Reflections from Ground Zero

Yesterday, I visited Ground Zero for the first time. There's a new PATH (transit) station there, and construction is underway for the planned memorial ... but the chief emotion I felt there was not anger, or even really sadness. I was more puzzled and frustrated than anything.

Why is there so little access to the site? I understand that it's an active construction site, but it seemed that The Powers That Be went through some extraordinary steps to shield from view the site itself, and I found that troubling. I managed to get one picture of the actual construction (right), but I felt kind of intrusive, or like I was doing something I shouldn't have been doing ... as though someone wants us to feel shame about the place.

We shouldn't be ashamed of Ground Zero, and we shouldn't be obscuring it from public view. Likewise, we shouldn't be using it as a rallying point for killing Brown People and anyone who disagrees with the Bush crime syndicate, as so often happens, thanks to the Chinese Ribbon Magnet Lovers and the Flag Lapel Pin Brigade and all the other faux patriots out there. As racymind said to me this weekend, we need not only to defeat neoconservatism wholly and completely; we need to crush it under our thumbs, bury it in the ground, and salt the earth so that it never grows again.

In short, I miss the time -- before the PNAC-sponsored destruction of America began in 1994 -- that this actually meant something: