Death cult USA

I've got a pretty nice routine going on here at Falling Downs. Don't be envious. It took a lifetime of back-breaking work at the Black Lung Foundry and Budd Automotive and General Electric and Frankel Steel and Harjim Machinery Works and Saint John Shipbuilding and a dozen other shops large and small to get here. I'VE PAID MY DUES.

I get up when I get up. I walk the hounds. I drive into town to get a coffee (Timmies extra large with a half milk) and the papers. I take the hounds in the back of the truck. Along the way we generally stop, weather permitting, so the dogs can have a swim, either in Lake Charles or in Georgian Bay. Then back to Falling Downs for a good read on the porch. Lots of reading this past weekend was about the 9/11 murders.

I think that's probably as good a way as any of labelling that terrible Tuesday in '01. The 9/11 murders. They were murders, after all; near 3,000 in a single day.

At this time of year the Canada Geese are getting ready for the Big Fly. In a few short weeks they'll be heading south to the parks and beaches of the Carolinas and the Peach State and points further south, there to befoul the beaches and the parks and the lawns and the playgrounds with their infinite supply of fresh goose shit.

When we spend an entire day celebrating the deaths of the almost 3000 who died on 9/11, we forget how many have died since. Since 9/11 we've seen around 175,000 more murders. We've seen about 350,000 suicides (and isn't it crazy that you're statistically twice as likely to die by your own hand than at the hand of that dark skinned stranger looking at your window right now?) We've seen at least 400,000 traffic fatalities.

Dead is dead. Every death is a loss. We're going to miss the friend or the brother or the father or the aunt or the sister whether they died in a car crash or in the twin towers. Dead is dead.

The geese in the marshes all around here have been practicing up for the big trip. They haven't got the big "flying v" quite figured out. But they're coming along. A few more weeks and they'll have it down. Luckily they'll have to over-fly the hunting counties in Ohio and New York and Pennsylvania and Tennessee. That'll winnow their numbers and put a few geese on the dinner tables.

Celebrating the less than one percent of Americans who have been victims of terrorism in the last ten years keeps the fear alive. Fear is very important. The proud New Hampshireman who puts grandma on the plane for Phoenix, knowing she will have her crotch groped by the TSA folks before she gets on the plane, has forgotten "live free or die". Had he not forgotten he would walk to Phoenix with grandma on his back. It's the fear.

THE FEAR.

Americans have been going to little league and high-school football and stock car races in the thousands and the hundreds of thousands in the past ten years. They've been going to NFL and MLB and NBA games without consequence. NASCAR and the NHL haven't suffered a single terrorist attack.

Maybe there's nothing to fear.

That's why it's so important to keep fear alive. Lets read that list of victims' names one more time.

Let's keep fear alive.