Mom & Me Journals Histories: 1999 - 2001

    The most interesting snippet of language I've heard so far regarding the 9/11 affair belongs to my mother. About an hour ago she switched from CNN to a cable channel showing Murder She Wrote. "I've had enough of this," she said as she switched the channel (with some help; she becomes more and more creative on the remotes by the day). Then:

    I was on the living room floor brushing The Big Girl. Mom moved from the sofa to the dinette, I think as a mimed version of her spoken statement. After she'd focused on the television long enough to satisfy herself that it wasn't news she said, "You know, there's something about this whole thing that's been bothering me terribly."
    I went into the dinette to give her my full attention. "About what, Mom?"
    "This 'act of terrorism'." She rolled her hands around one another indicating that she was not using the term she considered appropriate. "I have this terrible feeling that someone cooked this whole thing up to some other purpose. I'm not talking about someone overseas ["overseas" to my mother is anyplace she's not; on Guam, the U.S. was "overseas"]. I'm talking about here." She stabbed at the table with her right index finger. "It just seems to me that this went off too well. And no one seems confused, just angry. Like it was planned from within," she taps the table with her finger again, "this country. Not by foreigners," she qualifies, "by us. Someone's sitting back," she settles into her chair, belly forward, her hands clasped across her chest, delighted Cheshire smile planted on her face, "saying, 'Uh huh. This is going just as I'd planned.' And it's not that Osama man."
    I was blown away. Not that this hadn't crossed my mind, just as it has been crossing your mind that our government is going to latch onto this as just the ticket they need (which is allowing splendid access, isn't it). I had gotten the impression, though, that she was totally involved in the "galvanize the nation" similarity to WWII. She was. She's also recognizing, having gone through the WWII galvanization (which was premised upon an attack that, it has been more than speculated, could have been prevented, although I'm not sure she's aware of that), that something seems, well, her phrase is "wrong about this". She doesn't think there's something wrong just with the reaction. She thinks there's something wrong with the actual event or, at least, what we're presuming and being told about the actual event.
    Her last pronouncement was, "We'd better not treat the Arab Americans as badly as we treated the Japanese Americans, but it looks like someone's just been itching to do that. Now, I'm afraid, they may think they have their chance. I just think this whole thing is something completely different than we're being led to believe."

    I thought you'd find her final assessment (at this point, anyway) interesting.
    In curious point to her fears, at the beauty salon today one woman worried about the fact that her son called her last night to tell her, "If war is declared, I'm volunteering." Another much older woman started spouting scripture from Revelations. All I can say is, it's obvious something is definitely working, awfully (and I mean that word) well and I'm wondering about it all, too.