Not me.

Once again my fellow Americans, you never cease to amaze me. In the wake of the infamous bombings that shocked the world and tore up my home away from home, the citizens of the “greatest country in the history of civilization” have appalled me more than ever.

Apparently we stop educating people after they reach the age of four. I woke up Tuesday morning and found out about the chaos and destruction during my photography class. I was shell-shocked to say the least. Ever since I was old enough to remember, I have gone to New York City. Its immenseness and ability to swallow me whole was eye-opening.

The summers that I lived there will forever be implanted in my mind. The nights and days that left me on my knees with nothing but my most common knowledge will forever be my moments of truth, when I found who I am and who I could be. To see a New York on its knees and a New York without Babylon’s Towers brought tears to my eyes.

So how, I asked myself, can it get any worse. Well, that is where you come in, my most beloved and fellow Americans. This tragic event had me witness my best friend saying that we should “kill all those towel-wearing motherfuckers.” I miss the New York of old, just as I miss the complacent consumer-happy Americans without a care in the world.

I woke up on Thursday morning to hear our favorite radio personality, Howard Stern, tell listeners we should blow up the whole friggin’ Middle East. And then I picked up the newspaper to read reports that Muslims, who wear turbans, (not towels you ignorant fucks), were being beaten with baseball bats for being, well, Muslims who wear turbans.

If this is America, I hate America and I hate Americans. My good buddy from my coke snorting days, George W. Bush, said that America is the land of the free and the “protector of freedom.” Damn George, I thought we made a pact at those Narcotics Anonymous meetings. I stopped, didn’t you?

Call me a pacifist, a traitor. Label me what you will, but this has been the worst week of my life. And my birthday is next week. A celebration of life. And as Americans gather for American pride day, and wear their flags and colors, what are we celebrating? Our country? The lives of those who passed? Or are we celebrating the fact that we live by social Darwinism, and that we have the greatest military force in the world? Are we celebrating hate? If we aren’t you could have fooled me.

My mother and father brought me into this world and I respect and love them for that. And being a son has taught me one valuable lesson: respect others’ sons and daughters. That is what we all are, sons and daughters. Imagine the look on your mothers’ and fathers’ faces if they learned that you were the target of hate. Hard to deal with, isn’t it?

We learned one thing Tuesday didn’t we? The United States is vulnerable. Vulnerable to what? Not terrorist attacks, because we knew that already. Americans are vulnerable to hate. And since we wholeheartedly believe that America is a melting pot, we can assume that everyone is vulnerable to hate. Once we as Americans found this out, we were astounded. Amazed. Sickened. It tore at our very hearts. We finally understood that not everyone wants to be like us. We found out that there are people more proud of who they are than we. We found out that someone has it in for us. Bigtime.

America is scared.

Whoever is responsible for this attack has woke the sleeping giant one more time. But something is different about this giant. He is older; he has learned from his mistakes. He is also frightened. He is afraid because he finally found out how vulnerable he really is.

When I wake up tomorrow I will not wish, for the first in a week, that this was a dream. America lost thousands on September 11. I will respect their memories and celebrate their lives. But this country has needed a wake-up call for a long time, and it infuriates me that it needed one of this proportion. So when I shed my last tear and move on with my life, never forgetting, I hope that you, America, will understand that being the America of the past will not do.

I am talking of an America that enslaved blacks and many of its educational history books devote something like two pages and a photograph to tell its children of the harrowing experience, and the damage it has done to this country as a whole. I am talking of the America that put its Japanese citizens in concentration camps for being the descendents of people we were at war with and its educational history books only offer an entire paragraph to that experience.

I am talking about the America that we live in. Not some America that we see in movies. I am talking about the America that does not treat everybody as if they are equal. I am talking about the America that is filled with hate and fear.

I see America as a country that does not trust outsiders. I also see that the ones America shouldn’t trust are its own citizens.

It’s time to grow up America. It is time to realize our potential and finally become the greatest country in the history of civilization. And we will not achieve this by starting a war with the Middle East and brandishing our military might.