What ‘Way of Life’ Actually Was Changed?

My life will not “change forever” at this point if I do not let it. Why in the world did the American people ever imagine we would not eventually be targeted from beyond our borders?

Have people forgotten that our own home-grown terrorists of the ‘60s and ‘70s bombed government buildings and banks? Or the African American churches that were torched in the South, or the ghastly white-sheeted cowards who tore fathers and sons from their beds in the dead of night to hang them and leave them dangling as examples?

What makes Sept. 11 different?

Is it because we watched the planes slam into the World Trade Center again and again on the news, unlike atrocities about which we only read and never witnessed?

Perhaps.

But I am tired of hearing people say, “Our lives have been forever changed,” usually in a deep and solemn voice.

I want to reply, “Oh, really? You mean you can’t send your daughters to school anymore? You can’t practice the religion of your choice anymore? You can’t walk into an abundantly stocked supermarket anymore? Your dishwashers and washing machines have vanished? Your SUVs have all been conscripted by the Army? Your swimming pools have gone dry? Your electricity no longer runs 24 hours a day? You can no longer bank online? Our hospitals are so crowded with the casualties of war that nobody can get a face lift? There’s fresh powder in Vail and Aspen but the ski lifts have all stopped and you can’t get there?”

Give me a break.

Or do you really mean that egocentric fear cripples your perception of reality? Or, that by acknowledging we are not invincible because we are Americans, our lives have changed? A loss of thoughtless, narcissistic innocence is not a bad thing. It is not a fluke that our Special Forces have trained for years in desert warfare.

If an immediate family member--a mother, father, child, sibling, grandchild or grandparent--died in the World Trade Center atrocity, then your life has been forever changed. Does just knowing that someone--a stranger to you--died, no matter how horrifically, truly change your life forever? Not really. Do long lines at airport security check points really represent change your life?

Knowing that in our civilized country most children who are murdered are killed by family members does not change our lives.

More people die because of alcohol-related traffic accidents every year than in terrorist attacks, and we don’t hear our nation saying, “Our lives have been forever changed” by the pernicious and promiscuous use of that particular drug. People do not stop driving, do not avoid freeways or cross-country trips.

Fear is the enemy and we have only that to fear. If we knuckle under to threats, then those hate-blinded zealots have been victorious.