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Time to say goodbye to year tainted by terror
© St. Petersburg Times Notice how quiet the tabloids have been this year with their usual year-end psychic predictions. It would have been nice, at the end of last year, to know where we would be at the end of this year, but, monumental efforts and Monday-morning quarterbacking notwithstanding, we didn't have a clue. Nobody said we would be at war with anything more threatening than boredom, and nobody said a robust economy would suddenly become a struggling one. Nobody saw gas prices going down, the prime rate all but disappearing and joblessness growing by leaps and bounds. Nobody saw us afraid to open our mail and looking up with anxiety when planes and helicopters flew over. Nobody noticed that some of the terror we were told, the year before last, would be in our streets in 2000 would be there for real in 2001. And nobody looks terribly interested in going out on a shaking limb to forecast what horrors, or for that matter what glories, await. We have, as we understandably do in times of crisis, surrendered more of our constitutional rights, or at least bowed to a more rigid interpretation of what is allowable in the areas of search and seizure and habeas corpus. An airline pilot can tell us to get off an airplane simply because he or she doesn't like our looks or because we make other passengers uncomfortable. (I've been making other passengers feel as uncomfortable as possible for years. It's one way to keep them from talking to me.) Total strangers go through our dirty underwear when we get on airplanes and some other forms of mass transportation, and people with credentials (if any at all) they obtained by taking courses advertised on matchbook covers search our purses and backpacks and confiscate our umbrellas on the way into sporting events. This, so far, has been the year that terrorism worked. People were handcuffed for playing office jokes with white powder. F-16s forced down private airplanes seen as threats to national security when they were involved only in a little good old traditional Florida dope dealing. People have been insulted and spat upon, and in one case even killed by their neighbors because of their skin color, accents or choice of head wear. A whole bunch of persons of almost instantly forgotten European heritage suddenly hunkered down and said everyone different should change or leave, and never quite got it when American Indians heard them and snickered. Was it all bad? Of course not. Wonderful stories of courage and self-sacrifice have come out of the smoke and dust. The bravery of a handful of young men bringing down United Airlines Flight 93 before its terrorist hijackers could cause even more deaths and destruction stands, for all of its sorrow, like a beacon telling us that when it is time to do what one of them, Todd Beamer, said, then it is time. "Let's roll." We finally got around to paying attention to the daily -- not just during this disaster but daily -- sacrifices made by firefighters and police officers and other improperly recognized mainstays of our social structure. We finally sent our young people off to a war that has overwhelming public support and in which only the most out of touch can ask, "Why are we involved?" More important, we are asking ourselves some of the hard questions about who we are and where we are going as a nation -- questions we have conveniently ducked for years by quickly changing mental channels as soon as they arose. I can tell by my mail, even that from those who sometimes violently disagree with me, that we are, as perhaps never before, becoming sensitively aware of exactly how important are our relationships to each other and to our government and to the documents that set forth a framework for conducting those relationships. So please join me Monday night in saying goodbye to a year that brought us unbelievable pain leavened with just enough goodness and decency to give the new year a chance to rise above it. I for one will be saying good riddance to the experiences, but not to the lessons learned. And, please, don't drink and drive. Now more than ever, we really can't spare the loss of any of you to further senseless tragedy.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
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Times columns today Jan Glidewell Ernest Hooper Gary Shelton Hubert Mizell Robert Trigaux Helen Huntley Robyn Blumner From the Times North Suncoast desks |
