I went down to the "ground zero" site two years ago for the fifth anniversary, about a month-and-a-half after my wife and I moved here. It was the most disgusting and offensive thing I have ever witnessed.
I wrote about it (part 1 & part 2) in my regular blog.
The whole area gets taken over by a bunch of people pushing their stupid reactionary political agenda. These are people that try to own the day for themselves, even though the majority of them are people who have no personal connection to the event. They lost no family or friends in the World Trade Center because they never knew anyone living in New York.
They are people that are here to push their xenophobic agenda.
These are people who claim to have an affinity to New York, because it was attacked by Arabs. The truth is, they are individuals who hate everything that this city stands for - from multiculturalism to gay rights - and would never have entered this Sodom & Gomorrah had the towers not been destroyed.
What should be a day of reminding ourselves to help one another has instead become a day of jingoism and trinket-selling.
And vehicles that looked like they got pooped on by an American flag and the NRA:
And people screaming at each other. The 9-11 conspiracy crowd likes to show up. Yet another group that gets misidentified by the media, who claim that they are extreme left-wingers. All you have to do is spend a few minutes talking to them and you find out they are right-wing religious nut jobs or libertarian types. The main leader of the movement is a Texan named Alex Jones who refers to Bush as a Trotskyite and even accuses neocon William Kristol of being a Communist. I talked to many of the conspiracy theory crowd that day and they all spoke like this.
So, sorry conservatives, but those nut jobs belong to you, not us.
I haven't gone down there on the anniversary since that one, it is just too annoying, seeing my city get co-opted like that.
Like I said, we have only lived here for a couple of years, but my love affair with this city started in 1991 when I came here for the first time during college. I fell in love with New York from the moment I first laid my eyes on it. For what it is, not what it symbolizes.
But I don't pretend that the events of September 11, 2001 had anything to do with me. None of my friends who were living here at the time got hurt or killed. I lost no one that day.
Neither did most of the people who have kidnapped 9/11 for their agenda.
The two candidates appeared together today in a show of unity and political ads were taken off the air.
Tomorrow, McCain's campaign will go right back to suggesting Obama is not patriotic and saying that he is a sexist elitist who wants to kill babies and teach our five-year-olds how to have sex.
National unity. Sigh.
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