I was sitting down to check CNN as my lunch was getting ready. Like the day nine years before when the Challenger exploded, the scene before me made no sense, because my mind refused to countenance what I was seeing. Then, again like the Challenger disaster, it gradually sank in. Something horrible had happened.
What is most odd, and frightening, about our current climate is how this single event, rather than serving as a caution to those on the right to temper their rhetoric, and consider the dangers of talking about tyranny and the end of America and whatnot, has become a focal point of so much discussion. There are those out there who wish to own this event, and celebrate the perpetrator, Timothy McVeigh, as a great patriot. That should be enough of a caution.
Times are passing people by at such a rapid pace, the desire to turn the clock back to the previous decade seems overwhelming. Many desire a return to the prosperity of the 1990's. Some others to Republican ascendancy. Still others want to delegitimize yet another Democratic President by any means necessary. Our times are not theirs, however. Our challenges are greater precisely because we need to move forward rather than glance back at what has been.
Yet, we should never forget what one person, intelligent, resourceful, and bent on destruction, can do. The fallen in Oklahoma City - a city some of whose residents I have come to know and love - should be a constant reminder that "government" is not some abstract "thing", but people just doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. Sometimes, "government" includes a space for the children of these people, and on April 19, 1995, there were children in the Murrah Federal Office Building. Faceless bureaucrats? Rather, our neighbors.
