Okay, daylogs. Never done this before, but would like to rant about how i think things are going - badly, that is. There go my reputation points. But i hafta vent somewhere - might as well be in a daylog, points be damned.
So today, we took the baby to the mall for the first time, and lo and behold, the mall was dead, i mean there were maybe a hundred people, counting employees, in the entire mall. And verily i did remark to my spouse of these many years "WTF?" For we live in Jersey City, fer cryin out loud, and the mall is a cookiecutter Simon's mall just exactly like unto every other Simon's mall in the land of lactose-free milk and organic honey, and it is verily not, i repeat not a logical terrorist target in any way shape or even form. But it was dead, very dead, gathered unto the Lord even by virtue of the people's fear of crowded buildings. And behold, i began to have flashbacks to 1991 and the fun times we had in Tel Aviv, carrying our gas masks around to poorly-attended parties and generally trying to have a normal life.
And soon i observed many American flags hung from the windows and the balconies, the car antennae and the potted plants, the stoops and the balustrades and the very mannequins in the shops. And this, too, portended no good in my eyes.
And i saw T-shirts with tacky prints of the WTC, with the cunning legend "EVIL will be PUNISHED!!" Yea, verily. Indeed. And if we make a buck or two off your grief and your shock, it doesn't hurt anyone, does it? Oh yeah, i do love capitalism.
Two words have been haunting me ever since 9/11 - "freedom" and "prayer". Freedom, because on the day that the shit went down, every single politician and talking head who was asked for a reaction, said "this is an assault on our freedom". And then the Man-In-The-Street interviews all said the same basic thing - "these people hate us because they're jealous of our freedom". And i and my spouse are saying almost in unison "yeah right, that's why the complex was called the World Freedom Center, because it was a symbol of our freedom." Hmm. Are we the only people in America who think the choice of targets might actually have been calculated? That perhaps these people may actually have had some grievances beyond hating freedom, and that they chose those damn buildings as symbols of those grievances?
The other word haunting me is "prayer". Why, why whywhy does everybody have to pray now? When did everybody get so religious all of a sudden? Were all these people praying on a regular basis, and i missed it because i'm not a member of the Vast Religious Conspiracy? It strikes me as a little bit weird, this whole prayer thing. Looks like it comes in a three-step process:
- Fundamentalist Moslems commit unspeakable violence in the name of God, believing that this will get them to Heaven.
- (Mostly) Christian and Jewish Americans take a moment to pray to God. I guess they are praying for victory or a tight bomb pattern, because Stage 3 is...
- Americans go overseas to what they think is the staging ground for Step 1, and commit their own acts of violence. Later, it will transpire that not all of the people there were cruel terrorist types, indeed some of them were the proverbial innocent bystanders, and to avenge them, their brethren will return to Step 1.
You'll notice that a belief in God and Heaven is a basic requirement for Steps 1 and 2, and Steps 1 and 2 are neccessary for Step 3. And people try to tell me that atheists don't have a moral code.
To sum up, not a lot actually happened today, but i am getting more and more afraid that we are actually going to make good on that little "America at War" idea. And I'm not happy about that. I could have stayed in Israel if i wanted a war. At least in Israel we had nice weather, fresh oranges and a great Psychedelic Trance scene.
I don't mean to sound flippant, and now that i'm reading this, i realize that's exactly how i sound. But i really do hope that people take this war issue slowly. I've seen war, i've seen terrorism up close and personal before the WTC, i don't want to see any more. And while i do believe that every terrorist attack must bring a strong and decisive reaction, i hope Dubya realizes that bombing the shit out of Afghanistan is not going to make terrorism go away. Quite the opposite. By all means, let's kill bin Laden until he's had enough and then let's do it again. But if we use this as an excuse to invade yet another country, we're going to be very VERY sorry.