A thought for the weekend from a Blogger:
September 11th, 2003
Under Threat, It Stays
So here it is, the evening of September 11th, 2003. I had hoped to avoid saying anything today. It's not that I didn't have anything to say, but that I'm just so bad at saying stuff. There was a draft last weekend that involved stabs at eloquence (and Joy Division lyrics) whose awfulness confirmed the best thing was for this site to be silent this week.
But throughout the last couple of days things have changed a bit. I've found myself getting angry. Of course the anger over the attacks is always there. That won't go away anytime soon. No, what I'm angry about is being told by others that I shouldn't be angry. Even more so that I have no right to be angry; that it is wrong for me to be angry. There are these people who are desperate to minimize what happened. I guess because they simply don't want to deal with the fact that there are people who want to kill them, not for anything they've done, but simply because they are. They want to limit the scope to merely (as much as 3,000 murdered can be made 'merely') an attack on those killed and their families, nothing more. It certainly should not be viewed as an attack on the whole country.
The argument used is a mutated form of that previous "chickenhawk" argument which declared that unless you were or had been in uniform, you had no right to call for use of the military (all while ignoring the corollary that you also had no right to say when the military should not be used which means that for these people, civilian control of the military is non-progressive). Now the argument is that unless you directly lost someone in the terrorist attacks, you have no right to still be upset. For consistency's sake, I assume these same people make sure to hold no opinion about Israeli or Palestinian actions unless they directly know someone affected. But as a test, bring up Rachel Corrie to them just to see how they react.
Those who spent a lifetime pasting the US as a patriarchal, racist, fascist theocratic enemy, haven't recovered from finding there actually is such an entity out there primed and willing to kill. After an initial stumble of, "Wha..? So that's what that actually looks like..." they shook their heads and attached even stronger blinders. Can't have a whole lifeview crumble just because of reality. But that is fine. They may weigh us down, but we'll pull ahead anyway because part of what we're about is letting fools be fools.
I may not entirely like the way the war is being fought, but there is a war going on. One declared upon us. You can pretend it isn't or doesn't have to be there, but don't give me a surprised look should the gun ever come to your head. The choice is not between fighting this war the way it is being fought now or walking away. The war will be waged by them whether we fight back or not. The division of with us or with the terrorists was not made by the President, merely acknowledged. The terrorists are the ones who divided up this world. So you're damned right I'm going to be angry. I'm angry that I've been marked for death along with everyone else in this world. Not subjugation, but death. I'm angry that when they attack, my death is the goal, not an unfortunate part of getting their target. I'm angry that I am that target, not because I'm special or that my name is on some list, but because I exist. I'm angry that should these people manage to kill me, someone else they want dead will shake their head and try to blame me in the shameful hope that their tsk-tsking somehow protects them.
I will continue to be angry over all those things too many want to ignore.
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