Someone just e-mailed me an animated picture that contained the World Trade Center cleverly dodging airplanes. The title of the animation is “In a Perfect World”.

I know it’s supposed to be a joke, but it really rubs me the wrong way. It bothers me because the joke perpetuates the same kind of ignorance and arrogance that led our nation to this disaster, as if to say that everything would have been alright if we just had buildings that could get out of the way.

To me, if we lived “In a perfect world…”:

• we wouldn’t feel the need to bomb the living hell out of an already poor and starving nation,


• we would be able to look at ourselves honestly, and see ourselves as a nation whose foreign policy can be self-serving and destructive to the world around us,


• there would be no political and religious tension to cause wars,


• there would be no al Queda,


• we would remember that we are supposed to pray for our enemies,


• and finally, there would be no need for buildings to dodge airplanes in the first place.