[ 09-11-03 ] [ 8:25 a.m.]
[ September 11th... ]
Looking at the date on my calendar this morning, I realized what today is, and I know that people everywhere are going to write long remembrances and tell the stories of where they were and what they were doing and how their lives have forever changed. Knowing that, it's sort of sad to think that after all that's happened, people still spend their time using the word "I".
I know I'm no different. Just look through the entries in this diary and you'll be able to see that I am just as self-centered as every other self-righteous person with a halfway functional brain. I suppose that's the point of having a brain, to use it to think about yourself and your life. To one person, their life is like their own movie - they are the star, and everyone else can go out for the Oscar for best supporting actor. It's all just a part of the human mentality, and while it is pretty selfish when you stop to think about it, just telling people that they're selfish for thinking about their own well-being isn't going to change anything. I know from personal experience that the way people are is the way they will likely stay. Right-wing liberals aren't going to start liking gay marriage any more than vampires like the sun if you tell them that their personal opinions and beliefs are wrong. Likely, all they'll do, if you make a big enough stink, is go on national television and call you a fundamentalist.
That's beside the point though. What I'm trying to get at is the fact that people remain stubborn to change when confronted by people and beliefs different than theirs. People are always whining about how we can never get anything down to a set generalization - and that's because people are too different, and too stubborn to want to see anyone else's point of view. It's always "this is my opinion, so therefore I'm right." Very rarely do we ever see people willing to make compromises, and when they do come along, usually they're viewed as piteous or get swept up in the fiery debate raining down on them from all sides. Those who know how to make compromise are a rarity, and because of the way they are treated by society, they're becoming an endangered species.
Meanwhile, everyone else keeps trying to scream over the people who are advocating something they don't agree with. Most people can't stand the fact that something they find unacceptable may be the complete and total lifestyle of someone else. Because of that discontinuity in what those people view as their perfect, flawless lifestyles, the world, and in particular the United States, becomes more of a mess of confusion and screaming than a full week on Wall Street. Sadly enough, our politicians get more wrapped up in this than anybody. Instead of trying to make peace in our country, they spend just as much time pointing fingers at each other and trying to convince each other who's right to the point that you can't even tell what they're saying anymore. The only thing the average American has to go by is the fact that there's a big brick wall splitting our country in half, and that brick wall isn't even thick enough to sit on. It's one side or the other, bucko, or get out of the way. Politicians spend so much time screaming at the American public, trying to tell you who's right and who's wrong and who's to blame; and once they've gathered a respectable army size they go to war with each other using words that pierce deeper than any gun, that slice sharper than any knife. And at the end of the day, when they're all done screaming at each other for a while, the politicians go home, count their cash, and think that being a professional debater without anything to say except accusatory diatribes at the opposing point of view is a pretty damn good way to make a living.
And somewhere in all that mess, the politicians and their respective followers lose sight of the fact that even though they can't happen to agree on how to deal with the crashing economy or something along those lines, there is one blazing neon factor that binds all of them, and all of us to them: we are all Americans.
We all live in the United States of America, in one of its fifty states. And maybe it's because we have states that we have so many so-called important people running around hurling pitchforks at each other. People in California want their rights represented. People in Kansas want their rights represented. People in Maine want their rights represented. People in Alaska want their rights represented. So we send representatives and senators, and we give them nice sharp knifes, pitchforks, and anything else that could make a gory, bloody wound, and we send them to D.C. for the American War, part 5,466,252,999. We've all forgotten that even though we may live in places that have different names that we live in the same place - the US. Moreover, Americans in general are quite headstrong (and while that causes the nation headaches on average, it's helpful when it comes to things like war and patriotism.) Just look at our armed forces, for example. We have a stronger army, navy, Air Force, etc. than any other nation in the world. Not because we need a draft to get it that way anymore, either. Thousands of Americans volunteer for their armed forces every day, not losing sight of the fact that they are Americans and they will stand up and defend their country until the bitter end. They are an example of what every American should be, but the rest of us just ignore them while we're busy pointing fingers and yelling. We ignore them 'til we need them, is practically what the rest of the United States is saying about their armed forces. And we go back to being not just Americans, but Democratic Americans and Republican Americans and Green Party Americans and so many different points of view that it could make you sick.
And then, something like September 11th happens. In the midst of just another day at the office shouting at someone who doesn't see something your way, you notice out your office window that one of your country's strongest monuments of strength and stability and pride is on fire. Well, fires happen every day, so why do you care? And then you hear someone poke their head into your office and tell you what you first assume is only a joke: "The World Trade Center towers just got hit by an airplane." This can't be, can it? No one could hit the Trade Center towers; no one would dare. And you watch out your office window for another half an hour, trying to convince yourself it's not true so you can go back to screaming at somebody again, and then you see something horrible: another plane hits the other tower. You stare, transfixed, as a half an hour later, the towers collapse, and with them, thousands of Americans, some who saw it your way, some who didn't. And you go home at night to your family and they're watching CNN and crying, and trying to believe it didn't happen. And the president tells you what happened, and you find yourself believing him, even if you didn't before. And you go to work the next day with a red white and blue ribbon pinned onto your lapel and you see American flags draped all over everything. And at work you pray with the very man you were screaming at when you heard the news.
Isn't it sad that it takes a devestation like September 11th to get people to stop screaming at each other? Moreover, isn't it more sad that people remember what happened for a couple of months and then it's back to business, more screaming and yelling as though nothing had happened. And a year later, after all the wreckage is gone and the heroes have had their stories told, you pause for a few minutes and look out that same office window and you don't even remember how it felt to be unified with the people that you spend all your time hating now.
And two years later, you look out that office window, and you feel nothing but a hollow emptiness. You turn back to your phone and start to yell at a guy who doesn't even remember it's September 11th.
So you can forget all you want. You can memorialize it all you want. But nothing will change the fact that nothing will change. We will always be the same, always assuming that we are the ones who are right and everyone else is wrong. And there will always be a brief unifying moment when you think that the yelling and screaming might be over until somebody thinks it's okay to start yelling again and we're back to the way it was before.
Sad. So sad.
I sincerely hope that we must never see another day like September 11, 2001. Beyond the reasons that this country lost thousands of strong, good-hearted Americans, because I never want to hear about that again. But also, I don't ever want to see this country be unified out of a tragedy and then forget so quickly that we are all the same.
We are all the same.
It took September 11 to make us realize that. And it didn't take long after September 11 to make us forget.
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