semi-obligatory 9/11 entry

[cellio]

So tomorrow is September 11th. The media has decided to mark the day by showing lots of specials and retrospectives and whatnot. If you watch TV tomorrow, you're going to see the planes hitting the buildings every damn ten minutes.

This is appalling. It's sensationalist crap that is a disservice, not a tribute, to the victims. At least give them the option to end their mourning and move on, for crying out loud. When I die, I want my survivors to remember my life, not the way I died. Especially if it's tragic. Maybe I'm weird, but I don't think I'm completely alone on this one.

9/11/2001 was a tragedy. But it was far from our only tragedy, and certainly far from the world's only tragedy. It was an act of hatred, but there are places in the world where hatred is recurring and systematic. We could, in general, stand to get a lot more perspective.

On the other hand, if we fail to learn from this, if we fail to empathize with those who face terrorism on a weekly or daily basis rather than once, or if we fail to distinguish between evil individuals and their races or religions, that will be a tragedy far more serious than planes flying into buildings.

I pray for a diminishing of hatred. I also pray for justice, that those responsible for terror -- all terror, not just ours -- be brought to account. And I pray that this doesn't take as high a price in liberty here in the US as I fear it already has.

But I will not build a shrine to the dead, and I will not spend the day watching the carnage on infinite loop, I will not attend any of the memorial services being held around the city tomorrow, and I will not change my daily routine out of fear. Living normally is the only response that makes sense to me.

Tomorrow, God willing, I am going to go to work, study talmud with my rabbi, and socialize with friends. Just as if tomorrow were the 10th, or the 12th.

Comments

[goljerp]

I agree with the sentiment of your entry. I, personally, went to morning minyan at my shul, which included some poetry and other rememberances of the day at the end. I'm also going to a bris of a baby whose father ran into the towers because he was worried that his recently married wife was there. (Obviously he ran out again, and she was fine). But I'm not going to watch TV. And I don't think that we should protect our society by destroying the most valuable parts of it - its freedom and openness.