Rant on.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Let’s talk about…9\/12.\u00a0 That’s right, I said 9\/12, not 9\/11.\u00a0 Today is the day after the tenth anniversary of that awful day when America suffered the most memorable terrorist attack it has ever had, one on its own soil.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Okay, I’ll take a step back first and talk about 9\/11 first.\u00a0 In late August of 2001, I got a job at a telemarketer type of place.\u00a0 This required a couple of weeks of training, and on that particular day I headed into work early.\u00a0 I parked in the parking lot–the doors had not opened yet–and listened to the morning show.\u00a0 The first plane hit, and the DJ’s, Mark and Steve, mentioned it as it was originally reported:\u00a0 A small plane had crashed into the north tower of the world trade center.\u00a0 The morning show being what it was and the initial report sounding more like an accident than anything else, the boys on the air joked about it a little.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Then the second plane hit.\u00a0 The jokes stopped.\u00a0 For that matter, the music stopped.\u00a0 They played, I think, one and a half more songs–I know they ended a song early–and went into more of a reporter mode.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The doors for my workplace opened up and I went in.\u00a0 The TV in the training room was turned on and tuned to CNN or something rather than starting up a training video.\u00a0 No training even started.\u00a0 Two hours later, they told us to go home.\u00a0 I remember the drive home was very eerie.\u00a0 There was almost no traffic.\u00a0 This was mid-morning on a normally busy street.\u00a0 There were no planes in the sky.\u00a0 I got home and Sam and I hugged each other long and hard.\u00a0 Then we sat down on the couch and glued ourselves to the TV.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I don’t think I went to work on 9\/12, but I can’t remember for certain.\u00a0 I know there was a lot of TV-watching for the next week or so.\u00a0 Life, however, did<\/em> go on.\u00a0 The job was crap, and I was soon looking for something better.\u00a0 On September 12, 2001, though, that wasn’t a concern yet.\u00a0 I–and I think much of the country–was struggling to understand what had happened the day before.\u00a0 If 9\/11 was about terrorism, 9\/12 was about shock.\u00a0 The country was in a state of shock, and, after a fashion, our sense of national identity had taken a serious blow.\u00a0 Nobody attacked us on our own soil!\u00a0 How could the happen?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I suppose it was, as many have said, inevitable that somebody<\/em> would attack us on our own turf.\u00a0 I visited New York City a few times a couple of years or so before 9\/11 happened.\u00a0 I didn’t go into the twin towers, but I did go into the area near them.\u00a0 I looked around at the wide open space, and had a dark thought about how easy it would be for somebody to fly a plane into one of the buildings.\u00a0 I even mentioned it to Sam when I called her from the hotel that night.\u00a0 I didn’t realize my thought was precognitive.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A couple of weeks after 9\/11, Jon Stewart got on the air and gave one of the most emotional monologues I have ever heard.\u00a0 His message was simple:\u00a0 The show must and would go on.\u00a0 The terrorists would not win; America would not crumble.\u00a0 And so he would continue making jokes and doing his thing, and everybody else should do the same.\u00a0 And so we did.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Here we are now, ten years later.\u00a0 Freedom in this country, particularly in airports, has suffered a major blow, but it is still the best country to live in.\u00a0 I confess, I don’t have any experience living anywhere else, but I don’t want any.\u00a0 And I will go on living, not in fear of what some terrorists might do in the future, but safe in the knowledge America will survive and thrive should that happen.\u00a0 We have our differences, and we love that fact.\u00a0 We are united in our individuality.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rant off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rant on. Let’s talk about…9\/12.\u00a0 That’s right, I said 9\/12, not 9\/11.\u00a0 Today is the day after the tenth anniversary of that awful day when America suffered the most memorable terrorist attack it has ever had, one on its own soil. Okay, I’ll take a step back first and talk about 9\/11 first.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":657,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions\/657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}