Dude, I can�t believe some people. This is the kind of thing that makes absolutely no sense to me. It�s like Dennis Miller. People who are basically decent and compassionate abandoning all principles in the face of September 11. How can anyone justify it? Aside from the fact that I most emphatically do not believe that President Bush has made us safer or will ever make us safe, I can�t understand why that would be the only thing people would worry about. Granted, if we�re not here anymore �cause some maniac blows us up, the question of whether or not Biff and Johnny can get married will be moot. But, conversely, if there�s a danger that we�re all going to be gone soon, shouldn�t we make our country the best possible place to live for everyone while we�re still here? I think so. Of course, the basic flaw in these neo-Republicans� thinking is that, without a doubt, not one person or program or weapon will make us safe. As a country, we will never, ever be completely safe. It�s just not possible. No one is ever completely safe from anything. I don�t mean to wax philosophical, but it�s like Bette Midler says in The Rose: �the soul, afraid of dying�never learns to live.� I mean, if we can�t learn from Bette Midler, who can we learn from?

The thing is, the woman in the article is right. There are �September 10 people and September 11 people.� And I think September 10 people have greater vision. We see September 11 as, not an aberration, but one event in a long line of many events. It�s not that I believe we should have been attacked or that the deaths of thousands of people weren�t tragic. I was shocked and horrified, just like everyone else. I also know that the people who did it weren�t �evil� and that, as a nation, we are not �innocent victims.� I do believe that when a country, even one as big and as powerful as us, keeps pissing people off left and right with sweeping arrogance and disregard for humanity, well, you reap what you sow. What�s surprising about September 11 is not that it happened, but that it hadn�t happened before, and with much more frequency. It makes me nervous even to type that because I know that some people reading it (my whopping readership of two � thanks, sis!) would be all �You�re unpatriotic and a terrorist!� But anyone who isn�t hysterical and has any kind of analytical mind would see that is not what I�m saying at all. It�s amazing to comprehend but people are still full on hysterical about September 11 and it�s been three years. I can�t believe that woman in the article actually said the words �We can�t get into those things (human rights violations, men�s oppression of women) until we�re safe.� Safe from what?? Islamic fundamentalists (much like Christian ones) are single-minded and full of hate. Not every person in the world (or in Iraq) who hates us is an Islamic fundamentalist. Is President Bush going to be able to guarantee in a year or in ten years that no one hates us anymore? Because that is the only and I mean ONLY way we are ever going to be safe from any kind of attack. And again, why is that the only thing we should worry about? Never has anything good come from deciding to put everything else on the back burner until �just this one thing is done.� It doesn�t work when I try to do it at my job and I can�t imagine how it would possibly work in politics and running a huge country. Not to mention that these things (abortion rights, rights for gay people) affect people�s lives every minute of every day. A pregnant fifteen year old girl isn�t worried about Osama Bin Laden, she�s worried about how she�s going to go to college if she has an infant by the time she�s sixteen. These September 11 people are never going to be satisfied because there will never be a guarantee that it won�t happen again. So when is it that we�re going to get to all this other, secondary stuff? When President Bush decides to invade another country that had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks?

I�m not saying that we should ever forget, we absolutely shouldn�t. But we should acknowledge and move on. September 11 will be part of our history forever. It was a huge, big thing. But it's not the only thing. We need to use it to show us what we can�t do anymore. Increasing security in an attempt to prevent terrorism is obvious and smart. But that�s not all we should do. We have have have have to look at why many many people are ready to die in order to show us how much they hate us. �Evil� is not good enough. It�s an easy way out and allows us to keep (once again) from examining all the shit we do to other people and other nations. Shit that the government pulls that, if we just dug a little deeper, we would all know about. There�s plenty of crap that they go to great lengths to hide, but most of the stuff we don�t know about because we just don�t care. People have their SUVs and houses and jobs and they literally don�t think about anyone else. It seems that even a lot of poor people just aren�t political. They don�t examine our legal and social systems to find the flaws, they just want someone to blame. The media gives them a scapegoat (whoever is convenient at the time: black people, Mexican people, women, nameless, faceless vaguely Middle Eastern people, etc.) and they bitch but they go on living just as they always have. We�re all guilty of it. But if more people just cared a little bit more, I think a lot could change.