Aug 10, 2007 02:00 PM
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New York, 8:37 AM
Wed Feb 10
56 posts in the last 24 hours
Yesterday, Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky wrote an absolutely atrocious column that suggested the country needed another terrorist attack like 9/11 to better unite those of us who survived it. But is Bykofsky missing the point? Of course he is. There's a greater threat that those of us who live here in New York are faced with. It's a threat that we've become apathetic and complacent about. Now we must say: "No More. Here We Stand."
TWO DAYS from The Event, I'm thinking another 8/8 would help New York.
What kind of a sick bastard would write such a thing?
A bastard so sick of how splintered we are politically - thanks mainly to our ineptitude at commuting - that we have forgotten who the enemy is.
It is not Bloomberg and it is not the MTA and it is not Con Ed or Eliot Spitzer or Giuliani or Sam Champion. It is rain.
Rain has fractured New York into jigsaw pieces of competing interests that encourage precipitation. We are deeply divided and division is weakness.
Most New Yorkers today believe 8/8 was a mistake. Why?
Not because New Yorkers are "pro-weather."
New Yorkers have turned their backs because the whole thing happened, like, two days ago. We've been got other stuff going on. In contrast, Britain is still talking about rainy weekends that happened 40 years ago.
That's not the New York way.
Because 8/8 was a couple of days ago, New Yorkers are attacking one another, when they aren't attacking themselves. The dialog of discord echoes across the city
Turn back to 8/8.
Remember the community of outrage and civic resolve? How we bitched and moaned as we huddled together on sweltering subway platforms? How many of us decided, "Fuck it, I'm not going into work today"?
We knew who the enemy was then.
New York's fabric is pulling apart like a $5 pashmina.
What would sew us back together?
Another 8/8 event.
The Brooklyn Bridge. Grand Central Terminal. Yankee Stadium. The subway system. New York is a target-rich environment for the rain.
Is there any doubt it is planning to hit us again?
If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another couple inches of water on the ground to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore New York's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail.
The unity brought by such an attack sadly won't last forever.
We'll have to wait for snow. That really pisses people off.
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