Monday, September 11, 2006

Lux Æterna Luceat Eis, Requiem


5 years ago this morning, I was working the Medicare section of Carondelet Manor extended care facility. There were three men making a big mess, painting the hallways while I was trying to do my own work. The atmosphere was one of controlled pandemonium, with the confused residents wandering off at times and the other residents off doing interesting activities that made me have to look everywhere for them in order to give medications or do treatments.

All that changed at 7:46 AM CDT, when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. I heard the news on one of the radios the painters were listening to as they did their work. We were all stunned into absolute immobility, then the real pandemonium ensued. Those who did know what was going on were remembering how they felt when they heard about Pearl Harbor, and those who did not know what was going on thought it was Pearl Harbor.

The difficulties got worse by the minute. United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:02 AM CDT. There was now no question that we were under attack. The painters found two more radios and tuned all three on different stations, and tuned every TV on different stations so there was a cacophony of news that was so overwhelmingly emotional that it was difficult to breathe, let alone work and comfort and calm 45 residents.

I spent that whole day trying to calm myself and work out how I was going to talk to my son, who was 8 years old at the time, about what had happened. This was not easy, especially when those incredibly insensitive jerks insisted on surrounding us all with sound and visuals of the explosions and the collapsing towers, even when they knew that it was being patently harmful to the residents for whom they supposedly worked.

By the time American Airlines Flight 77 supposedly crashed into the Pentagon (there is some strong evidence that whatever hit the Pentagon did not have wings, since there is actual video from a gate camera of the event, not to mention the fact that there is no damage on the building beyond the cylindrical wound in the exterior) at 8:37 CDT, there were so many agitated residents that I had to turn off the TV's and radios to try and get people under control. Of course, the idiot men had to keep turning them on again, since they didn't have to deal with the aftermath. It was unbearable.

I was saddened but proud of the people on United Airlines Flight 93 when they wrested control of the plane away from the hijackers and crashed it into the ground in Pennsylvania. They sparked the beginning of the wave of righteous anger that fueled the American experience, and, unfortunately, ultimately skewed us away from the truth and toward the liars who were masterful manipulators of this raw emotion.

It is time for We the People to wrestle the hijacked Ship of State and return it to the course we should be flying. It is up to us now.

Let's Roll

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