9/11 loves that she can walk around the memorial to the old World Trade Center without passing through all the security. She loves that it's a park at the new World Trade Center, where people picnic, laugh, goof off, all the things that everyone should do in a well-maintained plaza in the downtown of a giant city. Tourists should smile when they take pictures, extending their selfie sticks to full telescope to try to capture the entirety of one of the giant waterfall holes. 9/11 knows that some will be somber, especially those who knew the dead, who know the injured, who are themselves sickened or injured from the day. She's just so tired of everything being so grim, of the unrelenting, ongoing insanity that is associated with her name.
What 9/11 appreciates is that, even on this 14th anniversary, she is able to wander the grounds, watching people, occasionally brushing against them to get that electric rush of feeling like she belongs. She knows, though, that this is a brief respite, a year to breathe, before the election next year when she will be dragged around and bought and sold and beaten and bled and fucked roughly by all the candidates, all competing to see which one can use her worst, which one can exploit her and expose her and force her to be part of every perverted idea that sprouts in their mad brains, like dungeon pornographers who think they're making art when all they're doing is torturing people so others can get their rocks off.
Already, the signs are there. The odious Ted Cruz declared that 9/11 “should be an opportunity to resolve that we will not allow political correctness or complacency to lull us into the same false sense of security that al Qaida exploited fourteen years ago." The desperate Rick Santorum tweeted, "The fitting tribute to the 9/11 victims is to at least be truthful about the enemy we now face." The terrible Lindsey Graham hashtagged, "As we #NeverForget911, we must work to defeat the #RadicalIslam terrorist threats facing our nation today." Somehow, 9/11 thinks, it doesn't occur to anyone that "the enemy we now face" is not a result of the attacks 14 years ago but of the response by the United States. 9/11 is so tired of trying to explain that Iraq had nothing to do with her.
Most absurd was Jeb Bush, who proclaimed, "I'm proud of the president of the United States at the time who unified our country in a way that was desperately needed and created a strategy to keep us safe." 9/11 had to laugh when she heard that, ruefully, remembering all the times she was pushed to her knees by George W. Bush and told, "You better swallow." God, we are damned to repeat, aren't we, she thinks.
As usual, tonight, 9/11 will drink herself to sleep. In her darker moments, she wishes that another attack would happen on U.S. soil, not that bullshit Benghazi thing that it pains her to be associated with. She knows it's wrong to want another incident. She knows many people will be killed or hurt, but she wants another date to take her place, to be invoked whenever some leader wants to claim the mantle of toughest defender of the nation. She wants another date to have to be pushed into the spotlight, to be ass-fucked by whichever politician needs some of her flesh. She wants to be forgotten, even as a nation that conveniently forgets everything else keeps saying they will never forget this one goddamned thing.
She will be grateful when the night passes. She will be grateful when the memorial lights are turned off. 9/11 wants to lay low, gather some strength, get healthy, even, before this time next year when she will be made an election's designated whore once more.
