I'm scared. [View All]

[deadparrot]

I'm 18 years old, and what I'm seeing now is, with the possible exception of 9/11, one of the scariest moments of my life. It's scary because of what my fellow citizens are going through, and it's scary because everything is so uncertain. It feels different.

A major US city is, for all intents and purposes, gone, at least for a substantial period of time. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around that fact. Hundreds, if not thousands, if not tens of thousands, are dead. A million or more don't have homes. Tales of horor are coming out; who knows if there's any truth to them?

Gas is skyrocketing to record levels, with no relief in sight. One can assume that this will have a measurable effect on our economy and the ability to transport goods across the country. Bad news for an already weak stock market.

Iraq has been temporarily forgotten, but it's still there. Four soldiers dead today.

We have a president who goes on five week vacations, plays a guitar while millions suffer with varying degrees of loss, and who devoted a whopping minute and twenty-five seconds to addressing the tragedy.

I expected the media and American people to be complacent about what's going on, even approving of Bush. It has happened, to a point, but I'm feeling the rumblings of discontent, also. Take tomorrow's NYT editorial, or the words and actions of any number of anchors in the MSM.

Rarely does a day go by when I don't see one post or another on DU proclaiming "the tide is turning," and I always approached such claims with a fair degree of skepticism.

But for the past few days, it seems like the world as I've known it has been knocked off its axis. It seems like everything is reaching a fever pitch, everything peaking at the same time...maybe it's just a natural series of events that follow a catastrophe.

But this combination of problems...a city in ruins, widespread death and disaster, sky-high gas, a quagmire...I don't think I've ever seen anything like it.