the otherwhirled

{REUTERS/Asim Tanveer (PAKISTAN)}

Seven years.

And we are further away from our freedoms than we ever were, at the added sacrifice of almost the same number of soldiers as the number of civilians lost on that fateful day. We are not safer. We are not more complete. And we live under clouds of suspicion and mistrust for even so much as being honest about that.

Today we will remember (and some will no doubt re-experience) the terrible events of this day, seven years past. Today will be a reflective day: a day of consideration, and I hope, of positive anticipation for our futures. Today will be contemplative and also combative. Our pundits will verbally spar not only over the meaning of today, but over the meaning of that day, seven years past. And at the end of today, we will be no closer to the understanding, or the acceptance, of those events than we were on this day a year past.

Today, some politicians will try to convince us that it’s better to be at war than at peace, while others will tell us how they would fight that same war differently. Some will claim we now have more freedoms, thanks to their efforts, while others will claim, truthfully, that we are the furthest away from the freedoms our founding fathers ensured to us than we have ever been. And politicians on both sides of that argument will use today to promote their own ideals and their own messages, because today is that kind of day this year as well.

{let us kneel in prayer}

Today will also be just another day, as we go to work and school, and carry on with our lives while others fight and die in conflicts that have nothing to do with the events of that day, but have everything to do with the enslavement of other cultures to our way of life and the worship of our gods.

For those of us living in the United States, it will likely be a quiet day.

Set to the background music of gunfire and the pumping of oil.

For it is in these gods that those who lead this country truly trust.