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Terror Thursday
I was woken far too early on Thursday morning, just as I was on a different Thursday 13 months ago, by a friend with dread in her voice. Memories have flittered ceaselessly through my consciousness since: the panicked search for a missing Baumfrau on that July morning, the pain in Paintbrush’s voice as he mourned the senseless deaths in his beloved Madrid, staring at the exterior of St. Paul’s in the rain last May, Discourse’s exhaustion as she recounted another night of arson and destruction in France last fall, taking off various pairs of sandals and sneakers and boots as I’ve gone through airport security over the years, the relief in my father’s voice as he finally reached me on that September night five years ago. The Twin Towers collapsing as I watched on CNN.
I have tried for the last three days to write something intelligent, something meaningful, something pithy about the terrorist plot discovered last week. (Obviously, I am a writer who has chosen the wrong medium.) I may yet, one day, but not today.
All I have to offer at this moment are my resolve and my my defiance. There might have been a time when I felt some sympathy for those claiming to right the many wrongs of history, justified their misguided methods because of their alienation. But blowing up a bunch of airliners over the Atlantic while wrapped in the self-righteous rhetoric of religion and victimhood is not, has never been, and never will be any kind of justice. Wanting and planning to kill innocents for nothing more than their identity is nihilism wrapped in a faded promise of martyrdom. And the more they proclaim they greatness, the clearer it becomes what poor excuses for human beings they are.
I’d tell the bastards to go to hell, but it’s pretty evident that they’re already headed there. And thank the God they claim to serve for that.
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