25 years ago today…

 

“The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.” ― Marcus Aurelius

25 years is a lifetime.

25 years ago, I was 22.  I had just been released from my first psychotic break that summer and was supposed to start my first day at my new job at a restaurant appropriately called, “The American Café”.

When I walked in to start my first shift, my manager told me I could go home.  I asked him, “Why?”.  He pointed at a television broadcasting the footage of the twin towers aflame.

I called a friend, and we congregated at their house.  We watched the footage of the plane striking over and over, dumbfounded like a mass-hypnosis event.  It was a beautiful day outside that day, no clouds to be found in the sky.  Eerie and serene, no planes in the sky, and I live by both Dulles and National Airports.  It was quiet.

25 years is a lifetime.  Some people were robbed of that lifetime.  We try our best to honor them and their memories today.  I lived in New York.  I lived in Northern Virginia.  I’d been to the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.  This was personal to me, I knew the places that were attacked and the areas affected.  I knew people and family members of people who worked in both the Pentagon and the Twin Towers.

People remember where they were when the Twin Towers fell.  It was like the moment in the previous generation when Kennedy got shot.  In our current fractured, no longer mono-cultural world, will we have a moment like this for the next generation?  A tragedy where people remember exactly where they were when they heard the news?  Where parents, without the aid of cell phones, rush to pick up school children frantically?  Where people work hard to account for loved ones against the misinformation, fear, and chaos?

I tend not to get mixed up in the hyper-jingoistic patriotism that followed that day.

Everywhere I went I saw flags and decals of flags, signs that said, “These colors don’t run”, songs promising violence “Courtesy of the U.S.A.” playing loudly.  For a country some consider to be largely a so-called “Christian nation”, I knew that day that there would be no turning of the other cheek.

There is a contingent of this country, a large contingent that is bloodthirsty.  They aren’t thinking about navigating our better angels, or exhibiting forgiveness.  They are hurt.  They want to hurt someone else.  It’s that simple.

I heard the phrase, “Our way of life” used to justify thousands of campaigns and bombs, endless wars and this was back when you needed some sort of approval from Congress to start a “war”.

What did we accomplish in twenty-five years since?

Blood.

PTSD.

Flags covering coffins returning home.

Death of innocent peoples abroad.

Continuation of generational trauma.

Lies. (Mission Accomplished)

Loss of dignity, humanity and rights.

The loss of lives at the Twin Towers was a power grab that led to further eroding of our civil liberties and whatever moral high ground we may pretended to have as a nation before 9/11.  We are now a living in a surveillance state, trading our freedom for security.

Bad faith actors used it to grow their careers while simultaneously lying about the conditions on the site of where the tragedy occurred, and people died of result of breathing in toxic air.  Heroes and first responders died.  Multinational companies that profit off wars reaped billions.  Americans who “looked like” the terrorists were harassed and bullied for being Muslim, for wearing headwraps, for being foreign, for being brown.  Some people can’t tell the difference between a Muslim and a Sikh, but it didn’t matter to them.  They were hurt, and they wanted to hurt someone else.

We eventually got the person who masterminded it.  All of the misdirection and misallocation of resources spent trying to exact vengeance and justice and it only took us ten years to capture and kill the ringleader.  Turns out, there were no weapons of mass destruction.

Was it worth it?

Are we better off?

Is vengeance the same as justice?

Questions I live with as this day passes.

They say in a few years, fifty percent of Americans will be born after 9/11.  They have no memory of the emotions of that day, and the days that followed.  I pray for the people of this land. I pray for inept leaders who use our worse instincts to launch endless wars that fatten their bottom lines under the guise of patriotism, all while young people are sent to die.  I pray for people who wrap themselves in the flag to avoid accountability and critique.  I pray for our media, dividing us with culture wars while putting us under hypnosis spells by replaying themes and images.

I pray for the lofty ideals of this country.  I hope one day we prove worthy of them, and that one day we live up to them.

I pray those who lost the 25 years I have been able to live since then.

I pray, as always, for peace.