kind of obligatory
I kind of wanted to just leave yesterday be, but in the end, I figured that it was probably best to counter all of the blindly patriotic tackiness and/or resurgences of anger from so many other people with my little piece of ten years after.
Where I was when things went down doesn’t really matter. I don’t even remember, really. I was at work. What I do remember, though, is feeling sadness at the loss, but mostly worry – not so much about another attack or fearing for my own safety, but more about how the country would respond, and the many, many ways such a response could be screwed up.
From this point a decade hence, I can say it probably could have been handled better. My kids have never known a time when their country wasn’t at war; a time when the number of troops deployed to war zones wasn’t larger than the population of some US states; a time when so much of the social and political structure of the country wasn’t based on the idea of fear.
I remember a time when Americans weren’t afraid. When we were mostly optimistic about things, and were focused on trying to make things better for the future. I hope that in the next ten years, we can get a little closer to that.
