TEN YEARS LATER

It was ten years ago today my county was traumatized by the worst
attack on our people on our own soil in my lifetime.  Over three
thousand innocent lives snuffed out by cold-blooded killers driven
by hate and an inhuman political/religious agenda.

It is ten years later and I am still angry beyond my meager ability
to express it fully.  But my anger goes beyond that I feel towards
killers already beyond my reach and, hopefully, suffering in a Hell
worse than I can imagine.

I tried to write today’s comments a dozen times over the past three
days and now in the wee hours of this Sunday morning.  On this day,
my thoughts should be with the victims of the attacks and all those
they left behind...and they are.  But there is also that terrible
anger I feel in so many different ways.

An aside.  Every time I tried to express myself and failed, I took
my blood pressure.  I don’t know why I did that.  I’m not usually
that obsessed with it.  Every time I checked, my blood pressure had
gone up a few points.  Getting these words down might be some sort
of survival mechanism kicking in.

I am angry that Saudi Arabia got a pass in the aftermath of those
attacks because of its special relationship with the Bush family.
The obscenely wealthy potentates of that nation had been sponsors
of terrorism in the past and are likely still sponsoring terrorists
today. 

I am angry that President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney,
and others of their cell lied the United States into an unnecessary
war against a country that did not attack us and, in doing so, are
responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths.  I am angry that
they undermined my country’s highest moral traditions by torturing
our enemies and, often, those who were not our enemies until we did
torture them.  I am angry that they will likely never face justice
in a court of law, though the noted prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi put
forth a most compelling case in his 2008 book, The Prosecution of
George W. Bush for Murder.

I am angry that our soldiers, those who lost lives and limbs doing
their duty, have been treated so shabbily by those in power.  I am
angry that New York’s first responders have been denied the medical
help they deserve by bastards who fall back on the usual ignorance
of the right: that the science on the cause of their cancers isn’t
complete yet.

I am angry at how the right took the fear and uncertainty that we
all felt ten years ago and used it to fuel a repressive agenda that
trashed civil liberties, vilified all who expressed views opposing
theirs, and fomented a religious intolerance that has grown into a
dehumanizing of any who stand in the way of their agenda.  We saw
Muslims, foreigners, immigrants legal and otherwise, liberals, gays,
teachers, union workers, and, ultimately, even policemen and firemen
cast as the villains in an mean-spirited agenda determined to make the
most wealthy even more wealthy and widen the already cavernous gap
between the obscenely rich and the rest of us.

I am angry that bigotry, greed, ignorance, and lust for power drive
the Republican Party and their insane Tea Party cousins...and that
many Americans refuse to recognize this.

I am angry that the Democrats have been such moral cowards and, all
too often, co-conspirators in that bigotry, greed, ignorance, and
lust for power when they should be opposing the agenda of the right
at every juncture and with the same anger that courses through me.

I am angry that voter repression is being visited upon citizens by
the Republicans in power, using the flimsy paranoid context of the
voter fraud that has only rarely been proven and then only in the
most minuscule of evidence. 

I am angry.

I am angry at myself for not being able to give proper remembrance
to those innocents who were murdered ten years ago today and whose
families will mourn them forever.  I am angry that I am compelled
to use the anniversary of their deaths to express myself in such a
manner.  And I am saddened that this might well be the best way I
can honor their memories.

Know this...

There is grief in my anger.  There is fear in my anger.  There is
hope in my anger that my country might yet be turned from the
cruel and ignorant path the right would have us walk.

Ten years ago, our world changed.

There is still time to change it again.

This time, for the better.  

© 2011 Tony Isabella