Pearl Harbor occured before my father was born. My generation has never seen:00 AMerica subjected to an attack of this magnitude, certainly not on:00 AMerican soil from outside agencies. My parent’s generation has not. Oklahoma City was:00 AMericans — it was something to be quieted down and dealt with internally.
The U.S. is on the international news today, not because our President is putting his foot in his mouth or because we walked out of talks on the environment, but because we got hit by the stuff that happens all the time in other parts of the world.
Other parts. Not here, not ever (at least not like this). Until now. We’re not special anymore. Like our athlete’s salaries, our caloric intake, or our skyscrapers, the U.S. entered the international spotlight of victimization from successful terrorist attacks on our home soil (home soul) with something Big. So big I can’t get my mind around it.
I don’t know what stage of grieving I’m in. It’s not denial, but I don’t think I’m at anger yet, except that I don’t feel as disgusted as I normally would when someone suggests sending 100,000 troops in to simply exterminate a few ‘suspected terrorist nests’. Instead, I shrug. When I see Palestinians throwing candy in the air, I frown. I think dark thoughts and I will not put them here. Many, many people will be saying the things I’m thinking right now, because people will not know what to do about this. Maybe I’m in Denial about my Anger.
These things have happened to the world before, but not here. Veterans of these sorts of attacks will be looking at us in bemusement: we will be indignant, we will be shocked, outraged, maybe even insulted, because we don’t know what else to do. We will cheer and laugh when the news starts to show a large, unexplained fire in Kabul, Afghanistan (this just happened, and this is just what people in my building did). We are newcomers to this play, infants who just got our toys taken away, who just found out we can be spanked and punished, like everyone else.
I imagine we won’t be entirely proud of ourselves after all this is said and done, and maybe that result was partly the point of the whole thing.
No one has claimed responsibility for these events, which makes me wonder if it’s because they are scared, cautious, or because the whole thing was engineered by 12 people, split between 4 planes, who believed they could pull it off, turned out to be right, and are now dead.
I don’t know which possibility is more disturbing.
His enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.
I wish the world could understand this. I hope that I can, eventually. Right now, I don’t understand anything.
.::.
I’m going home now. I want to sit with my family, talk to my kid, and pet my dog. Jake knows I’m upset: I think he thinks I’m mad at him.
He knows something’s wrong.
