911

I dislike stories about 911 because it’s about fear, terror, and how governments often use fear to keep the populace in line. But there is value in remembering so that past mistakes are not repeated.

Here’s where we were 15 years ago: around 9 AM that day, my friend and co-author Phyllis Vega called and said, “Turn on the TV, Trish. We’ve been attacked. A plane flew into the Twin Towers.”

I watched  ten minutes of the news coverage, then ran into the garage, leaped into my car, and drove to our daughter’s middle school and pulled her out of school. I believed we were under attack.

Only later, of course, did I realize just what a mess the Bush administration had created, what a corrupt labyrinth of greed and negligence had enabled this attack to happen. This attack changed everything. Suddenly, we had Homeland Security (sounds like Nazi Germany) and the TSA, and countless other government agencies and covert activities (many of which Edward Snowden brought to light) . Suddenly, we had new enemies – not Russia or Cuba or the usual suspects, but Islamic terrorists who really hated us and sought to do us harm. Suddenly, every car I passed in our community had an American flag flapping from its hood.

I felt like I had entered an alternate reality.

The rest is a sad history. Colin Powell testified that Iraq had nuclear bombs and we invaded that country and toppled Saddam, a dictator we had put into place, and the Mideast blew up. Eventually, of course, the Bush administration became history and Obama won and has been president for eight years. And yet, not a single person in the lying Bush administration has been indicted for war crimes. W Bush has picked up painting, Cheney has gotten a new heart, and Wolfowitz is nowhere to be found. Now and then, Cheney rears his scowling ugly face to comment on something, and I turn off the TV.

Let’s be clear on a couple of things here. 911 was an anomaly, where some dudes from Saudi Arabia (our friends!?) used box cutters to bring down the symbols of western civilization – the Twin Towers, the 11 in the equation. The Bushies knew something was coming and ignored it. The Bushies used the disaster to their advantage. Certain people profited enormously because of it – Halliburton, do we hear about them anymore??

Now we’re in a new election season, where Clinton’s Iraq vote haunts her – yes, yes, let’s invade – and Trump claims that he was always against this war. Google his interview with Howard Stern, where he supports the invasion. As any reasonable person can see,  911 set us up for a police state – subtle but present, Orwellian in terms of government spying, a world changed , a paradigm shift in the making.

Personally, I prefer to live in some other reality, where people are united by their good intentions for mankind and for themselves, where the TSA is only as annoying as that mosquito at a picnic that is eventually slapped into oblivion, where those flies called Bush and Cheney and Wolfowitz are merely postscripts in history. I want that reality. I hope for it.

The enemies we have are those conjured from the political imagination. The more you focus on them, the more real and present they become and the greater their influence in your life.  How about a world where we’re all truly equal in terms of pay, services, benefits?  Where everyone has health care that is actually about care and not about profit? Where kids can graduate from college debt free? Where we really know what is in our food? These are simple, important things.

We are all connected, an Indra’s net. What affects you affects me and on down the line to infinity. Can we do this? Can we find the connective tissue, the collective thread? Can we actually bring an Aquarian age into reality?

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