Tuesday, September 12, 2006

RANDOM THOUGHTS

ANGER THERAPY


I have a couple of related questions for my readers. There's something that I've been kicking around in my head for a couple of days as Bush parades around the country as the "9/11 president". I'd like you all to think back five years ago, in the days and weeks following 9/11, were any of you toeing the line of "standing behind the president"? Did you put the partisan politics of the day beside in order to stand with the Bush as Americans, and not Democrats and Republicans?
I didn't. I know that some of you might think that I'm probably just remembering things the way I want to because of how I feel about him now, or have felt about him for the past few years. I considered that myself, but ultimately I realized that I was one of those 10% who didn't stand behind Bush in the days and weeks after 9/11. At the time, I thought that this was all nice theatre, what with Congress singing Kumbaya or whatever it was they sang in front of the Capitol, but I just was not nibbling on that bait. Back then, I had a sinking suspicion that when the inevitable investigations began, that Clinton would get the blame for it. I knew that, having been in office for less than nine months, it would be a sufficiently short enough amount of time to give Bush sort of a plausible deniability and essentially absolve him of the responsibility of that day. At least, that's what the Bush supporters would push over the coming months, with varying degrees of success.
I looked at images of Bush in that classroom in Sarasota and thought that this is the president we had, one of freezes up when the chips are down, regardless of a couple of prepared statements he delivered during and after the disaster. He was completely and utterly out of his element. He had absolutely no idea what to do when faced with a true crisis. It's probably best that he spent his Vietnam years in Texas and Alabama because if he had been in country, he probably would have gotten his fellow soldiers killed due to his inaction at the moment when his brothers in arms needed him most.
Back before Bush became [s]elected I felt that he was offensively unqualified for the job of president. After the 9/11 attacks, that thought stayed in my head - this is too big for him. He is not mentally capable of making the right decisions. The man who many thought it'd be cool to have a beer with is not the man we needed at that time in our history. Even now, after over five years of on-the-job training, he seems painfully awkward and ill-prepared in the role. To me, Bush as president is like a bad actor in a high school play - he tries to go through the motions and he sometimes knows his lines, but he has never convinced me that he is the president, that he truly understood the role.

For five years, I did not watch a single 9/11 documentary or special. I couldn't. I was too angry. Angry at a lot of things. Over time that anger coalesced into an anger at Bush for using 9/11 as a political tool and an excuse to carry out his agenda. Watching a 9/11 program only made me angry that Bush hadn't captured bin Laden; it made me angry that he fought against the formation of a 9/11 commission; it made me angry that he wouldn't stop using 9/11 as a campaign prop no matter what subject he was talking about.
Finally, during this "9/11 season" I actually started watching a couple of programs on the Discovery Channel and the History Channel. Not coincidentally I started writing this blog, which leads me to believe that I finally had an outlet for my anger. By writing this blog, I was able to begin the hear the stories of that fateful day; the people's stories, the forensics of the buildings' collapses, the history that led to 9/11, all of the stories. I did so without becoming angry. I'm glad that I finally did sit down and watch them. There are many important stories that came out of that day and very few had anything to do directly with Bush so to finally experience them has been cathartic. Of course, I've got over five years of anger to vent through this blog, so expect me to be around for a while.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your talking about anger really sounds familiar to me and although I am forever furious over what they have done to my country and the people everywhere, it is now a slower burn instead of a volcanic eruption.

Like you, never was I with the preznit and never could be. I like your writing.

microdot said...

I love anonymous's comment. So easy to do , start typing whatever obscenity passes for thought in his timy little brain! That's how he deals with 9/11.
9/11, I'm over it!
I was in NYC, in my apartment on Ave B and my neighbor was in the hallway trying to get the door open to the roof. I came out to ask her what she was doing and she was incoherent. We got up on the roof and watched the tower of black smoke ripping the clear blue sky (we had a clear view, less than a mile away across lower Manhattan). I tried to get some info from the media...nada...Howard Stern was babbling away, can you believe it?
I got on my bike and rode to Union Square where a nervous almost hysterical crowd had already collected.
No one had any real facts. I lived through the first bombing in 93 so I was ready for anything. I got back on my bike and rode to 6th Ave and then downtown with the towers in front of me. When I got to Canal, I stopped transfixed as I watched a plane insanely low looping around and eating up the distance between it and the 2nd tower. When it hit, the debris and flames came through in my direction, we all were stopped in traffic, staring in fear and awe and shock. I got out of the street and onto the sidewalk where panic was reigning!
I watched and talked to people, I got a little closer and saw things coming out of the windows, falling. We realized that they were people, jumping, dying!
Then the first tower collapsed, the dust cloud rushed up Church street and we started to move back. When the second tower collapsed, the dust came farther up and I decided to get out of there for my own good! I went back to Union Square where I met some friends and we tried to make some sense of what we had experienced, but I really believe that most of the city was in a state of clinical shock!
I was supposed to fly out 2 days later to go back to France, but I was stranded and finally had to pay all kinds of fees to get a booking. Meanwhile, life below 14th Street was a nightmare of security checks when ever you tried to walk more than 2 blocks in any direction.
I could go on and rant about how mad I am that 9/11 has been hijackled by this bunch of jackals as a good reason to do anything and commit any crime they wish. Trounce on the Bill of Rights, any International Code of Conduct, conduct a truly insane foreign policy that squandered all the good will the world gave to America after the tradegy.
I am upset about what has really happened in Afghanistan and the bullshit propaganda that comes ouut of there and well, we all know things aren't going so swimmingly in Iraq...
Hey, shit happens, buildings get blown up all over the world, hundreds of thousands of people have died because of of George Bushs' manipulation of 9/11.
9/11, I'm over it!
To see how I comemorated 9/11, check out my blog! Marching dancers, tractors pulling floats! The NUMA NUMA song was played over and over again!
9/11, I'm over it!