I know: That's hard to listen to, hard to take.
So was 9/11/2001.
I was sleeping in that day -- no clients and only had to deliver an appelate brief I'd been up nearly all night polishing to the office to type up for Friday -- so I awoke after the planes had hit the towers and the Pentagon. The news then was of another plane having disappeared from the radar somewhere in Pennsylvania. Not long after that, the towers collapsed and I watched the thick smoke of debris billow out and race down the sreets of Manhattan.
And I was angry. And horrified.
And impressed. Yes, I am ashamed and deeply pained to admit it, but I was impressed. By then much of the basic details of the plot had been figured out/speculated on by the talking heads, and the boldness and simplicity of the plan, as well as the horrifically obvious impact, was known. And I thought "Well, if they wanted to get our attention [a major aim of any terrorist attack], they sure went about it the right way."
So yes, I was impressed. Disgustingly and unforgivably impressed. And disgusted at the damage done. And angry.
For a number of reasons.
At the madmen who had done this. What was the point? Just to show they could? How sick and twisted is that? Killing -- no, murdering thousands of innocent people to tell us... what? That it's easy? That they're determiined? Yeah, I get that. Always have. I was 15 when a similar group took over the athletes' quarters in the 1972 Munich Olympics. But I understood their greivance: They made it unambiguous -- not any kind of saving grace of course, but it was comprehensible.
But this? What, some vague statement against imperialism? And thousands of innocents could die so you could tell us basically... nothing? Sick.
And angry because I knew what this would bring about: More clampdowns on civil liberties (thanks, Congress, for the Patriot Act to confirm my fears).
And angry at the politicians. That started with Dana Rohrbacher, who hypocritically and in typical partisan hack right-wing fashion blamed the Clinton administration for the attack.
How 9/12 of him. Way to bring the country together.
And angry at the media. It started when I heard an anchor tout that they had exclusive footage of one of the planes hitting one of the WTC towers "coming up, so stay tuned." I mean, can we quit blowing our own horn just a bit for right now? Please?
But also for the reliance on the usual military and intelligence experts paraded endlessly before us -- the same ones they'd use to sell us the Iraq war a year later. Not because they parroted the usual conventional wisdom about Bin Laden and Middle East/Muslim terrorism -- well not only that anyway, and please note I'm not a "truther": Yes Bin Laden and a few maniacs pulled this off -- but because they were all touting war on Afghanistan, and of course absolutely heedless of the consequences to the innocent Afhganis suffering under Taliban (and Al Quaeda) rule. No, we don't need more mass killing and suffering.
And because of this, a basic question that was brought up and quickly handled by that usual crowd of conventional wisdom was never really answered or debated: Why do they hate us?
Maybe we should've started here (warning use of the N-word and a couple of the seven words):
(Like I said, I'm not a "truther": I take the chorus figuratively -- that "Bush" being governmental policies, domestic as well as foreign, stretching a long way back as the rap seems to point to.)
It would have been nice if we'd had a broader set of experts, some who would've advised us differently, as in this -- please, PLEASE view: I think it's the best thing done on 9/11.
Maybe then we could've taken the time to understand the kind of despair, cynicism and disaffection that could have led these men to follow any psychopathically homicidal megalomaniac who mangles the Quran, the Bible, or even The White Album to be recruited to his murderous cause.
I think we're starting to come out of it, but as the birthers and deathers are showing us we have a long way to go.
Maybe we should do a kind of ghost dance -- not to bring back some memory and feeling of some nonexistent nostalgic moment of clear-eyed harmony and generous purpose, but to bring one about.
So, perhaps, a dance to Hope, real and authentic Hope:
That song has embodied for me the notion of hope rising from despair. Call it my anthem of the times.
Peace is audacious.