Three days in a row. Yep. Don't faint.

When I noticed the date, I thought I might write about where I was September 11, 2001, but I've decided not to. I think it would feel trite and insufficient. It's hard to imagine how the world would be different if that hadn't happened because I do think a lot changed that day.

On a not entirely unrelated topic, I remember that I used to be terrified of nuclear war. There was always this undercurrent of anxiety that it was going to happen at any moment. Loud thunder in the middle of the night would cause me to wake up in a complete panic because I was sure there was a mushroom cloud nearby. Or how about the tests of the Emergency Broadcast System? Remember those? I was always so afraid that it was going to be the real thing. I hated the noise that test made. I would change the channel really quickly to make sure it wasn't on EVERY channel, because that would mean it was happening.

(Although I did hear an actual Emergency Broadcast on my car radio one day. Turned out to be related to a tornado. I hadn't even known that the Emergency Broadcast System existed for any other reason than to tell us the nuclear bombs were on the way.)

But what I'm getting at is that I was anxious all the time for years and years. At some point, I started to feel less anxious. The idea of nuclear war still terrifies me, but it only terrifies me when I think about it, and I don't have to think about it constantly. It's not always in my head.

Now I'm starting to feel the anxiety again. Not about nuclear war, or terrorist attacks, or anthrax or whatever -- I feel anxiety about the Tea Party. I feel anxiety about people who want to 'Take Our Country Back!'. For crying out loud - who do they want to take it back from?? Me?? Isn't it mine too? So what...it doesn't count if the people and policies that I support are voted for by a majority of others in the country? Suddenly our democracy isn't working anymore? I read somewhere where someone said there's a big difference between tyranny and losing an election. Yes. Listen Tea Party, I'm talking to you - if your side loses an election, it just means that you lost. It means more people disagree with you than agree with you. It does not mean that our government is broken.

So what am I worried about, specifically? Civil war. I don't really think deep in my gut that there's going to be a civil war. I think the vast majority of Americans just want to live our lives and not be bothered with a bunch of upheaval - but that doesn't prevent me feeling anxious about it anyway. It actually causes me to avoid the news altogether for weeks at a time. (Although I've recently discovered that the news is much less stressful if I just don't read online comments about the stories.) The problem is there seem to be an awful lot of lunatics in the world and an awful lot of people who will vote and act against their own self-interests because of whatever misguided notions about religion or what America is that they have.

I guess that's it. The country is full of a lot of misguided, misinformed, manipulated, and misled people. And they scare the shit out of me. I think they mean well, but they're scared too and they don't seem to know any better.

Which brings me back to where I started - 9/11. Without that, I don't think any of this would be happening. At least not in the way that it is.

How's that for a pretty good ramble?