FEAR AND DISTRACTION REDUX
Friday, September 11, 2020
Earth is never entirely peaceful, yet mostly safe for most of us most days – even mid-pandemic where we are learning, albeit painfully, to accept a new level of consciousness about everything, fighting this new enemy we all share in hopes, one day, we’ll feel better, have reliable treatments, and a credible vaccine.
The enemy is the virus, not China.
Stopping spread, developing therapies, and vaccines are fact-based science – but it plays out in America daily as blame/fear fiction, to the repetitive tune of political mudslinging. It’s rarely helpful to blame those not responsible, but that’s the politics of distraction …
Redux means brought back or bringing back.
Fear redux, then, today is re-living 102 minutes of incalculable horror, costs tabulated in billions of dollars, the tonnage of concrete, steel, and debris – so many assets destroyed.
Still, its highest price was tallied in corpses.
Everyone knows what happened, and destructive acts of terror, warfare, and retaliation that followed.
New York City recovered, rebuilt, and revitalized.
Since 2001, September 11th is celebrated, mourned, and replayed – bright September morning redux, its horror and destruction replayed.
Americans, Canadians, and people the world over – recalling when 19 suicide-terrorists hijacked four planes and steered them to fiery ends, killing 2,977 innocent victims – that first plane hit the World Trade Center north tower at 9:03AM, and the crash of the fourth plane at 10:03AM. Two other planes hit the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. Both towers collapsed. Elapsed time 102 minutes, 2,996 corpses.
Everyone sat helplessly that day, numbed and stunned, watching TV commentators explain how little anyone knew or understood, worrying whether more was yet to come.
Every revisiting of that massive loss of life and destruction has brought so many failings and so many heroism acts into sharp relief. Nineteen years later, we’ve learned lots, but one must wonder if the right people knew enough or anything at all. Yes, Osama Bin Laden is gone, as are so many of his co-conspirator terrorists.
Countless first-responders are sick or have died – neglected in large measures by their government, which had failed to recognize and take action to prevent the disaster. Nearly 20 years on, the question of what ought to have been known, and who ought to have acted on intelligence is known to few – but that is the politics of distraction.
What is still real is hatred, however masked by crisis-du-jour, trade-wars, or election campaigns – the world’s currency of choice used to be U.S. dollars. Now U.S. fear and hate is political currency, bandied about as slogans without deference to those who perished that day and since or who will yet die, their lives and health needlessly damaged, cut short by 19 suicide terrorists 19 years ago this day.
Nineteen years ago, we Canadians gasped in horror as our friend, our largest trading partner, and next-door neighbour was viscously attacked – it appeared symbolic, attacking iconic American buildings, but that wasn’t really the case.
2,977 innocent people were viciously murdered.
That’s what happened that day.
And so many survivors, so many first-responders later stricken with illness and/or death, were attacked too. They are all victims, as are their families.
America sought out and killed perpetrators, but only after leaders did their calculus to wage wars on other enemies over different issues – masquerading as vengeance for 9/11 victims.
In the end, it was more about oil and middle-eastern geopolitics, not about weapons of mass destruction, or naming and seeking retribution from only perpetrators and their backers.
It’s rarely helpful to blame those not responsible. Simpler to name, blame, and attack someone else – that’s the politics of distraction.
Not to say Iran and Afghanistan had clean hands, but Bin Laden and the 19 hijackers were Saudi terrorists, right?
When wars are fought – against any enemy, the first victim is the truth.
Nineteen years ago today, 2,977 people were murdered.
That we know for sure.
So much of the rest of the story is murky spin and politics – as clear as a Zapruder film, a grassy knoll, or a magic bullet, but that’s the politics of distraction redux.