I sometimes have to ask myself why I am living in this country. When I first came down, it was like the gold rush of the late 1800s all over again. People my age were striking it rich working for these .com companies where they worked their asses off but were rewarded with free everything, lavish launch parties, and huge stock options. Suddenly work was fun and fulfilling and you, as an individual, contributed to the success of something really big. Of course now we know, there was no gold to be struck. Yet, I'm still here. The carnival atmosphere of the late 90s to 2000 is dried up and now we live in fear.

Once in a while I stop and realize that being in this country actually scares the shit out of me. 9/11 was a tremendous tragedy. Many innocent people died and their families still suffer today and always will. The threat of terrorism absolutely freaks me out. But two wrongs don't make a right. Slaughtering civilians by the thousands and torturing Iraqi soldiers and then, for Christ's sake, posing for pictures ($%?#!) does not bring back the victims of 9/11 or solve any problems for that matter. Americans sometimes wonder why the rest of the world hates America. After a performance like that, the question is, how can they not? And then you read garbage like this and fully realize how backwards some people in this country are. The only thing that scares me more than terrorism in this country is people who justify war and violence with all this Christian/conservative/patriotic rhetoric.