World New York.

“I, like others, seek answers. We are aware of our vulnerabilities now. We knew these things before, but we didn’t feel them. We knew about the security tests at airport after airport that exposed shortcomings, in which laughably underpaid and undertrained personnel were expected to protect us. Now we see those shortcomings in action. We feel them. We knew about the arrogance and the cock-strutting of our military and police, who were convinced and convinced us they were the best in the world. Now the prideful boasting looks suspiciously like that of the British at the end of its empire, losing wars against poorly armed and under-trained Africans and Indians, in the same way they had lost against the irregular new Americans before them. We knew, and were perhaps reassured by, Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s emergency bunker on the twenty-second floor of the World Trade Center. Now, that bluster is exposed as well. There is, perhaps, no more enticing target than that which has been paraded in front of the world as invincible, and no people more likely to feel the sting of their own hubris than those who scoff at others. That is us. “

Sums up nicely what I myself can’t put into words. Turns out that the mom of one of our hall directors here was on a flight to New York this morning. Word has just come that her flight was diverted back to St. Louis and that she’s safe.