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Sep. 12th, 2009 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
somedaybitchas befits me, my thoughts on the anniversary of 9/11,
i watched the 2nd plane hit the Tower live on television. on the way home that awful morning i remember being deeply shaken by the voice of Peter Jennings struggling with the human instinct to refute the evidence of his own eyes.
as i merged onto the bridge overpass a few miles from home, i remember suppressing a strong moment of actual, immediate, tangible fear; Jennings was verifying a jumbo jet having just crashed itself into the Pentagon. the knowledge in his voice that the plane had missed its actual target was easy to hear, even though no one had yet posed the theory.
the roomie had only been here a few weeks. despite the hour, there was no question of waking her up, and i remember vividly the what the fuck?? confused tonality to her voice as she processed my words.
i remember talking to my stepdad, Larry, on the phone, and us looking at the same live images at the same time, on the same channel, both wondering aloud if we really were seeing the Tower start to lean.
mostly, though, i remember the gut-wrenching rage and grief.
if i had been in a position of authority, i would have had a really, really difficult time not conventionally bombing the guilty out of existence and turning the land into a parking lot.
******************
people who want to control you don't do so because you've done something "wrong", and/or you "deserve it"; they do so because it is at the very foundation of who they are.
bully mentality is bully mentality.
they.are.wrong.
you can be a victim only if you allow it, and to believe that if you just live the way others want you to live will get them to leave you alone is the worst kind of naive. it's also often deadly. just ask any Jews - or members of the French Resistance - that survived World War II. or any of the millions of Russians opposed to the Bolsheviks, Stalin, Trotsky or Lenin. or hell, Alan Turing.....oh right. you can't.
not everyone will like you, for a variety of reasons. the most common reasons, though, are petty jealousy and envy, and it's easy to see if you bother at all to look.
we're the most free nation on the planet in the recorded history of humanity. it's not our fault that others aren't like us, and feeling the need to apologize for our lack of absolute perfection according to someone else's definitions - or that we should somehow exist in a perpetually self-flagellating state in order to atone for the relative ease of our lives - just makes me think you're a moron.
would it be great if we were all at peace, warm, fuzzy, rich and loving? sure, but there's no such thing as perfection.
do we, however well meaning, stick our nose where it may not always belong? yep. but i'll take that over standing by and doing nothing, hands down, every time.
and sometimes, there are just days when you need to turn around and kick a bully really hard in the nuts to get him to stop being a douche.
democracy is messy, and it's hard; it's risky and it's scary. if it wasn't, everybody'd be doing it. it's much easier to monday morning quarterback us from a distance; it's safer, and it gives you someone to blame when your personal world view doesn't live up to your expectations.
i watched the 2nd plane hit the Tower live on television. on the way home that awful morning i remember being deeply shaken by the voice of Peter Jennings struggling with the human instinct to refute the evidence of his own eyes.
as i merged onto the bridge overpass a few miles from home, i remember suppressing a strong moment of actual, immediate, tangible fear; Jennings was verifying a jumbo jet having just crashed itself into the Pentagon. the knowledge in his voice that the plane had missed its actual target was easy to hear, even though no one had yet posed the theory.
the roomie had only been here a few weeks. despite the hour, there was no question of waking her up, and i remember vividly the what the fuck?? confused tonality to her voice as she processed my words.
i remember talking to my stepdad, Larry, on the phone, and us looking at the same live images at the same time, on the same channel, both wondering aloud if we really were seeing the Tower start to lean.
mostly, though, i remember the gut-wrenching rage and grief.
if i had been in a position of authority, i would have had a really, really difficult time not conventionally bombing the guilty out of existence and turning the land into a parking lot.
******************
people who want to control you don't do so because you've done something "wrong", and/or you "deserve it"; they do so because it is at the very foundation of who they are.
bully mentality is bully mentality.
they.are.wrong.
you can be a victim only if you allow it, and to believe that if you just live the way others want you to live will get them to leave you alone is the worst kind of naive. it's also often deadly. just ask any Jews - or members of the French Resistance - that survived World War II. or any of the millions of Russians opposed to the Bolsheviks, Stalin, Trotsky or Lenin. or hell, Alan Turing.....oh right. you can't.
not everyone will like you, for a variety of reasons. the most common reasons, though, are petty jealousy and envy, and it's easy to see if you bother at all to look.
we're the most free nation on the planet in the recorded history of humanity. it's not our fault that others aren't like us, and feeling the need to apologize for our lack of absolute perfection according to someone else's definitions - or that we should somehow exist in a perpetually self-flagellating state in order to atone for the relative ease of our lives - just makes me think you're a moron.
would it be great if we were all at peace, warm, fuzzy, rich and loving? sure, but there's no such thing as perfection.
do we, however well meaning, stick our nose where it may not always belong? yep. but i'll take that over standing by and doing nothing, hands down, every time.
and sometimes, there are just days when you need to turn around and kick a bully really hard in the nuts to get him to stop being a douche.
democracy is messy, and it's hard; it's risky and it's scary. if it wasn't, everybody'd be doing it. it's much easier to monday morning quarterback us from a distance; it's safer, and it gives you someone to blame when your personal world view doesn't live up to your expectations.
