. Olbermann knew people in the WTC. On the planes. He's speaking from a position of authority on this, and the charges he levels need to be on ever goddamned major network in the nation. But most telling is who he quotes: Rod Serling.
On a slight, but related, tangent - Serling was the man that created the classic sci-fi/horror/fantasy TV series the Twilight Zone. You've seen him. "Submitted for your consideration." Him. Important to note:
"Rod Serling served as a U.S. Army paratrooper and demolition specialist with the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment, U.S. 11th Airborne Division in the Pacific Theater in World War II from January 1943 to January 1945. He was seriously wounded in the wrist and knee during combat and was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star.
Due to his wartime experiences, Serling suffered from nightmares and flashbacks for the rest of his life. Though he was rather short (5'4") and slight, Serling was also a noted boxer during his military days."
Serling was a patriot. Also a hell of a writer and someone who felt and deeply understood the human condition. Someone who ultimately believes that we could all be better, but that we needed to remain vigilant, lest own own terrible natures turn on us all. Nowhere else was this more evident than in the Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street." Olbermann quotes the closing of that episode. He missed that the new Zone (with Forrest Whitaker) did a remake of TMADOMS during its brief run, and instead of aliens, portrayed a government experiment, a cruel test of 'preparedness' that turned an entire neighborhood against itself and against a Muslim family living in it. The story changes only a little, but Serling's words remain unchanged:
"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts... attitudes... prejudices. To be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and the thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to The Twilight Zone."
I've been thinking more and more lately, as the cheap facade erected by liars, frauds, cheats and criminals in both political parties, in the ranks of government and industry and among the 'common man' starts to crumble, that we cannot allow the world to be this way. We simply...can't. We have a responsibility as people, as human beings, to leave the world better than when we found it. To never cease struggling against the lethal undertow that the wrong in the world generates. Here in America, we're drowning in fear. And like Serling's ideological fallout, the consequences are not solely on ourselves, but on those who will come after. I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but for the few of y'all that read this particular blog, consider it a reflection on things as they are, and a request to change things that might be.
Because, unlike the residents of Maple Street, this message does not come to you from the Twilight Zone.