We are coming up on the anniversary of 9/11 again. 

On that day when planes fell, and buildings fell, and as a Nation, we in the US sat in our homes, shocked, saddened, upset and angry that anyone would dare to turn a plane and its passengers into a missile aimed at us. Consider that a terrorist organization would think to send two of those four bombs, nearly half their weaponry, not to Washington DC, our seat of power as they could have sent all four to DC, but to two very large buildings full of some of the wealthiest and completely anonymous businesses on the planet? 

It was a year in which a terrified Nation made some very bad decisions in the heat of fear and anger. 

We attacked a country that had NOTHING to do with those planes.  

In doing so, the US and its allies set in motion several chains of events.

We destabilized an entire region.

We tortured people.

We gave fodder to a small, volatile faction of an otherwise peaceful religion that allowed them to expand their reach globally.

We gave our enemies a convenient and visible target to hate.

We injured our relationships and trust with our allies by openly and covertly spying on them.

We injured ourselves by giving our Government the right to spy on us.

We injured ourselves by standing idly by while the same Government provided legal cover to organizations who broke the law and spied on us.

We emboldened and empowered major corporations to aid and assist with our loss of privacy.

Why do I say “We?”
Because when our duly elected Government, and the corporations We work for do things to us, to our friends, to our allies, and to people who eventually grow to hate us, We share in the benefits as well as the consequences of those actions. Regardless of whether We agree or disagree with our Government, our Corporations, our Leadership, The Wealthy amongst us, or the Powerful amongst us, their actions communicate our perceived beliefs to the rest of the planet. 

To people around the globe, our leaders represent who We are.  When factions within our Government make it their sworn duty on television that gets broadcast around the globe to declare openly that they will not work with the current leadership, the clear message that sends to everyone else on the planet, including those who might have reason to despise us for our past mis-steps up to our clearly and deeply flawed actions is this…

The time is now.

The US can’t do anything to stop you because We are too busy fighting amongst themselves to be bothered to do the thing that the US is usually pretty good at doing – stepping in globally and providing aid and support to the victims of those who use their power to oppress the weak.

If you had any designs on grabbing power, taking over a Nation, encroaching on foreign borders, making a power grab in the name of protecting “ethnic” citizens living abroad (like the excuse Russia currently is using), expanding the levels of destruction and oppression in order to free up land held by one ethnic minority in order to make it available for settlement by another ethnic minority with bigger guns and bombs (Syria, Libya, Egypt, and Israel, Iraq, etc), the time is now because We are distracted by tan suits and water bucket challenges and Gay football players, and Beyonce possibly getting divorced from Jay Z. Our Congress, specifically one side of the House, is too distracted by Money and hatred of any idea the White House proposes, even if every single idea was based in or created in a Republican think tank, to be bothered with providing any kind of legislation or support to solve any of the real problems this Nation is facing like Voter Suppression, Uneven Access to Quality Education, Uneven Access to Post Secondary Education, Crumbling Infrastructure, Tax law that encourages the Exportation of Employment to Nations with no protections for its working class, Tax law that enables those who are the heaviest burden on our infrastructure not to pay a single penny to support that infrastructure, Corporate policies designed to downsize a workforce, while overburdening those who get to keep their jobs. Oppressing those who do get to keep their jobs with fear of losing the job, while reinforcing the idea that a 3% raise is more than adequate for bending over backwards to do your job and the equivalent of the jobs of the two or three other people who just got fired. Transferring all of those cost savings over to Sales as bonuses or up the the Executive level because they “made a profit”, usually by cutting workforce and rather than giving the money to the people whose workloads were quadrupled, sending it upstairs to the CEO, or out to the shareholders on Wall Street…

Or in large towers in New York where anonymous companies buy and sell pieces of paper, and in doing so enrich themselves from stolen resources, stolen time, and stolen revenues.

So as our Government, our Corporations, and our people do things in our name, and our planet races towards its extinction in its desire to build taller buildings, exploit more resources, point fingers at the other guy and say, “We’ll stop polluting, but only if They stop polluting first.”  We’ll continue to claim to negotiate a “Peace” in Israel, while our actions and our funding confirms we have already chosen a side in the conflict and cannot be trusted to negotiate impartially. 

Both sides know this already, and the side with more money and guns knows all they need to do is wait and occasionally escalate a conflict and all that they want, which appears to be a country free from the people who used to live there, will come to them. Palestinian land was taken in the name of a book that not everyone believes. Is that valid enough reason for folks to come in, build high walls separating farmers from their water and cutting their fields in half, send people through changeable checkpoints, and start unevenly enforcing building codes so European Diaspora can build gun-turreted castles in the sand, and exclude those of the African Diaspora from the same “privilege?”

So the Palestinians in the desperate act of those fighting an un-winnable war, throw rocks and poorly made rockets at a wall they have no hope of damaging because resistance is all they have left, even if it is futile.

Palestinian land was seized and given as a blood gift in reparation for 6 million lives lost at a time when Corporations, and Government were too busy enriching themselves to be bothered with paying attention to people being oppressed and trampled back in the past centuries’ history, as trains full of humanity, built by companies with names you’d likely recognize today, rolled quietly toward waiting furnaces. Its funny what happens to people when the previously whipped and oppressed are given their own whip to crack?

Part of the reason why the US got into the business of “helping the oppressed,” was in recognition and guilt that We sat idly by and some even profited from it while part of humanity was summarily executed for a crime no greater than being born Jewish. Kind of how Black men are being shipped off to prisons or shot in the street for a crime no greater than being born “Black.” Smaller scale. Same problem.

Over the years and as time passed, the US forgot itself, or remembered its real goal which is to acquire resources and protect the interests of a very small section of the population – the ruling class – and to give the rest of the population   “Democracy” and equal access to “Success” both of which are akin to those with power waiving a dollar just out of reach at a person who needs a lot more than a dollar, but the chance at that dollar is seen as a start, even though we all know that dollar will never get close enough for us to actually reach it and the one person who might get that dollar won’t help the other thousand or million who couldn’t or wouldn’t step on their fellow man to get it.

So as we approach the anniversary, and the weeping and the flag-waving and the vision of those two large towers on fire in NYC begins to invade our senses via the Corporate Run media, and we are reminded of the fear, and the opportunity to unite in our grief, and take a very serious look at who We are to the rest of the world, will we take advantage of it as a moment to awaken our better selves and move forward as a Nation and as a World capable of great and wondrous things?

And maybe ask the question, “Why did they aim at the Towers?”

Or will we pay lip-service to the tragedy, and continue locked in a pointless battle with ourselves while the planet slowly catches fire?