It was hard to turn around this week, certainly impossible to turn on a set, without seeing images from September 11th, 2001.
With the return of those images came a return to those raw emotions from that day; the fear, the disbelief, the anger.
More than anything, there was the need to punch back, to turn an American military designed as a shield into a sword.
If you want to laugh and jump around at our anguish, you can do it at your own peril.
In those first few days after 9-11 there was little thought of ramifications, little concern for the big picture in our collective quest for retribution.
No one envisioned a protracted conflict in Iraq that would drain American lives but provide waning hope of permanent improvement.
No one cared if our civil liberties were trampled a little bit in the stampede to make someone pay.
Five years later, the American government has wider latitude to look in on the lives of its own citizens.
Part of me doesn’t care.
If a federal agent wants to waste his time listening to my phone calls, go for it.
“Hey, how was your day.”
“About the same. Yours?”
“Same thing.”
“Grab some milk and eggs? The kids have piano lessons.”
“Sure. See ‘ya.”
“See ‘ya.”
The only secret code imbedded in that message is that marriage makes complete sentences unnecessary.
It’s not as if my movements or lifestyle feel restricted. I can go where I want, do what I want and when I want (as long as my wife says okay).
If the government spies on other people and that makes my family safer, isn’t that worth it?
Isn’t the lack of training camps in Afghanistan, the end of a brutal dictatorship in Iraq and an agreement to get out of the arms race in Libya worth it?
The rest of me knows better.
If you raise the water temperature slowly enough, you can scald a bather without his knowing.
The analogy applies to the slow erosion of civil rights, where the victim doesn’t realize he’s entered an authoritarian state until the cage door swings shut.
We lost three thousand people that day, but may lose hundreds more to lung disease and other illnesses still being determined.
Likewise, we lost a piece of the American soul that day, but how much more will we lose in the slower death of allowing our fears to overwhelm the very beliefs that make us who we are.