Thoughts While Dreading the First Anniversary of 9/11

While watching TV in my classroom with my students, nearly a year ago,

watching jet planes fly into the World Trade Center towers over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, then watching the towers collapse (too quick and yet so slow),

I was asked, Now what’s going to happen? And in reply I made the following three-part prediction:

First, I said, the heated discussion about the need for a nuclear missile defense will cool

because who needs nukes when all you have to do is hijack a jetliner loaded with fuel–

Second, I continued, goodbye civil liberties:

the Bill of Rights will come under attack over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again,

by those who have taken an oath to defend the Constitution,

because they consider such rights mere niceties,

fine for warless times, perhaps, but a hindrance when our homeland is threatened by labor unions, or Japanese,

or Communists, or Black Panthers, or Daniel Ellsberg, or George McGovern’s Democratic Party, or drugs, or Islamic terrorists, or mothers trying to smuggle their bottled breast milk onto a plane, or by anyone who disagrees–

And third, I concluded, it won’t be long before you hear that someone or some conspiracy within the Federal Government was responsible for the attack,

either by planning and paying for it directly or by simply knowing what was going happen

and failing to act.

And the worst thing about the third

is you won’t be able to confidently declare that a such an outrageous suggestion is patently absurd.

And now, nearly a year later, how accurate did my predictions prove to be?

Sadly,

I think I got three out of three

(though, as I recall, a feeble attempt was made to keep the missile defense on the table, it soon slipped off the radar as the budget deficit ballooned and the stock market tanked, so that now the only nuclear bombs

we’re supposed to be worried about are Saddam’s)–

And I think I’ve come to realize why, historically,

prophets (not that I’m claiming to be a prophet) have always been so miserable and cranky and low on yuks:

too often, being right just plain sucks.

-Dirk Stratton