A Day That Will Live Infamy

Horrified. Sickened. Outraged. Speechless.

I haven’t been up to writing anything in this journal this week, mainly because I’ve been going through quite a bit of shock and emotional turmoil following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I’ve always been a ‘sensitive boy,’ but I never would have imagined I could have been so deeply affected by events in the world.

But I’m slowly returning to normal now, trying to put some of my thoughts and feelings into words, and to ‘process’ my grief, anger, and fear by articulating them.

I was just getting up on Tuesday morning when my friend Raymond called and said, “Turn on your TV. The World Trade Center is on fire.” I watched in mute disbelief as the south tower was hit, then the Pentagon, then as both WTC towers crashed to Earth.

I’ve been pretty much riveted to the television since then, with brief breaks to live my life and attend to business. The first couple of days, life here in the Capital was pretty eerie, in a martial law kind of way, with constant emergency sirens, military vehicles, and combat air patrols overhead.

Things are gradually returning to normal. I went out Friday and Saturday night, and am joining Raymond and a couple of his buddies at the Eagle tonight. But I’m still spending hours each day in front of the TV, leery of the jingoistic turn the journalism has taken. I’m numb at the repetitiveness of much of the coverage. And I’m concerned about the questions unanswered (witness the way President Bush utterly dodged a question this morning about the preparedness of the American public for mass casualties in our ‘War on Terrorism’) or even completely unasked (witness the complete lack of interest on the implications for an ‘Act of War’ on insurance claims and pay outs*).

Of course, we are at war in a manner of speaking. But I’m very, very concerned — even fearful — about where this will all end. As horrific as the attacks in New York and Washington were, very little thought or discussion seems to have been given to the root causes of this terrorism, nor to whether these bastards have something much, much worse up their other sleeve.

But I’m also proud to be an American (I’ve got my little flag hanging in my front window) and proud to have seen and heard of heroism superior to the brutality of the crime that inspired them. The courage of the passengers (including one gay man who was a friend of my friend, John McMullen) who brought their own plane down south of Pittsburgh rather than see it used as a weapon against Washington will inspire me for the rest of my life.

*NOTE: The issue of Newsweek just out says that American insurance companies have, as a matter of policy, decided NOT to apply a war acts exclusion to the Sept. 11th terrorism, despite the fact that claims are expected to top $25 billion. I may never have occasion to say this again about insurance executives, but God bless them.