It's probably all been said already... another day that will live in infamy. The end of an era. The day America ended.
All in all, really fucking scary. No hijackings for 10+ years. No civilians lost to terrorism for fifteen years. No reason, no reason at all, for us to feel anything but safe here in our pristine country. Karen had left the radio on in the bathroom, and when I got up, the first words that I heard were that a plane had crashed into the Trade Center. I didn't really think too much of it, remembering the incident years ago when a single-engine plane hit the Empire State building. I proceeded to take a shower and I turned on CNN as I was drying off... which reminds me, I've gotta talk Karen into not leaving the blinds open in the living room. Anyway, I turned it on just in time to see the second plane hit the building. I am really disgusted with my fellow Americans. The price of gasoline was immediately jacked up to like $5/gallon... and people were forming huge lines in order to buy it. And talking about the price of gas. People were still burning in New York and at the Pentagon when these crass people were whining about the gas prices. Anyway, the real thing to fear here, I think, is the possibility of the loss of our individual freedoms, the freedoms that we've fought so hard for for so many years... in the name of safety, national safety. The bullets of the jack-booted thugs from the right are just as deadly as the bullets from the jack-booted thugs of the left. So far, blame has not been assigned. A lot of people jumped the gun in the OK City bombing, and they're not doing that this time. Not that it really matters... we need to root out every terrorist organization in the world, because now they've crossed the line... they've killed American Civilians. We need to root them out and cut off their funds, their heads and their hands. Figuratively speaking, of course. Or not. Speaking as an American Civilian, I'm really pissed off. Another thing that pisses me off... I watched GW, and he did just fine. Then I watched, of all people, Newt Gingerich, and he spoke very well too. So I can't really even get mad at them, dammit. So I'm left without a target, as is almost everyone else. To make up for that... I feel like a target. Not me, specifically, nor my family nor my friends, specifically... but me as a human, me as an american, me as a man here in Kansas. I did find out today that Forbes, our local not-quite-an-air-base, is among the top ten military targets in the continental US. I guess that there are things going on out there that we civilians don't realize. Anyways... Shortly after I got to work, we blew the x-ray tube on our main machine. Which meant that we had to work about twice, maybe three times, harder than we wanted to work. No time to sit around and watch TV... we heard scraps from people bringing us patients. I've been watching the TV ever since I got home, of course, and I'm now up to date on everything that has happened. And it seems that all that it would have taken was two guys for each plane. Sure, that's not really very likely... but it is a possibility. Eight guys willing to die for something. There is no assurance whatsoever that there aren't ten or twenty guys out there with A-bombs that don't like us... they just haven't quite got the guts to die to hurt us. But they will eventually be able to find people who will. Yeah, I'm making it sound pretty hopeless, ain't I? I'm really tired of being a cynic, I wish that I could go back to being a simple skeptic, but you can never go back home. As I was getting mentally prepared to leave tonight, we got word that there was a trauma patient coming in via LifeStar. 12 year-old girl, ejected from a high-speed vehicle rollover. Three sisters, another one went to the other hospital where she was essentially DOA, the third also went to the other hospital with minor injuries. I thought that I'd better stay on, although I wasn't on call, but I did have them call the on-call tech in too. It's hard doing a trauma CT alone, and especially hard on a machine that is not really familiar to any of us. So anyway, I stayed until after 19:00. Again, I'm dead tired, but I can't stop watching the TV. And that horrible sight of the second plane going into the World Trade Center building... that will haunt Americans to their graves. The significance of the date... I've heard that it was nine-one-one, but I've also read that this is the day that the UN has declared "World Peace Day". An afterthought, since the cable modem is out again: people who are willing to give their lives for a cause invariable believe in an afterlife. One more bad example of what fucking religion does to the human animal.