Politics

Six months today. Might be good to take a moment for reflection when you have a chance.

Not too long ago, as part of my “Where were you?” post, I talked about how I found out about the events of Sep. 11th. Now it’s six months later, and in many ways, I’m still not sure how I feel about the whole thing. I am quite sure, however, that what we’ve seen happen in the past six months is just the beginning, and that the repurcussions are far from over.

More people died that day than many people can easily concieve of — especially, I think, people of my generation and younger. We’d never really seen attacks on this scale before outside of a movie theater, or the confines of a television set tuned to the History Channel. The three generations prior to mine have all had their conflicts — Vietnam for my parents, World War II for their parents, World War I for their parents — but there hadn’t really been anything to really affect the majority of my generation yet. Desert Shield/Desert Storm was about as close as we got, and for most people (at least, most people I know), it seemed more video-game inspired than anything else. Tune into your television each night and get the latest scores. See the video footage of bombs dropping straight down chimneys. It didn’t feel real — it was a world away, and I don’t think I or any of my friends actually knew anyone directly involved.

Suddenly, terrorists hit America — and at first, it seemed that everything had changed. Suddenly we were the victims, in much worse a fashion than we ever thought we could be. Thousands of people dead in the matter of a few hours. Civillians targeted, rather than a military target. Disbelief, shock, and terror swept across the nation — which quickly turned to outrage and a cry for revenge.

Looking around now, it seems to me that the more things change, the more things stay the same.

The changes I see frighten me. As dad and I were talking a bit about in the comments to an earlier post, there’s a patriotic fervor sweeping the nation that seems to be blinding people to the all-too-possible consequences. Our government is passing legislation that appears to be heading us full-steam into becoming a police state, and because it’s all hidden behind a political smokescreen of “Homeland Security”, people are all too complacent about giving up their freedoms. We’ve declared war on a concept — finally, something that, at its core, strikes me as being both stupider and exponentially more brilliant than the long-running “War on Drugs”. Stupider, because of the infintesimal chances of ever ‘winning’ such a war, and more brilliant, because of its ability to capture the public’s approval for anything connected to it. I truly worry about where this nation will be, and what life will be like in another six months, or a year, or two years down the line.

In many ways, though, it’s the things that haven’t changed that scare me all the more. Primarily among these being a repeat of the “video game war” feeling I had during Desert Storm. I don’t know what it was really like, as I wasn’t there, but any time I’ve seen or read anything about the previous major conflicts that America was involved in, I always got a sense that the nation knew we were at war. The draft was active, and at any point, any eligible person could get snapped up to go to war, whether they wanted to or not. Everyone knew someone, or knew someone who knew someone who was fighting. Rationing of important supplies was in place. Women moved into the workforce to offset the number of men leaving for the military. These, and many other things that I’m sure I’ve missed, both helped the nation realize the situation it was in, and helped band everyone together towards a common goal.

Today, however, for the majority of people (including myself), for the most part, it’s like this war doesn’t exist. It’s the occasional headline in a newspaper, or story on the evening news, but again, it’s back to that “video game war”. There just isn’t that national feeling of being at war — it’s happening somewhere else, to someone else. Over here, life goes on, and it’s just another day. I’m not sure how better to put it like that, but that’s the feeling I get…and I’m not sure I like it, or what it may mean in a much larger sense.

Last week I was walking down the street and saw the headline “U.S. Suffers War’s Most Deadly Day” with a sub-heading detailing that there were 7 deaths when a helicopter was shot down. This may be overly cynical, but I have to admit my first thought was of some grizzled old Vietnam or World War II vet seeing that and laughing in derision. While I certainly don’t mean to belittle or demean the deaths of those soldiers — 7 deaths? There were probably times in previous conflicts where making it through a day — or sometimes even hours — with only seven deaths would have been practically cause for celebration. Today, it’s front-page, banner headline news. Maybe I’m being too cynical about it — I’m certainly not wishing for more deaths — but when the same report mentions that “100 to 200 enemy fighters had been killed,” it’s obvious that the low number of deaths on our side aren’t due to less overall casualties. I’m kind of losing my drift on this particular topic, but hopefully you got my point. If I’ve stumbled too much, let me know.

Anyway…. I guess that’s a lot of what’s on mind mind these days concerning all of this.