I still think a lot about 9/11, the day that changed the world. Some would say evil showed its ugly face ion that day in the form of four hijacked 757s;. less patriotic types might say America had it coming, especially on her own soil. Others don’t care–it didn’t happen to them and still others mourn the loss of humanity.
Fifteen years has flown by. Sin cethat time, so many people have been born, so many have died. What happened on 9/11 to some kids born since then might have the same affect on them as the anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination has on my generation. It happened at Ford’s Theater, I know…in April, I think.
I was four when John Kennedy was killed. I didn’t exactly understand the politics involved or the motives, but I knew some bad man or men didn’t like him enough to kill him and didn’t care how Caroline or John John felt about it. That’s how I saw it, I relate too my fellow children. That’s how my four year old mind grasped that November day.
Fifty-three years later and I’m not sure I understand anything better than I did back in 1963 or in 9/11s case, 2001. It was hate that bought the planes down, three took buildings with it. It was hate that killed JFK and hate that killed that black kid or that white kid or that murdered Asian doctor, the Palestinian college student or the Jewish merchant who’d been stabbed in the streets of Jerusalem.. Hell, if you want to be specifis, hate even killed Osama bin Laden.
Or does it make a difference because ‘we’ hated bin Laden; united by a very strong emotion?
Well, September 11th, the marine barracks bombing in Lebanon, the USS Cole all happened because somebody hated Western ideals. Were we attacked by the same united hatred , but in this case, it was hatred for us For America.
I could recall terroristic tragedies that happened even longer ago, but admittedly, things get a little hazy after anything relative to Archduke Ferdinand’s murder.
I had a thought recently….the kind that would enter our gray matter after smoking some great weed. What if God as we know it was really this massive alien or aliens and we were all put here for their amusement like Ceasar, the lions, and the Christians in the colosseum????. Violence being more sport than horror.
Sun Tzu (I think) believed that everything comes down to war. It’s the basic organizing factor of every society. Well yeah, how can you know peace without knowing war? Just think about it, somewhere at any given time on this planet, there are warring factors. From an organized militia, to ragtag guerrillas fighting in rain forests to football rivals facing each other every weekend in the fall. Defense. Offense. Its the strategy of everything.
Is life just one big power play?
It feels like it is sometimes. Who has the gold? Who’s the king of the mountain?. You hear stories about Wall Street tycoons or the star makers in Hollywood who get the biggest thrills of their lives simply by fucking someone over a deal.
And don’t get me started on free will. I think about the passengers on board the hijacked planes or the people who went to work at the Pentagon or either WTC tower that Tuesday morning. They didn’t believe they’d wake up that morning to die. But 19 radical America hating Muslim zealots had different plans for them. And then on United Flight 93, The Free Will of Man that existed on that plane became a tug of war. Everyone on board knew they were going to die and like the jumpers on the burning floors of the towers, they received the ultimate Sophie’s Choice—-they got to chose how they’d die. Again, I shake my head.
I don’t know. I’m told that to try to understand God is feeble. We’re not meant to understand God. Well frankly, that sounds just a little too convenient for me. Tolerance is more relevant than love and I can’t and won’t judge who or what you believe. And I hope you respect my beliefs and doubts. I know this; a power far bigger than me exists, I’ve felt it; I’ve seen it in action minus the angelic choir in the background and while I’d admit an existence, exactly how and why this entity operates as it does confuses the hell out of me.
