tp216.xml

tp216.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2003-03-10

Swallowing, looking up, I nearly drove off of the road. I was nowhere near Manhattan on that day, although that was where I was supposed to be. I happened to be in Boston going to work and I was numb. The dust was settling and I felt my Freedoms slowly burn as I put down the newspaper and collected stories from online. Fear and doubt were raging and everyone who looked Muslim (whatever that means) were proudly trouncing my Liberties. Pure human waste was flying grey ash in New York and you are telling me that I still can't use your stinking bathroom unless I buy something.

Americans, regardless of intent were being scared into submission, angry at their uselessness, sullen, and searching for the illusion of a distinctly American peace. Airplanes were making nice hotels for weary travelers and happy incompetents went skipping off to their jobs as airport screeners hoping that they would get to strip search grandmothers in wheelchairs today. Everything was aligned, perfectly. Every true American was standing 'under God,' being promised resolve from our gOVERNMENT who promptly hedged their bets after a retrospective, a carpet bombing of Afghanistan, and silences a week and now quite a few months later have refused to net us one apparently Waldoian Bin Laden.

I applauded heroes and I cried for the dead, and even today candles are burning in my house. They are not burning for the families, not for the fallen, and not for the imprisoned. Those candles are burning as a reminder to the American citizens who still do not understand that Liberty and Security are Vinegar and Oil and that our greatest threats to democracy were our January 1995 "Bojinka" negligence; our September 10th, 2001 ignorance; and our August 6th and August 9th ambivalence.