9/11/06: Business as usual

9/11 @ 5... What have we learned?

That our American name-branded media and slight-of-handed politics can weave a symbolic yet shallow charade, a sappy sidelight to the more motivating forces at work in the world -- that greed for wealth and power and emotions (namely the aggressive ferocity of FEAR) and tribal superiority are still primarily what make the world what it is.

That there is something deepset in the human psyche about that primitive sort of tribalism, that "Us Vs. Them" still has a much stronger hold on people than "Why can't we all just get along?"

That America had a great chance to "go positive" with the wave of sympathy it received after 9/11/01 and that it's government, it's elected officials, the sad products of it's infirmed and spoiled democracy, proceeded to blow that chance.

That we had sympathy on our side, and now we (mostly) have shame on our side.

That we could have sent beans and bread and bicycles and books instead of bombs.

That the drums of war are better financed and have friends in so-called "higher" places, places that, as with our Vice-President, attract not lofty idealists but, as in Iraq and Iran and Nazi Germany and so many other countries we profess to abhor, the lowliest of the low.

That Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson would be as outraged as Robert Bird at the current state of our democracy and our sorry state of international affairs.

That we could have taken the high road and instead, after a slew of on high and almighty speeches, went below the belt.

And that today, as for the last several weeks, the build up to this anniversary has been one of sentiments both soft and edgy, echoes of the Them and the Us. So many Americans seem to be waxing sentimental when still the harder lesson is that we should feel ashamed.

That assessing and accepting such feelings of shame, complicity and responsibility, both in the past, the present and the future are difficult things to do.