So Much Sadness...

I don't really write a lot about 9/11/2001 because for me it becomes such an issue fraught with political acrobatics and entitlements a lifetime in the other direction of the most important aspects of the event. It does matter that there is a true and balanced record of the event, that the truth from the intelligence side as well as from the emotional human interest sides have their fair airing for the world. I agree that the terrorists responsible should have a court trial and be forced to face the severity of their actions. I also believe that the powers that be had a grand opportunity to do better faster, and either looked the other way or were playing some kind of dangerous game of anti-diplomacy.

The point is that this story is not over and it opened up an entirely new chapter in America's legacy, and we are all responsible for how much attention we pay to what is important and what is utter distracting crap. Now more than ever Americans are responsible for being the most savvy, the most educated, the most well-rounded citizens of this earth, for the benefit of themselves and everyone they interact with. It is true that this is the greatest country, yet if we make the ill-advised decision to squander our capacity for good and justness, to choose ignorance and arrogance, to look the other way within our own damn borders, we have no hope of convincing the rest of the world looking at us in awe or contempt.

That is why I want to learn other languages as fervently as I want to share my command of English. That is why I am compelled to apply for the Foreign Service, even the Department of Homeland Security, although I sometimes worry and mistrust the actual agendas of such organizations. Just like the BBC report of the 23-year-long effort to exonerate the victims of the Liverpool Hillsborough Stadium crush disaster- and the government publicly apologized- where 96 people died but 41 could have been saved if ambulance, media coverage and police response and subsequent cover-up did not rip through that community spreading lies, doubt, division and cynicism about justice, there is still the well-tended fire in civilized modern times of the prevail of that same justice. The jihadists(funny, this word is coming up as incorrect according to the grammar settings. What is the correct option? Sadistic!) may defend their prophets with inexplicable violence and disregard for the value of human life to their same essential religious tenets, the left and right extremists and religious fanatics of all stripes will scream for blood and disenfranchisement to the ends of time, but there must and will continue to be the bold and sometimes taciturn few that answer the call to arms, to peace, to wisdom, to trial and experiment, to tactic and level-headed negotiation and strategy to keep humanity going one day, one year, one decade longer. One decade past September 11th. Three generations past World War 2/Hiroshima/Nagasaki/The Manhattan Project. 500 years since "the discovery of the New World" and the siege of mental/physical/environmental/slavery that we still fight against today.  Shall I go on? Not tonight, dammit.