9/11 ???

I didn't actually have much awareness of today being 9/11 today until I was talking to my mom, who is a little anxious, and when I told her I was hanging out on the roof, her immediate response was, "be careful."  Talk about over-reactive.  I live in a three flat.  Then, the only thing really on t.v. tonight was a thing on PBS about the new Freedom tower and how it and the memorial have been built.  Structural engineering is really interesting.

I feel strange about the whole 9/11 memorial thing.  Some people I think may be offended by my referral to 9/11 memorials as a "thing," but I feel like a memorial right now and so much emphasis on everything 9/11 related is a little premature- the world, politics, are still reactive to what happened on 9/11.  How can we have a memorial already when the lines of history are still unfolding in relation to this occurrence?  WWII memorials, to my knowledge, have only been erected in the past 10-20 years and that is at least 40 years after the end of WWII, the last time that the U.S. was actually suffered casualties by an outside force. 

I do think that construction around the site of where the towers fell is important but the perpetual awareness and 9/11 remembrance is too much.  I feel like we, as a nation, are dwelling too much on the past.  I appreciate construction as moving forward, and of a memorial, but the grandiose nature of the memorial being marketed is just too much.  I feel like 9/11 is what it is, a tragedy.  Maybe it is how culture has evolved with twitter, facebook, and other technological advances in that everyone and every little feeling is put out to the public that makes me feel over inundated with 9/11 coverage.

The press talks about "the public" experiencing "war fatigue."  I suppose that may be true to an extent.  I don't think "fatigue" may be the right expression for me.  I remember how I felt in the years following 9/11 (I was a highschool senior in the library when the second tower was hit and then in lit class when the towers fell) how patriotic I felt.  I remember telling a coworker at my summer job, this is after President Bush called us to war in Iraq, that I would be willing to be enlisted and go to war right then.  I had believed everything the president had told us in his national addresses at that time.  I supported our actions abroad. 

NOW, now, I don't feel that same patriotism that I once felt; if we were to go to war against Syria as world police force I would rally and protest against it.  I feel horrible because I feel like I am lacking that pride in my country.  I had hope when Obama was elected and I was in Grant Park that night and was so excited that this was a new chapter in American history where we would once again be recognized not for the size of our military but for the simple factors that make this nation great and some would debate it but I think Lady Liberty and the poet Emma Lazarus, says it best, "

 

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

  This is an excerpt from the poem that is on a tablet on the pedestal on which Lady Liberty stands.  We are a nation that is built by those searching for more and it is from there that we derive our strength.  We offer freedom, of religion, of speech, of arms, to a fair and speedy trial.  The unspoken basis upon which freedom resides is the basic respect of peoples no matter their condition. 

When we sully these freedoms, persecute the press, Guantanamo, when we build fences along our borders and enact protectionist legislation against immigration, I feel we fail as a country. 

Am I suffering from "war fatigue?"  I don't think so; if I felt like a conflict in which we as a nation were engaged in was just and appropriate action then I would completely support action.  Syria is not that type of engagement.  Iraq was sold to us on false terms and it sullied our reputation just as Vietnam did.  Entanglement in a civil war is not what the U.S. is built upon.  We must look to ourselves and uphold ourselves as a successful integration of cultures and ideals where people can live peacefully and flourish; in merely doing that we will succeed in seeing others "nations" striving to emulate that ideal system of freedom which the U.S. is supposed to represent.  In our talk, and attempts to be a "world power" we are actually lessening the stature of our nation.  It is the quiet, the large quiet entities that are to be the most respected.

Too much talk, too much twitter, too much 24/7, too much remembrance.  Let us strive to be free and to assist those by humanitarian efforts those who have similar desires- that is where we can be great.  Helping "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses."  We have the economic power to do that- invest there and not in the military and we will reap rewards and build far less resentment that inspires the al quidas of the world. 

I hope I'm not being too redundant. 

Musing on death/jail...and of course Syria

This is me tired and run down and watching the movie Pearl Harbor.   Yes, that's an old movie but I am feeling like I need a comfort movie and for whatever reason this movie is it for me.  Maybe I feel like watching it because it is the prelude to the entrance of the U.S. into WWII and with Syria still the hot topic I want to watch something that gave another generation pause before involvement into a war. 

I have written my congressional representatives as well as to President Obama voicing my opposition to any involvement in Syria without the support of the United Nations, NATO, and the United Arab Union.  I hope others are doing the same.  I have written my representatives in the past and I hope that my voice will be heard.  (kinda funny- I feel like I have the right to write the Iowa representatives as well as the Illinois because I think of them almost more as mine than I do Illinois.)

I think the thing that bothers me most is commentary that since the U.S. and President Obama have taken a stance against the use of chemical weapons that we will look weak if we don't act.  I think that is the biggest bunch of bologna out there.  I applaud the Democrat Rep Alan Grayson who appeared on PBS World News from Florida who did a wonderful job of voicing opposition to U.S. involvement in Syria and correctly stated that the idea of a stand or a message is the wrong discussion to even be having.   I agree that we are stronger and the President looks better if he listens to what "we the people" have to say.  NO WAR!  Focus on humanitarian support and the name of the U.S. will go a lot farther.  Everyone knows we have power, but those who have the most, are the ones who refrain from using it. 

There is other news out there right now besides Syria.

In the Midwest there was this guy who kidnapped three girls and held them captive for years; the guy was sentenced and then apparently hung himself with his sheets.  What kills me (:-) is that some people are upset about the fact that this guy killed himself.  What's wrong with a person deciding to end his or her own life?  I know the Bible says somewhere that suicide is wrong but I really only remember that because of reading Dante's Inferno and suicide is reserved for something like the 11th circle of hell- particularly horrible.  Suicide in other cultures has been thought of as honorable.  I'm not saying that this guy did an honorable thing but he did save taxpayers thousands of dollars in jail costs and I don't think you can argue that after inflicting so much pain that this guy didn't deserve to die- especially since he chose it himself. 

I truly don't understand why so many people are preoccupied with keeping people who are in jail, who want to die, from killing themselves- especially those who are in jail for life without parole.  Why do we persist to force feed people who are starving themselves to death because they can't take prison anymore?  It costs the rest of the population way too much money to keep these people alive who were basically sentenced to death in jail.  Maybe my friend who is a pastor for a prison population in southern Illinois would feel differently- I'll have to ask. 

I suppose that that conversation transitions to the topic of death and if people have made their peace and are okay with death than who am I to question that decision?  I don't fear death but I guess that is because I have belief in a something else that I choose to call heaven (although I like the peaceful connotation the name Elation Fields brings to mind personally). 

Peace to all and to all a good night!