posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
selkie at 11:12am on 07/07/2005
selkie at 11:12am on 07/07/2005"I don't want to send you out into the world today," I told my fiancee this morning.
"Everyone has to send someone out," she said, uncharacteristically sober. And then she went to work.
But I've lost my feeling that anywhere is safer than here. It's replaced with the thought that we live in a bad time, that I'm too young to have known such things happening, that I don't want to bring up children in a world like this.
Striking at people who are on buses and down in the trains at nine in the morning because they have to go to work to feed their families just seems to be something worse than an act of war. And I know there was someone off to work this morning who absolutely hated their vile, soul-poisoning little office job, but who got up and did it five mornings a work anyway because there was someone else who needed them and who made everything worth it. I know there was someone who had gotten up too early to stand on their feet all day at a job where the work was too hard, really, for what was in their pay-packet at the week's end; but they were already planning what they'd do with the bit left over, a bottle of wine or some roses or strawberries for the person they loved. I know there was someone whose entire mind was on the baby they'd just left in daycare, and whether that was really a fever this morning or just a summer cold. I know there was someone who'd just gotten a new iPod, or started a new book, or was shoving their tongue against a toothache they really should get around to seeing about.
How is it holy or honourable to end the lives of people like that? What does it buy in the promised paradise, the ambush and murder not of heads of state, not generals, not public policymakers, but just common women and men whose only fault was stepping off the moving staircase and into a train at the wrong second?
I don't understand.
"Everyone has to send someone out," she said, uncharacteristically sober. And then she went to work.
But I've lost my feeling that anywhere is safer than here. It's replaced with the thought that we live in a bad time, that I'm too young to have known such things happening, that I don't want to bring up children in a world like this.
Striking at people who are on buses and down in the trains at nine in the morning because they have to go to work to feed their families just seems to be something worse than an act of war. And I know there was someone off to work this morning who absolutely hated their vile, soul-poisoning little office job, but who got up and did it five mornings a work anyway because there was someone else who needed them and who made everything worth it. I know there was someone who had gotten up too early to stand on their feet all day at a job where the work was too hard, really, for what was in their pay-packet at the week's end; but they were already planning what they'd do with the bit left over, a bottle of wine or some roses or strawberries for the person they loved. I know there was someone whose entire mind was on the baby they'd just left in daycare, and whether that was really a fever this morning or just a summer cold. I know there was someone who'd just gotten a new iPod, or started a new book, or was shoving their tongue against a toothache they really should get around to seeing about.
How is it holy or honourable to end the lives of people like that? What does it buy in the promised paradise, the ambush and murder not of heads of state, not generals, not public policymakers, but just common women and men whose only fault was stepping off the moving staircase and into a train at the wrong second?
I don't understand.
To play Devil's Advocate a second:
Governments only have power because we give it to them.
That said, the terrorists are completely and totally wrong: fear doesn't make us dislike our leaders. For the most part it makes people cry like babies and cling to the leg of whoever says "I can fix it" -- which is of course the person in power. It's why there's talk of a conspiracy theory saying that Bush had a hand in getting the WTC to go down (it's a pretty ridiculous theory, based on the rubble footprint and claiming dynamite had to be used for some reason.)
But if they could keep it up continuously we might get tired of our leaders' policy and try someone else who might be less against their views, and thus less likely to get us blown up. Of course, clearly they cannot keep it up continuously . . . but it's a hell of a lot harder to blow up Bush than it is to blow up random people on the street . . .
(no subject)
The point isn't to kill the common people because they're guilty. The point is to use the deaths of the common people against the heads of state, who are guilty (or, well, perceived as such).
This isn't comfort, and I'm sorry for that.