Photo courtesy of http://www.geekphilosopher.com
There are are days I will always remember. Some happy and others sad. September 11, 2001 is a day that like many others, I will never forget.
I was about 5 months pregnant with my first child. I had recently graduated from college, moved to a new town, and my husband and I were no longer scraping pennies together as he had a real job. We were excited and optimistic. I woke up to the phone ringing. A friend, who was also 5 months pregnant called and told me that the twin towers had fallen down. I honestly had no idea what she was talking about. It wasn’t until she told me that an airplane flew into the World Trade Center that things began to click. After trying to get her to explain several times, since it seemed odd that an airplane would fly into a building and knock it down, she told me to turn on the television. As I walked into the living room of our apartment, I was thinking it had to be a weird fluke accident for sure, right? Really, how many commercial pilots could be flying low enough to crash into a really big building. Maybe this was some sort of joke?
As I turned on the TV, I was immediately crushed. This was no joke, this wasn’t an accident or some odd fluke. This was real. As I learned that people had intentionally killed a couple thousand people by stealing airplanes and flying them into the World Trade Center, I was sick. How could people be so evil? How could anyone be so deluded into thinking this was a good idea? I was so sick to my stomach. I looked down on my growing belly and I remember apologizing to my baby that I was bringing him (I didn’t know he was a boy yet) into such a corrupt and wicked world.
Over the next several days, the TV was on a lot. I wanted to know what was happening. I wanted to know that my world was returning to normal- it never really did. I wanted to live in a fantasy that would erase such disgusting behavior.
Life itself returned to normal- the stock exchange reopened, flights returned to normal operations, and flag that were flown in solidarity slowly returned to their cabinets. A war was being waged that most people really didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to and the federal government took steps to insure the safety of the American people.
As I reflect back on the attacks on the World Trade Center, I think of the brave men who thwarted the plane that landed in PA. I think of the sad loss of life and I still can’t believe how evil the men who planned that attack were. I am angry that they robbed the lives of so many. I am also angry that they are still attacking us. The various measures put in place by the Federal Government to insure safety have stripped us of rights and freedom. We are told they have helped thwart further attacks. Maybe they have, but I am not so sure. Are the scanners at the airports really necessary? The men who stole those airplanes used box cutters. Last time I checked, a box cutter is metal and should have been detected by the metal detector if on a person or it was in the carry-on luggage. I have flown my whole life, and honestly I feel less safe going through strip search machines than I did before 9-11. I feel violated time and time again. Is recording all phone calls and text and email data for all citizens and storing them in Utah really necessary? Does that make us safe? That seems like collecting the hay in hopes of finding a needle that may or may not be in the hay stack. Those men who flew into the twin towers are still harming us as they have created a mass feeling of fear, anxiety, and general insecurity. They have also created a feeling amongst many Americans that we need to live under constant surveillance in order to be safe.
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