Sometimes you fly so high, so fast it makes you sick....

[captainsblog]

...you won the battle and lost the war.

In this case, it wasn't the flying that made me sick, but the landing. Into a country that, at times and in places, I don't even recognize as my own anymore.

Read.

Read the story from Sunday, September 11, 2011- of an American citizen, of Arab-Jewish descent (along with two men Indian in appearance), pulled off a plane, cuffed, stripsearched and scared to living shite, because some bubbas in the back thought they Saw Something and thus Said Something.

Silly me. I thought flying on 9/11 would be easy. I figured most people would choose not to fly that day so lines would be short, planes would be lightly filled and though security might be ratcheted up, we’d all feel safer knowing we had come a long way since that dreadful Tuesday morning 10 years ago.

But then armed officers stormed my plane, threw me in handcuffs and locked me up.

Burly men playing soldier with real guns. Faceless, humorless bureaucrats treating her like a terrorist and, thus, treating her like a subhuman because of how she looked.

They  put me in the back of the car. It’s a plastic seat, for all you out there who have never been tossed into the back of a police car. It’s hard, it’s hot, and it’s humiliating. The Indian man who had sat next to me on the plane was already in the backseat. I turned to him, shocked, and asked him if he knew what was going on. I asked him if he knew the other man that had been in our row, and he said he had just met him. I said, it’s because of what we look like. They’re doing this because of what we look like. And I couldn’t believe that I was being arrested and taken away.  When the Patriot Act was passed after 9/11 and Arabs and Arab-looking people were being harassed all over the country, my Saudi Arabian dad became nervous. A bit of a conspiracy theorist at heart, he knew the government was watching him and at any time could come and take him away. It was happening all over. Men were being taken on suspicion of terrorist activities and held and questioned–sometimes abused–for long periods of time. Our country had a civil rights issue on its hands. And, in the name of patriotism we lost a lot of our liberty, especially those who look like me.

In the angry, mindless moments of post-9/11/01 shock, I had similar evil thoughts. I wanted our Cowboy Cheerleader-in-Chief to bomb Mecca back to the Stone Age in retaliation. I didn't know who the enemy was and I just assumed, stupidly, that it was everyone. For me, that passed in about a day. These guys, not so much.

I sat down on the metal cot that hung off the wall. It had a thin, green vinyl mattress–mattress is a generous term–that offered no comfort. It was about a 6-by-10 cell, the concrete walls were painted a light yellow but were streaked with black dirt. The floor was some sort of stainless steel, and a stainless steel toilet that has probably never seen the good side of a scrubbing brush, instructed me to keep holding my stretched bladder as long as I could. Near the ceiling above the toilet there was a video camera.

We left our civil liberties at the door along with our brains. The Press Secretary to the President of the United Fucking States told Americans "that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do."  Watch lists and "papers please" laws got passed without a whimper.  Emma Lazarus's welcoming words started spinning in their above-watery grave.

I stared at the yellow walls and listened to a few officers talk about the overtime they were racking up, and I decided that I hated country music. I hated speedboats and shitty beer in coozies and fat bellies and rednecks. I thought about Abu Ghraib and the horror to which those prisoners were exposed. I thought about my dad and his prescience.  I was glad he wasn’t alive to know about what was happening to me. I thought about my kids, and what would have happened if they had been there when I got taken away. I contemplated never flying again. I thought about the incredible waste of taxpayer dollars in conducting an operation like this. I wondered what my rights were, if I had any at all. Mostly, I could not believe I was sitting in some jail cell in some cold, undisclosed building surrounded by “the authorities.”

We bought a lot of United We Stand merch back then, but did we come together as One Nation? Find a common purpose, as we did in the Just War of 60 years before? No. We were ordered to go shopping. So the terrorists wouldn't win.

In the end, the heroine of our piece was vindicated, apologized to, and even given a ride to her car waiting in the airport parking lot.

[T]he male FBI agent was waiting accompanied by another FBI agent–possibly the head honcho on duty. He said the three of us were being released and there was nothing suspicious found on the plane. He apologized for what had happened and thanked me for understanding and cooperating. He said, “It’s 9/11 and people are seeing ghosts. They are seeing things that aren’t there.” He said they had to act on a report of suspicious behavior, and this is what the reaction looks like.

He said there had been 50 other similar incidents across the country that day.

One for each of the stars on the American flag.

How fucking patriotic.

Comments

[angledge.livejournal.com]

Osama bin Laden is also spinning in his grave. But he's dancing for joy. We have played right into his game.

[bktheirregular]

There are some bloody-minded monsters out there. And I mean those who are absolutely convinced that they, and they alone, represent the True America.

[greenquotebook.livejournal.com]

Beautifully said.

I find it particularly notable that, on the day when it mattered, they couldn't scramble ARMED fighter jets to prevent the disasters, but they managed to do it for a bunch of people who unwisely chose 9/11 to join the mile-high club.

[thanatos-kalos.livejournal.com]

Ah, Detroit. Of course. I'm so glad to have escaped that racist cesspit after only a year...

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

I think it's the Grosse Points and Bloomfield Hillses that pose more of the societal problem.

Plus, it could just as easily have happened here- and probably did, if not this time, many times over the decade.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Even beyond our borders, I should add, it's a problem. The minister who married us, still at that church 24 Septembers later, recounted spending time with her husband in Switzerland this summer. They rode up an elevated railway to the top of the Alps in the company of a couple from Ohio- both casually but nicely dressed, he in a nondescript baseball cap. They met again at dinner- she, now, dressed to the nines and he in full Sikhwear.

When Susan asked him why he'd dressed as he had on the train, he sighed; "It's just easier this way. Otherwise it causes so many people so much trouble."

Game, point, match Osama. No love, no love, no love.

[nentikobe.livejournal.com]

I once threw a drink over a pack of girls who were hassling a sikh family. (Large hawaiian punch.)

I reminded them as I left that Timothy McVeigh would not have set off any of the flags. White, non descript.

I think that these days evil looks awfully WASPish.

Aside, I spent a few seconds enjoying your icon.

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

Sorry, for some reason my brain is speaking in musicals.

All l can think of is Cabaret. Remember the single most terrifying song?

The sun on the meadow is summery warm
The stag in the forest runs free
But gathered together to greet the storm
Tomorrow belongs to me

The branch on the linden is leafy and green
The Rhine gives its gold to the sea (Gold to the sea)
But somewhere a glory awaits unseen
Tomorrow belongs to me

Now Fatherland, Fatherland, show us the sign
Your children have waited to see
The morning will come
When the world is mine
Tomorrow belongs to me

The babe in his cradle is closing his eyes
The blossom embraces the bee
But soon says the whisper, arise, arise
Tomorrow belongs to me
Tomorrow belongs to me