esrosedotblog

SURROUNDED

Today's anniversary blitz is pretty much what I expected.

Surrounded with 9-11 souvenirs; in the papers and on the web.

We don't have TV. So I am spared that.

I scanned most of what I did get.

I have also been thinking about the WSJ?OTD about whether 'everything' changed on that day.

I said 'no' and still say 'no' but for a different, I believe stronger, reason.

That is that change happens all the time and we are powerless in determining what and when it will happen and how and how much it will affect us and the world.

How about WWI; the day they shot the Archduke or whatever? WWII? Pearl Harbor Day.

How about the day they killed Kennedy? Pick either one; Jack or Bobby.

Let's get bigger. The first day that they started adding CO2 to the atmosphere? How about Global Warming. You can't get any bigger than that.

And there is no 'day' for that even though it sure trumps Al Queda for causing a lot of shit to happen.

There is this need, somehow, to isolate events and make them determinate.

And only the bad ones. What about the good things?

OK. I will pick a day. How about the day my first kid was born and I became a father?

That was a big one for me.

Nothing was the same after that.

There are thousands of items like that.

What about the invention of antibiotics? The discovery of DNA?

The internet?

What about the Wright Brothers.

Big things.

It is all changing all the time.

Get with the Program.

Terrorism didn't start with 9-11 either. It has been everywhere always.

It is not even the first US experience. Go back to Pearl Harbor.

More recent? Islamist radicals? The USS Cole. The Iranian hostages. Other bombs other places overseas that got our guys.

Our guys.

That is another thing.

This so called terror war is not against the US alone.

It is against unorthodox non-islamist secular civilized and democratic (or other) culture.

The next attack after the WTC was in Spain. Another in London. It could be Russia.

So spare me the angst.

Sure, we should mourn and surely we should try to prevent such and action again. But it will happen.

Will that be another day to wrap yourself in the flag and rant and rave?

While the polar bears are taking a dive and many other species are totally disappearing, what do we do? Dwell on the micro-past?

Are we so self centered that we cannot see the disappearing forest for the immediate tree?

OK. Now I have done my 9-11 thing. Just like all the rest.