This will become the 'Zapruder film' of the World Trade Center catastrophe.
I know none of us ever thought a whole ton of things that we are thinking today, but I really never thought I'd hear the term 'forces of darkness' used outside of a fantasy novel, much less by a head of state.
Words have not yet been invented to describe the way this agony has touched me, this nation, and the world.
Hitler taught humankind a great deal about inhumanity, atrocity, and lust for power. These were things we did not then want to learn -- lessons which we would gladly have forfeited had they not grabbed us and shaken us into an unpleasant reality. Humanity paid dearly for that education. But it was worth it.
On Tuesday -- my birthday -- we began a new lesson, similar in its unpleasantness and difficulty to the one Hitler taught decades ago. However, the topic of that lesson was over-grasping political philosophies while this lesson's theme is hateful religious fanaticism. And like it or not, now is humanity's time to learn this particular lesson.
The instructor, probably Osama bin Laden, has aroused in us an epic rage and fury. Thus he offers us a test, with an opportunity to pass or fail: can we feel within our broken hearts the full breadth of our rage, and attend our agony wherever it takes us, even down to our most terrifying depths and back out again, without choosing to kill our souls with hatred?
Whoever did this is a hate-filled person who has a chilling skill for turning others toward hate. His substance is fear, his purpose is evil, and he hates every manifestation of the openness, optimism, dauntless hope, and kind generosity which are, in large part, constitutents of the American personality. He seeks to kill that goodness in us -- not by murder, atrocity, or acts of war -- but by simply making us hate.
I can't stop crying, and that is a good thing. Because once I refuse to cry, I have no choice but to hate, and that bastard is not going to win. Not in America.
And definitely not on my birthday.