They said everything changed (over and)
Everything changed (over
and)
Everything changed (over again)
Did everyone lift to help shoulder the
load
Or was it all Just a bump in the road?
Deaths
For those who've lost someone they knew, there's
still a hole in the world, rougher-edged and slower to heal for that they were
untimely ripp'd. No one death in the September 11 attacks was any more tragic than
a thousand other deaths every day, and we need to remember that there are people
suffering just as severely for those who died on other days. But somehow, as in
war, a mass of murders together have a collective gravity. They have a cumulative
impact not just on those directly concerned but on all of the society that is
greater than the sum of their individual effects.
They said
everything changed (over and)
Everything changed (over and)
Everything
changed (over again)
Did everyone lift to help shoulder the load
Or was it
all Just a bump in the road?
Politics
The politicians
all seemed to be deeply and sincerely affected by the events of September 11 ...
for about a week, Maybe two. That's how long all the bipartisan efforts lasted,
before they resumed. Single exception: those who want to use the attacks for their
own good, either to distract the nation from the economy ("Look over there! It's a
terrorist attack!") or to seize power ("The Constitution? We can't worry about
that now; we've got bad guys to catch."
They said everything changed
(over and)
Everything changed (over and)
Everything changed (over
again)
Did everyone lift to help shoulder the load
Or was it all Just a bump
in the road?
Journalists
I don't judge journalists as severely as
politicians, except maybe the big business-types in the background. There was
serious shock on those faces reporting the news last year -- at least on the first
dozen repetitions. Now, though, for many stations it may just be a chance to play
cool explosion footage over and over again. There has been some good coverage
sandwiched in with the weepy patriotic repetition, though.
href="www.npr.org">NPR, my main news source, had an interesting piece on
why the anniversary coverage has been so overdone, and this morning they
had on a man,
href="http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/cmnpd01fm.cfm?PrgDate=09/10/2002&PrgID=3">Hale
Gurland, who had helped in the rescue attempt, and who had commented last year
that he was "searching for freedom" as he dug through the rubble looking for
survivors, worrying about how his country would change. This year he also had
actual insights, and unique phrasing. I'd like to hear more from
him.
They said everything changed (over and)
Everything changed
(over and)
Everything changed (over again)
Did everyone lift to help
shoulder the load
Or was it all Just a bump in the road?
American public
I could generalize (and certainly the
media often are) but I'd be wrong. Reactions seem to be everything from "Huh?" to
"Let's go kick some Osama ass!" to "I still get nightmares," to "My life changed
completely," to "I don't see much change at all," to "What am I going to watch on
TV now American Idol is over?" I've seen comments I agreed with and comments I
abhorred and comments that just left me baffled -- none of which is either bad or
surprising in a country this big and varied.
I don't know what to
think about it all, still. I didn't want to write about this at all, but as
href="http://caerula.diaryland.com">Caerula wrote, it's not something you can
ignore. But somehow, I am glad my company is having a minute of silence
tomorrow.