E-Moment of Silence

Crossposted at thinkyouth.org
At lunch today, a good friend of mine asked our table what we all thought about having a moment of silence during school for the victims of 9/11. Everybody agreed that it was a good idea, but I didn’t say anything. Not because I didn’t agree with everybody else, I just thought the question had a pretty obvious answer. Then he turned to me specifically and said “And I’m guessing that you have something wrong with that…”
I’m not that cynical that I don’t believe in moments of silence, and my friend isn’t stupid, he’s just been sucked in by the Fox News style propaganda that anybody who is liberal or doesn’t support the George Bush 90% of the time is a bad person whose dissent supports terrorism. Of course, that’s crazy talk.
Just in case, let me make this perfectly clear: I support moments of silence on September 11th. In fact, right here I’ll have an emoment of silence. Please take some time to reflect on all the tragedies throughout the world: Iraq, Darfur, Israel, Palestine, and all the rest, but more importantly, let’s remember September 11th, 2001. And not for trying to pin the blame on somebody, but to make sure we don’t forget what that was like to be attacked, and to remember the victims who’s lives were cut short so unjustly.
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I was helping a friend the other day write a story which mentioned September 11th, and we couldn’t think of the right verb for the attacks. Finally, we settled on describing it like a cancer invading the towers that day. And it was certainly settling. I’m not sure that anybody is ever going to find the right words.
America did learn one thing from 9/11 though, and it is something that we need to remember in the coming months as the election approaches and our words get ever more vicious. We can unite as one people, and we are more the same than different.