By: Jennifer Richardson Holt
Fair warning: what you read here today may be emotionally charged, and my opinions will be very passionate. The stances will likely be unwavering and unapologetically so. If you are a regular reader, I daresay you could safely jump to some conclusions about the type of content you may be getting yourself into.
And you have every right to utterly disagree with me. I do request that you remember that I also have every right to feel that you are wholly and terrifyingly wrong.
We are thankfully still living in a country where we can actually voice our thoughts freely. I cannot say how long that will be the case, since it is growing more and more apparent that there is a disconcertingly expanding component of this nation that is strongly in favor of silencing opposition.
That sounds menacing, I know.
It should.
You may also think I am being overly dramatic. I really wish I were.
The weight of this week is hard to shake.
In two consecutive days, we have the one-year anniversary of the public assassination of a man who was a proponent of civil discussion; a man who insisted that when people stopped talking, opposing sides would dehumanize one another, leading to violence, which he very often and very clearly said was never the answer.
He gave a microphone to anyone, despite them being diametrically opposed to everything he stood for. And, in his wisdom, his warnings uttered some strange form of dark prophecy, because the opposing side—the side that he insisted have a voice so that violence was not resorted to—murdered him.
And though only one person pulled the trigger, a horrifying percentage of that side rejoiced in his violent, bloody death and threatened similar violence toward those who don’t agree with them.
The man who insisted that his own opposition not be silenced was silenced by his opposition, who ironically found it all very justifiable.
This same opposition that preaches tolerance only tolerates what they like and agree with.
The levels of twisted irony in it all are at a height that makes the sun look so close we should add it as the 51st state.
Then, the very next day, we have the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11.
As a person who lived through that day, who remembers what it felt like, I don’t think I personally will ever be able to revisit the events of that day in my mind without having my insides twist. There are very specific, graphic details that are forever burned into my mind.
There are a couple in particular that rip me apart.
Firstly, the phone calls.
Hearing someone call their loved ones from a plane or a building they know they will not be escaping is gut-wrenching. But then there are the calls of someone begging for rescue from a voice on the other end that knows it isn’t possible, sometimes ending with a final scream as a building collapses around them.
Those calls destroy me.
And then there are the jumpers.
I don’t have traumatized enough language to appropriately describe them. I don’t really want to be able to discuss them. I fear that being able to say very much about those who made that choice without completely malfunctioning would lessen my humanity.
And that brings us all to this day.
Ironically, the slogan for such a powerful event is “Never Forget.”
But my heavens, how we have forgotten.
There are those who say 9/11 didn’t happen. I just today heard some people say that the terrorist who organized the attacks was a hero. Many people want to embrace the ideology that murdered thousands of innocent civilians and make it the rule of law for America today.
We aren’t the united nation we were on 9/12/2001.
I don’t know that we ever will be.
We are far too focused on pointing fingers and being offended. There are those who are convinced that any voice that disagrees with them should be disallowed because, well, for no other reason than the fact that they don’t like it.
They say, “Words are violence,” which basically means, “I don’t like it when people don’t say I’m right and the best thing since sliced bread, and anyone who doesn’t do that should not be allowed to talk.”
There are even those who don’t just want to silence other opinions. Some want to do away with America as we know it altogether. They want to form some new society in which they have things the way they want them.
Now, true, their utopian societies exist only in their deluded little minds and, if put into practice, would be the stuff of nightmares. But you can’t tell the people of today that, considering common sense and all ability to critically think are as easy to locate these days as a cowboy who doesn’t wear boots.
We have lost our way.
It took a national catastrophe to give us some semblance of patriotic unity. It took something that severe to shake us to our senses.
I fear that, at the rate we are going, it will take something far more tragic and disastrous to make us remember what it was that we were to not forget.
Because at this moment, in the minds of far, far too many, the memory is lost.
God, wake us up.
Wake us up to remember our agonizing history, so we are not doomed to repeat it.
Prose and Possibilities 