Jack of Harts

Two decades ago I came home from work to find out that a plane had hit one of the World Trade towers in New York. I was watching live when the second plane hit. I saw both towers fall in real time. And when I went to the fan site I was a mod at to talk with my friends about it, the mods had shut the forum down because they didn’t want us dumb Americans talking on their turf. And they’d erased my mod credentials at the site as well, because they didn’t want THIS dumb American talking on their turf. It seems a petty thing. On one hand, an attack that killed thousands of Americans. On another hand, being silenced from even talking about it with my internet friends. The two are fused in my memories as one long shared experience. And it is one of the reasons I have nearly as strong an aversion to censoring or muting people as I do to killing people. Both are attacks, one physical, the other mental. A civilized society should accept neither.