It’s been 5 years and everyone has this on their mind.
5 YEARS AGO… we were still reeling from the judicial-political fiasco that was the 2000 Presidential election.
5 YEARS AGO… we were living our lives like nothing was wrong and it would take a miracle to wake the citizens of The United States of America out of their sleepwalking day.
5 YEARS AGO… we all became brothers and sisters regardless of age, race, and religion.
My how things have changed in 5 years.
I was talking to my mother last night and she was lamenting on the fact that, 5 years ago, people were going to church (pardon the upcoming pun) religiously and everyone seemed a lot nicer to one another. 5 years later? Not so much.
It would be easy to write about the chaos, destruction, cowardice, and heroism displayed 5 years ago seeing as every television station, radio station, website, and BLOG in the free world seems to “rewinding” to that day, but I’m taking a different tack. Basically we know what happened 5 years ago. We know that we never caught those responsible and we know that there are vast and numerous conspiracy theories regarding the destruction in New York City and Washington, D.C. What we forget, after all of that, is the fact that, for a shining few months, we were as one.
Not to be funny, but even the Yankees were cheered in Boston after 9/11 folks… that’s saying something.
I find it absolutely saddening that it took a tragedy of such magnitude to bring our country together and, 5 years later, we’re back at each other’s throats like nothing ever happened. Where did the goodwill go? Are the police and firefighters still revered? The answers are “I don’t know” and “Not a chance,” respectively.
As humans, our nature is to be pricks. Yes, there are shining exceptions, but the majority of us won’t let someone in on the Interstate. We won’t throw a few bucks in a bum’s hand. Hell, we barely want to be civil to complete strangers who haven’t ever done anything to us personally! Please note I said “we” because I constantly find myself speeding up on I-95 so people won’t cut in front of me and I never give any money to beggars because I think “Ya know, you could really have a job if you wanted one.”
We’re all assholes folks; it’s a fact that I have come to reluctantly accept. I mean, I always accepted that I was an asshole, but I used to have higher hopes for the rest of my fellow citizens. After 9/11/01, I was terribly depressed. It wasn’t because I was there or knew anyone that was there, but it was simply that I never fully grasped just how much hatred and evil there was in the world before then. Before, everything was comically overblown in the movies and I made that distinction between “reality” and “Hollywood.” After that day, the line was horribly blurred for me. I still can’t watch any specials about that day, nor can I bring myself to watch any movies about it either. I really just try to remember that there ARE good people in the world like the firefighters, police, EMTs, and the multitudes of volunteers at “Ground Zero.”
Where have the heroes gone? Nowhere folks… they’re all still here doing extraordinary things on an ordinary basis. It’s the rest of us that have changed. When we threw parades for the firefighters, now we throw bricks. When we cheered the cops, now we jeer. Society has slipped back into its miserable slumber of derision and we’ve forgotten how to co-exist again. I’m not saying that we need another wake-up call, because it seems that the wake-up call we received 5 years ago should have served, but I think we need to open our eyes and be a little nicer to our neighbor.
To all of the fire-fighters, police officers, emergency medical technicians, and our military men and women on Patriot Day:
Thank you.