Tuesday, September 11, 2001

Posted by: stark | Posted at: 11:31:21 PM

Jesus Christ. Does it get any worse?

It’s a little overwhelming to think about today. I woke up to find out that not only were we the victims of a terrorist attack, but that the World Trade Center towers were just...gone.

Not in the skyline.

Gone.

And with it thousands of lives. Millions of dollars, maybe billions.

I don’t know anyone personally who was killed. Well, not that I know of. All my friends and family have checked in with someone at this point. But the utter devastation doesn’t feel any less impacting to me. The physical representation of the missing piece of the skyline keeps driving it home...NYC will never, ever be the same. My wife said something powerful to me this afternoon...she said it was “a scar on the face of America.” She’s right…

But scars heal. And when they do, sometimes the person, or country, that was wounded is all the stronger for the scar. I shudder to think what is going to happen in the coming weeks and months given the seemingly forgone conclusion that this was Osama Bin-laden, or at least some Middle Eastern terrorist group. This isn’t going to break the US, this is going to galvanize us. This has united political enemies, quelled political debate, brought left and right, conservative and liberal, Democrat and Republican, men, women, black, white...virtually everyone together, and we have a common feeling:

Bloodlust.

To be blunt, you done fucked with the wrong bull, Jack. Whomever is ultimately responsible for this tragedy will pay dearly, and in the meantime many untold thousands of innocent people along the way will pay. The US military, the US government, the US people will be out for blood, and who can blame them? I’m sitting here trying to be the good person, trying to not feel hatred for anything remotely Arabic in nature, I know how horrible that is, and yet the bloodlust in me says fuck it, just wipe Afghanistan off the goodamned map is they’re protecting Bin-laden. Of course the truth is there are millions of Afghan citizens who want nothing to do with terrorism and they are not responsible. They should not be punished. In the light of day, I know cooler heads than mine will prevail, and I’m glad for that. This is a major fault in my psyche, and I have to live with it, but tonight, right now, after spending all day tracking down friends and family, watching the breaking news...seeing the sun set behind Peter Jennings on ABC and realizing that there was something missing from the skyline...well fuck ‘em. Let ‘em all burn in hell. If there is any justice in this world, the terrorist leaders of the groups not responsible will point their fingers at the ones who are.

I hope no one takes this situation and turns it into some stupid political game. The first politician I hear try to turn this into some dumbass argument about why we need more funding for research into reducing video game violence, or protecting the unborn, or gun bans or any other dumb fucking political football is going to get kicked square in the fucking face. Our only concern now should be to get blood to the hospitals, dig out the rubble and re-build those towers, so they can stand as a giant pair of middle fingers to future terrorists: G’head, knock us down. We get back up, bitch. We can take it.

Give blood. Call your local centers first, make sure they can handle the traffic. If you’re around the NYC area, make sure you know what they need and where to go. If you don’t know the number to call, call any hospital or police station or fire department, radio or TV station or newspaper. Any one of them will steer you in the right direction.

And while I’m thinking about it, stop and give thanks to the Internet today...it kept a LOT of us in touch when land phone lines and cellular lines were just saturated and you couldn’t get a call out.

I found this photo on the ‘net today. It almost made me cry. (big file, 106KB)