Estate Planning Vault

9/11: Pause for a Moment of Deep Thought

September 11th is an ominous date. It is a time to mourn the tremendous loss of life in the moments that pure evil struck our hearts. Just as my father paused on December 7th to remember the day the music stopped for his generation, I will stop and think about what happened on that beautiful morning six years ago.

What followed that attack on the twin towers for me, is the deep blue sky free of all aircraft. Reflection. Family. Grief. Fear. Hope. I suspect all Americans took inventory that day about life and what is truly meaningful. We are optimists. But today, we are a far different people than we were before.

America is a propagandist's paradise. Our President can only speak in well-rehearsed sound-bites written by others. He is no leader. Money and power are the true rulers of our country. Our President pins medals on the inept, sleeping watchdogs who were paid so well to keep us from just such events, and failed. Worst yet, he called these pathetic failures "heroes," cheapening the term.

Our media sells pills to old worrywarts. They echo the messages of fear and insular thinking. Us. Them. They used to be the Fourth Estate of government - the court of last resort, the voice of the powerless. Now they seem part and partner of the team in power - not the objective critics they once were, who told it like it was, whether we wanted to hear it or not.

Congress is a highway billboard for term limits. If there were criminal penalties for hypocrisy, half or more of our elected officials would vote from prison. There are enough of them going down for less lofty, real offenses, as it is. They are failures too. They should have demanded accountability for the monumental lapses that allowed that September strike on our heart.

We are a changed country. The most powerful nation on earth - caught by surprise by a rag-tag band of medieval extremists. We ban ordinary water from our planes, make old people take off their shoes in a laughable mockery of security.

Meanwhile, the brave soldiers who fight the wrong enemy in the wrong country without proper amour or equipment, come home in flag-draped coffins. On this September 11, mourn both them and what our country has become. Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington and Roosevelt must be somewhere, weeping.