[Ace Mercury]

I was at school at the time. The teacher had the projector going, tuned into CNN because, well, he heard about planes flying into buildings. The national anthem started up (the Canadian one, as it did every morning), and we all stood up. The TV was muted, so all we saw was one building surrounded by smoke. In the middle of the anthem, a silent plume of flame and smoke erupted beneath the second building; the second plane had hit the other building.

I never really felt the impact of the WTC disaster; I thought of it as an isolated incident, something, while tragic, was not a great big deal compared to some of the crises local and abroad. Though I sort of understood the feelings of those involved, I was surprised that most of the country also felt obligated to do something about it, do something for the country and its victims. It's a shame that that feeling has either subsided, or been redirected by charismatic, greedy people to their own ends. There are too who claim to be patriotic (or doers, or activists, or anything), but fail to objectively look at their own actions and their actual cause, instead believing what others say the cause is.

I believe there's an air of revenge in this. Had a great big rock fall from nowhere onto the WTC towers, there would be an outpouring of support to victims, but not the seething anger towards rocks in general. It's not just that the towers fell, it's because someone willed it to happen that really irks people. While there's a target (conveniently, a target politicians can change), there's naive people, who's heart is in the right place, but never bother to check up on the facts.