Personal

I purposely avoided ground zero this weekend. I would have liked to visit on my first trip back to NYC in almost six years, but it will always be a deeply personal affair for me, one I can’t share with the callous, sensationalistic press and disgusting politicians faking tears for votes.

As I’ve passed newsstands with full page pictures of the burning towers, as I’ve heard younger passengers on the bus I’m on say that 9/11 doesn’t mean anything specific to them, I can’t help but get upset. Not at the youth. Vietnam never meant anything to me, and I don’t expect 9/11 to mean much to them. But at the media, the politicians, the greedy trying to make a profit.

Imagine having lost a loved one on that fateful day. Then think about walking buy a newsstand covered with tabloid headlines next to pictures from that day. I guess I was fortunate to only lose friends and neighbors. I can’t imagine what it would feel like if I’d lost a wife or child.

If you want to remember 9/11, how about remembering the still ongoing war in Afghanistan that has cost so much that if we’d forgone it we could have easily provided universal healthcare, better education for our children, and not had such a massive debt.

Or think about the massive government intrusions we’ve allowed in our lives in the name of safety. I caused a stir in high school with an editorial titled “Big Brother is Watching”. I feel so neive to have gotten upset over cameras in the parking lot when today we let government employees grope infants and senior citizens.

I wish the press would spend 1/100 of the time the spend on 9/11 this weekend on the corruption and greed that has feed of the fears raised that day. But for those of us who were there, for those of us who lost loved ones, for those of us who still have nightmares about watching people jump 90 floors to their death instead of burning to death, please stop with the flag waving and the pictures. The pictures in my mind are more than enough.