London Calling

Okay, fine. So the sleep didn't come. Just a lengthy nap.

I suppose I should comment on my impressions of the big news from Blighty this morning and get it out of my skull.

The truth is, I can't wrap my head around it. If I had been blogging on 9.11.01, chances are good that I wouldn't have managed to say much about it right away.

I woke up earlier than usual to do a morning show that I customarily only ever hear the last two hours of, tops. I was already nervous because of the circumstances that had me in the studio, which are of a personal nature that I'm not posting on the freakin' internet. And the first thing I saw at 0530 on the tube was footage of people being hauled away from the scenes of explosions in London.

I remembered the same feeling of helplessness many of us had on 9-11. For my part, at the time, I was a very recently single parent living with my parents at the age of 31...hardly holding a firm self-opinion about my abilities to provide for The Boy yet. I was already seething with anger and disappointment at the collapse of my marriage, and worse still, I couldn't deal with the woman in question face-to-face because she was a thousand miles away. Then I wake up one morning to find the towers burning, the Pentagon burning, a field in Pennsylvania burning, rumors of truck bombs in DC...total media anarchy.

What a world, I thought. Just in time for it to change all over again. Such is the realization of growing up. Even for those of us who waited too long to do it. The world alters around you. You can deal with it, or you can let it kick your ass like a bully on the schoolyard.

After 9-11, terrorism was the buzzword on everyone's lips. Even if your thoughts lean towards government conspiracy (and to a degree, mine do, expecially about the Pentagon). Then came Bali. And Spain. And a suicide bomber a day in Israel. And then American soldiers were racing across Iraq so they could stand around and get blown up every once in a while.

Yet somehow, as a whole, we found ways to make jokes about the color-coded warning system. We forgot about terrorism...at least a little...because it was happening in other places again. We Americans look out for own like no other, which is why 95% of us can't tell you where Darfur is and why it's important.

But now, our only real buddies (geopolitically, anyway) have been tagged with the spray paint can of mindless hate, directly and in a way a simple whitewash can't cover. On the day following a major celebration of an international trump card and chest thump.

Pissing off Britain. Pissing off America.

It doesn't seem to scare anyone anymore. We're not dealing with the kind of enemy we've faced before. Because the enemy really isn't US. It's a small percentage of one particular religion that suffers a huge stain because extremists pissed in everybody's Wheaties.

But oh-ohhh...The Guns Of Brixton...