One Month Later

by Marko Peric

A word of warning: when I wrote this article I wasn't in the best mood. It's not funny. It's not happy. It's somewhat bitter and angry, especially down toward the end. I talk about unpleasant things. I use visceral imagery. Some readers may find the content disturbing. Others may find it disjointed and confused. You might not want to read this. In any case, you have been warned.

Okay, so this is 34 days after September 11. I was going to write this on October 11, and I even made a new file and titled it, and then found myself completely uninspired. So much has already been written about this from every angle imaginable. And I do mean every angle -- I've seen a commentary done in Dr. Seuss style. So what do I have to add to the noise? Someone as opinionated as me surely has something to add.

The thing is, I don't. Not really. I've talked about this twice before. The first two predictions I made in my second rant have by and large come true, although those weren't exactly longshots to start with. As for the third prediction, it's more of a long term thing. We'll see how things unfold. I will say that freezing assets and accounts of known terrorist organizations and fronts is certainly a positive step toward making terror uneconomical.

So what affect has all this had on my life? In truth, not very much. People talk about how things will never be the same again, and that might well be true if you live in Manhattan. But I feel largely untouched by this. I'm not sure if this makes me jaded or merely detached, but my life has not changed in any significant way. I go to work at the same time with the same people. I come home to the same place, I sleep in the same bed. I hang out with the same friends. My life is very much the same. Am I afraid? Heck no.

If the events of September 11 had happened closer to home I'm sure I'd feel somewhat differently. But it didn't, and so I don't. With the distance I have from the situation I can try to look at this with a non emotional view. What happened in New York and Washington is nothing short of horrible, but horrible things happen all the time. Hundreds of people died yesterday in Nigeria when Muslims turned against Christians under the guise of protesting the attacks on Afghanistan. This is part of ongoing strife in the country which has left thousands dead in the last two years. Have any of you lost sleep over this? What about the civil war in Guatemala? That war ran for 36 years, and 200,000 people were killed, over 90 percent of them by the military. Entire villages were eradicated on mere the suspicion of rebels being harboured there. This war received little or no attention from the North American media. This was a terrible, terrible thing. But it didn't happen in New York City.

I don't want to reduce the significance of what happened on the 11th. It was a disaster of unparalleled magnitude for this day and age and region. But the North American media has an insane tendency to grab a topic and run with it. Remember Gary Condit? I suspect the people at CNN don't remember him either, even though five weeks ago he and his missing intern Chandra Levy were their lead story. No one cares where Ms. Levy is now. That's old news.

Am I criticizing the media for its shortsighted navel gazing? In part yes, but I'm criticizing all of us for putting up with it. We like to have our news handed to us in nice little bite-size chucks with the emphasis on style over substance. But I'm getting way off topic here. This is supposed to be about September 11. The point is that what happened was bad, terrible, awful, and any number of other adjectives you want to toss around. But this too shall pass. People are running around in Chicken Little fashion expecting the sky to fall at any moment. But I don't think the end of the world is at hand quite yet. A bunch of disgruntled and disenfranchised madmen and thugs are what is at hand. I think we've exaggerated their power and importance even more than they have themselves. I don't consider my self a violent person, but I think the world will be a better place when someone puts a bullet through the back of bin Laden's head.

Well, it looks like the anger I talked about earlier has arrived.

Next time I'll get back to being funny. Maybe.