The days of our lives!
One would not think that February twenty sixth had any very special significance to American history. Perhaps looking out over the longer view, it does not. But as we approach the end of this shortest month of the year, in our recent and turbulent history, a couple of things that have occurred on this date that might give us pause.
It was just twenty years ago on this date that Osama bin Laden’s terrorist army launched their first attack on the parking garage of the World Trade Center. That event has been completely overshadowed by what happened over eleven years ago when bin Laden sent another group out to destroy the towers on September eleventh of 2001. It is interesting how quickly these lesser dates fade into the history books as they are over taken by events that are even more horrible to behold. Over a thousand souls were injured and six killed on this date just twenty years ago but no one of any consequence can remember who they are because there is no place left to commemorate and remember them due to what happened at the same place later on. And, it goes further than that! On another now forgotten date that has been overshadowed--April nineteenth, 1995--a home grown terrorist named Timothy McVey blew up the federal building out in Oklahoma City, killing over one hundred and fifty souls in the process of that act.
On a now suddenly lesser note, it was just one year ago today that the neighborhood watch leader--George Zimmerman--took it upon himself to provoke a barely seventeen year old transplant from the Miami ghettoes--Trayvon Martin--into a fight by stalking him as the youth returned from the neighborhood Seven/Eleven with some skittles and some tea. As we watched the morning shows retell this tale we wondered why it did not mean as much to us as it once had. We realized as we penned this piece that the Zimmerman/Martin affair has already paled in comparison to what happened in New Town, Connecticut just over three months ago when twenty very precious six and seven year old children were slaughtered by a nineteen year old with enough firepower on him to challenge a platoon of regular soldiers.
The names and the dates are piling up and being superseded as the horrors mount and mount and mount! And, we are in a war for our civility and our sanity that we fear that we are slowly losing on a daily basis as this new century goes forward. When you cannot change something for the better, it will slowly change you for the worse as you become numb to the things that you cannot control.
Of all of the dates mentioned here the one that will remain in memory until it is superseded is probably the one that occurred in September of 2001. Another is the date that the twenty were slaughtered. They are different kinds of events but the one thing that they have in common is the very violent nature of what happened on those days.
Violence seems to define us now!
The world looks at an America that came to its aid in the Second World War and through the Cold War as a strange and alien place where any soul can be gunned down for any apparent reason and there seems to be something in the law that gives them a reasonable chance to get away with it. George Zimmerman is staking his future on something called the Stand Your Ground law that, if upheld, will allow him to walk away without even a trial after a child man in search of some peace in life could not even walk home to watch television with his family without being profiled and confronted by a man who had no fear because of the weapon that he carried that he knew would make all of the difference in the end no matter what he did along the way. The lies that he told afterward are of no consequence at all!
We have watched the nation stock up on more and more weaponry since the New Town disaster because people are afraid that the government might ask them to stop buying weapons that are really designed for use in war. Perhaps the populous is ahead of the government because they realize that we are in a war, as imaginary for some as it might be. Tell that to the parents of the kids in Connecticut, or those who grieve again privately over those that they lost twenty years ago today. Or to those out in Oklahoma who await that day in April that rolls around every year when they can remember those, including several in a daycare located on the first floor, who were blown to oblivion by a madman who took matters into his own hands and redefined home grown terrorism for all of us. Or, to the parents of Trayvon Martin who await, a year later, for some sort of closure to what happened to a child who aspired to a career in the aviation industry.
Or to those anonymous ones who see their children killed each and every day somewhere across America in a parade of violence that may never end. I am but an individual, however, I don’t think there will ever be another day that goes by when I do not think, at some point along the way, of those twenty children, and, by extension, of every other child who has died needlessly along the way. And I believe that I pray, each and every day, that we do not allow anything like that to ever happen again!
But we are so helpless against it all!
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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