A member of a mailing list I'm on forwarded an email written by a friend of his on September 12, 2001. The friend, who was mere blocks from the World Trade Center the day before, describes her feelings on hearing the impact of the planes, running in panic from the cloud of ash as the towers collapsed, and making her way home to the Upper West Side on foot. Good letter. Until she gets home:
My roommate and I went over to Bart's to watch television last night with him and his roommate. I could handle it by then. What I couldn't handle was watching that asshole who is calling himself our president try to lead this country.
Forget the touchy-feely "widespread sense of purpose" talk, David. Well, maybe it was true for most people, for however brief a moment. But here's a woman who less than 12 hours earlier, while literally running for her life, witnessed the death of thousands of people in the most brutal attack on the nation in its history. Yet, in her mind, the horror of that event pales in comparison to the reality of George Bush being president. Nice.
Mark Gauvreau Judge takes on this mindset in a sober article about the importance of hate:
But increasingly in our culture, the rule is, psychoanalyze the sinner and explain away the sin through socioeconomics - either that or it spills vats of hate on silly targets, like the president. We are in desperate need of the real thing, saved for an appropriate target.
On this and every September 11 - and every day in between - let's remember that the appropriate targets of our hate are the people who brought down those buildings, and more importantly, the people who given half a chance would not hesitate to do it again!