Please remember that you are choosing to read my opinions.

It was a very sobering day for many of us when we heard what was going down. I sat on the floor watching the aftermath. I didn't go to school that day. I figured that watching history unfold justified my absence. When I woke up my mother was watching it on TV, shocked. We all knew nothing like it could ever happen, so when it did happen it blew our minds. I passed hours in front of the television that day, teary-eyed, wondering what would come of this. Nearly 3000 lives lost. Nearly 3000 lives taken. What retribution is there for this? How many people that are more innocent would die in the witch-hunt that would inevitably follow?

The events that happened on September 11th, 2001 are etched in my mind. Endless clouds of putrid, billowing smoke and dust. And everyone was asking "why?" Flags waved everywhere afterwards. An almost sickly amount of red, white, and blue arrogance hung in the air for months. How the terrorists must have despised us. I despised us after a while. Ignorance inevitably followed.

Kill the sand-nigger-towel-head-foreign-speaking-unchristian-extremists!

People who love America as much as any of us were targeted and made to feel unwelcome. Ugly words and ugly sentiments. Racial stereotyping. Accusing suspicions. Religious persecution. Pretty soon the lines were so blurred between who was and wasn't a terrorist that people in the middle of nowhere were worrying about the safety of their drinking water, power supplies, airports, and shopping malls.

Green, blue, yellow, orange, red! Terror Alert!
Buy more duct tape! Buy, buy, buy! Just don't stop buying!

Our fears were played upon like a fine piano. Various government officials told us to be alert, while the newscasts told us why. Looking back it was all very silly, but we were living in new times after 9/11, as we've been told time and time again. Post-9/11 times. In one day, we went from safe to absolutely naked to the threat of our enemy. The enemy became everyone who didn't look American, didn't speak like an American, or didn't act like an American. It was to be expected from people who were not used to feeling unsafe. And now...

O say, does that star spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Where are all of the American flags? Replaced by a magnetic support your troops ribbon. Replaced by another cause. A smooth transition to another war. Where is the fear of terrorism? Replaced by fear that the gas prices will keep going up. And so life went on as no one thought it would in the big city, and the rest of the country moved on as well. I no longer think about what happened on that occasion every day. I still feel for the people who lost loved ones in the World Trade Center, and I feel bad for all the people who were uninvolved with the 9/11 attacks that were violated, persecuted, or murdered in the name of justice.

Today, let us mourn the loss of innocent lives.