First there is the call from my wife - emotional, intense, speaking under her breath because she's in a meeting...
A plane has crashed into a building...
Then the dark sick void somewhere low in my chest...
My child goes to school on the East Side, only blocks away from 72nd and York...Get over there, get over there!!
Just like last time.
Before I go, I check the TV. The same black smoke pluming over the Manhattan skyline. The same shaky cameras. The same flames billowing from the side of a New York City building... Dear God don't let there be people jumping.
As I'm throwing on my bike helmet, there's suddenly information. It was a helicopter from the East Side heliport. It looks like it was an accident.
An accident. One aircraft. Only an accident.
That's what they said last time.
Before the second plane hit.
When will the second plane hit? Or the third? Or the tenth? Will it be some aerial version of suicide bombers in Baghdad, upgraded for our superior hi-tech culture?
The school calls. They're proceeding with the school day. My daughter is going to her soccer game as usual. On Randalls Island.
Where she will see the black smoke pluming over the Manhattan skyline.
Just like last time.
She's a New Yorker. She remembers. We all do.
But what's not the same as I watch the first responders responding, the brave firefighters going yet again as they do every day into a burning building, never knowing what to expect, the Red Cross making preparations for further calamity, all doing all the good things they do for us...
...are dreadful, cynical, vicious, vile thoughts. Will the building collapse in its own footprint? (It hasn't so far...). Was this what Rove meant by an October Surprise (Not big enough dude...) Who does this benefit politically? (Focus off Foley, focus off North Korea...) Who was in the plane and why was it first identified as a helicopter? (Or was it a drone?) Whoever's to blame, who will be blamed? Could it be that swarthy Mid-Eastern-complected man being manhandled on York Avenue by two NYPD officers? What if he is connected to the crash? What if he's a diplomat with a million-dollar apartment who wants to check his home? What if he goes to Guantanamo anyway?
Not just like last time.
Toxic thoughts. Toxic feelings. Toxic suspicions. We live in a toxic society, poisoned by fear and fear-mongering, the lies and violence and lawlessness and arrogance of a dreadful, cynical, vicious, vile administration.
Sure it all turns out to be a very different tragedy. An accident after all.
My bad? I don't think so.
Welcome to 10/11
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