Reflections on 9/11

So much has been said and left unsaid during this commemoration of 9/11. I guess my take is that I would like to see a lot less licking and re-licking of our own wounds, as if to keep them open, raw and hurting just enough to spur us on to commit only God knows what new horrors, supposedly justified by the remembrance of how much we were made to suffer.

In exchange, I would like to see a lot more remembrance of the cruelties we have already caused to so many other countries and peoples of the world, true remorse for those acts of commission and omission, and discussion of how to ensure that our country will stop using such horrors to promote limited economic ends under the guise of “defending freedom and democracy”, atoned for merely by throwing pennies at them.

Let us stop lending ourselves unthinkingly to further campaigns aimed to inflame our base passions, distract us from the real issues, confuse vice with virtue, and make us believe that truths are lies and lies are truths. Let us wake up from our dream of self-righteousness, America, realize that our national behavior so far has been more of a problem than the solution, and go about making a profound, long-lasting change (which will take much, much more than a vote, by the way).