9/11
I
was born September 11th, 1938. Time Magazine's Man-of-the-Year
in 1938 was...Adolf Hitler. Henry Luce, Time's publisher, was a
Synarchist*, a Skull and Bonesman (Yale, class of 1920). An anti-democrat,
he believed only an elite class of Guardians was fit to rule the world.
A Fascist sympathizer, Luce admired Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco. He
hated FDR and Churchill. In 1938 Hitler had taken Czechoslovakia and occupied
Austria. Neville Chamberlain was busy appeasing him. Winston Churchill,
then out of office, said of the British ruling elite, "They take
their weekends in the country, while Hitler takes his countries on the
weekend."
1938 was also
the year Don Budge became the first tennis player in history to win the
Grand Slam. My parents were tennis fans and nick-named their new son "Budge,"
which I lived with till I escaped to college. I couldn't play tennis worth
a lick, and I hated the name.
In 2001, my
63rd birthday fell on a Tuesday. That morning I sat down with a cup of
green tea to prepare a class I would teach that afternoon. I turned on
the TV, and the south tower was already ablaze. I remember thinking, "Boy,
there'll be some expensive remodeling on those floors." Suddenly
a vicious, black wasp appeared to flit across the screen. I wasn't sure
if it was in my house or in Manhattan. The north tower erupted. The newscasters
were eerily silent for seconds before a female voice screamed out. With
the world, I watched mesmerized as the horrors unfolded. Down went the
north tower. Just as the south tower was imploding, my phone rang. It
was my son Joe calling from Alaska to wish me happy birthday. Joe is a
wilderness guide and pilot. He had just landed a party of bear hunters
on the Kenai Peninsula.
"Happy
Birthday, Dad," he said, his cell phone crackling.
"Nice
of you to call, Joe," I said, "but you won't believe what I'm
watching on TV. The tip of Manhattan looks like an A-bomb went off. The
World Trade Towers just collapsed." He didn't believe me and had
to call his wife in Anchorage to confirm it. His float plane, like every
plane in North America, was soon grounded. He was stranded with his clients
in the Alaskan wilderness for two days.
In 1938 Time
Magazine opined that Adolf Hitler might well be Man-of-the-Century,
but after the war began, Henry Luce and his magazine fell silent on Fascism.
He died in 1967. He was 69. Hitler died in a Berlin bunker in 1945. He
was 56. The real Man-of-the-Century turned out to be Winston Churchill.
A female critic once told him, "If I was your wife, I'd poison your
tea." He replied, "Madam, if you were my wife, I'd drink it."
Winston Churchill died in 1965. He was 91.
Don Budge
just managed to live out the century. In December 1999, he was badly injured
in a car crash in Pennsylvania and died the next month. He was 84.
It's now 2005.
Osama, who ordered the Trade Tower attacks, is still on the loose. Bush's
war in Iraq still hangs in the balance. A "democratic" Afghanistan
is still the number one opium producer in the world. The newspapers also
report green tea will prevent prostate cancer. My prostate was removed
last year.
Joe's business
in Alaska prospers. He recently took George Herbert Walker Bush and Chuck
Yeager float fishing on the Talachalitna River. They caught huge king
salmon and fat rainbow trout.
I'm retired
now. On my birthday, I don't watch replays of the 9/11 disaster. I don't
care to. My sister and I have lunch once a month in St. Paul where we
both live. She can't play tennis worth a lick either, but she does drink
tea. And she still calls me Budge. I don't protest.
*
Google SYNARCHY and read about this ideology that links Plato,
The
Knights Templar, the anima mundi, Indian prana, the orgone
force, Tibetan Shambhala, the sacred path of the warrior, Skull and
Bones,
Fascism, and its latest incarnation, the Bush/Cheney/
Rumsfeld/Wolfowicz
cabal.
