The opinionated part
There are a lot of things that amaze me about all this.
I've been going through today feeling numb. Just numb. I work in a TV station, so I got more than my fill of footage, opinons and so on. Between all the rumors, and the opinions, it's made me just numb to what the reality is. Being half a country away doesn't help, really. It all seems so unreal.
I'm a little shaken by a lot of reactions on the 'net. A lot of people are screaming "Nuke the (I won't repeat racial epithets)!!!!!!!" But we don't know, as of this moment, know who or what did this. And I see too many people channeling a collective anger into racial violence. There seems to be a want for an enemy that isn't there yet. I'm already hearing about racially motivated beatings in the 'states. And that's depressing. That and a lot of paintball players are begging for the draft to start up so they can go kill the *******s responsible. I don't know if this says more for the youth or the sport, but it's happening stateside.
There's also a heavy knee-jerk reaction. People are buying gas expecting the price to jump. Rumor had it that gas was $5 a gallon in Texas. Problem is that when there's a rush on gas, demand goes up, and prices go up. I saw a guy today with 5 jerry cans on his pickup truck, and he was filling another one. I haven't seen lines for gas that long since the late 70's. (And, yes, I'm that old.) Teh local news here was reassuring people that there was enough gas, and that the prices wouldn't go up if people just relaxed. No luck, they paniced. Why? Becasue, obviously, we're losing our precious oil.
(And, before you Euro people laugh at us, Americans have a roaming culture. We need to move around. The US is a BIG ASS PLACE! So we rely on gas to get places. That and we have a live affair with cars. Ask an American about a '61 Mustang sometime... It's a US thing)
Then there is all the raw footage coming out of the "War Zone". I have seen the south tower hit from teh front, the air, the side, the bottom, the flank, and I think from 30 blocks away. In big cities I'm amazed how many people just happen to have a video camera on them. And a lot of people even managed to call relatives or the police on cell phones from the ill fated planes or from under rubble piles. Just incredible the level of communication and recording that exists in the hands of everyone.
On a personal note, my brother in law is a a Colonel in the army. He WORKS in the Pentagon. His wife called him up this morning and told him about the towers getting hit. She then said to him that she was worried becasue "The Pentagon is a good target too."
15 minutes later the Pentagon was hit. He worked in the spine to the left of the hit wall. He never felt it impact, and only knew there was a problem when it came up on the TV. (Never felt a rumble or anything. the bulding is built like a, well, brick ****house.) He managed to escape unharmed, as well as rescuing a few other people (carrying a child 2.5 miles away from the pentagon at full sprint when tey were told another plane might be coming in... The kid had a ball apparently...)
Ironically, the wing hit was, according to him, the "Home Terrorisim Office". They figure out how to fight terrorisim on US soil. And it was also the wing that was being worked on, so casualties from the Pentagon will be lower than they could have been. As far as I know, everyone I know is safe.
But not everyone is. The body count is unknown, and I think that it will remain unknown forever. At least 200 in the four planes that crashed. They're now saying that "thousands" are dead in the towers, a numberthat I think will climb into the tens of thousands once they figure out how many people were really there and either incenerated in the impact, jumped out of the windows 70+ stories up (which I don't understand why), or were crushed when the buildings collapsed. They will be going through the rubble for weeks, and who knows how long it will take to find the missing.
CNN keeps on replaying the videos of the two planes hitting the towers. It's like watching the Zapruder film at this point, we've seen it and it's not pleasant, but we can't stop watching. They're showing a live shot now, 3:10 AM easern time, what's left of the building is still smoldering. There's piles of papers like snow piled up in the streets.
My point? I guess I don't have one. There's really nothing you can say that hasn't been said, and there's not much you can do other than be concerned and pray, possibly give blood. I'm not even mad, or angry, just numb. It seems that we as a society only come together in moments of massive tragedy. (Challenger, JFK, Oklahoma City bombing, Pearl Harbor, Ect.) It's funny that we can't do the same in moments of global extreme joy.
I'll stop rambling now.
-Tyg