I was talking to M.’s elderly cousin, Don, on the phone last week, and he mentioned watching some of the programming that’s been on about the events of September 2001, and his voice was full of anger. He didn’t rant about Muslims or “them” or anything like that, but he was working his way to it, building up a head of steam, and I had to cut him off. We hadn’t watched any of it, didn’t go to United 93, won’t go to the Oliver Stone movie, and didn’t watch last night’s Part 1 of the Disney neo-con exploitation of that day’s death and destruction. It’s still too close. It may always be so.

Everyone is asking now, do you feel safer? Is the world different? For me, the answer to both questions is, no. But that’s too simple. I don’t feel I’m in any more danger, not to death or injury in a terrorist attack, than I ever was. The world is just as dangerous as it was in 2000 or in pretty nearly all the years I’ve been alive, and the U.S. going to war in Iraq hasn’t made any difference there, unless it’s been to have inflamed who started out aggrieved over injustices, perceived and real, inflicted by a system the U.S. has long since come to represent, a system of exploitation and dehumanisation on behalf of profit.

It doesn’t matter how true any of it may be, but it does matter how much people believe it. Hearts and minds – right? Well, that’s part of it, anyway.

The main thing, right now, is that today, five years on, the biggest change is the world is in us, Americans, Australians, British, etc.: the West. There are a lot more of us a lot more aware than before of the rest of the world, and that ought to be a good thing. It’s unfortunate, then, that so many of us have simply bought into the hateful rhetoric and cowardly principles being sold to promote more death and destructions. Clash of civilizations? Give me a break. Threat to the free world, the freedom-loving world, that democratic way of life? Please. The only threat we face to the progress of freedom in the world is the ease with which a few of our own leaders are willing to subvert the principles by which we live for just another day’s political leverage, just another percentage point of profit.

Today, my greatest fears aren’t from terrorism, but of more Diebold voting machines, more cronyism and more Swift-boat politics. My greatest fears come true when governments act to undo the good work of previous administrations or when they lie, promote lies, or just cover up the truth and hope they’ll get away with it.

It hurt a lot when the towers came down, and I’ll never forget what I saw, what I could smell in the air for days afterward. But it didn’t make me hate anyone and it didn’t make me want to foster hate in others and it didn’t make me afraid. And the only thing that’s really made me angry is everything done since to exploit that day.