Thoughts on Pivotal Moment

To the Editors:

As I write this, it is 9 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2001. Already the date Sept. 11 has taken on a distinct meaning, one which future generations may remember alongside Dec. 7. Yet underneath this meaningful date lies a dangerous spirit. It was present after Pearl Harbor, just as now, and the danger is simply this: we know not what we do. Pearl Harbor produced internment camps; it bred racism and jingoism and military might and two thermonuclear devices dropped, according to reason, to end a war — but also dropped, according to emotion, as a fist of vengeance.

We know not what we do, at least not yet. In 50 years, will our grandchildren look back at us and shake their heads at the blindness of our foresight? Will they be forced to judge us in ways that will make us angry that they are our posterity?

I hope not. I hope that we as a nation can understand that the answer to violence, while sometimes violence, is never abject escalation. The answer is never the pet project soapbox, the theoretical working-out of the ills of modernity — as the socialists attempted against fascism, only to become the wolves themselves once the immediate threat was gone. The chest-thumping is happening again, even on the campus I still call home.

Real people have died. More real people will die in the days and months to come. More ideologies will rise and fall than can stand on the head of a pin — and so, too, there must be angels. If we can be those angels for one breath, for one blink of an eye, maybe we will be all right. Our descendents will have reason to praise us. And the fallen will rest proud in the knowledge that we have done right by them.

–Kevin A. Munoz
OC ’95