For my remembrance of the 9/11 attacks during which 2,996 Americans were slaughtered by 19 terrorists, my family watched 9/11: The Filmmakers’ Commemorative Edition.
The movie started as a documentary following one rookie New York firefighter through training and his nine months of probation. In doing so, the two filmmakers were following an engine company on a call when the first hijacked airplane hit. The strike was on camera.
(Cross-post from my other blog, Outrun Change. Christians, the primary audience for this blog, do not need to be reminded of the reality of evil. Still, it is good to look at it closely once in a while to refresh our memory of the depths of evil. Thus, this post.)
It is well worth your time to watch the movie in order to see evil at work during the attack, inside the first tower as it collapsed, outside the second tower when it went down, and the cleanup aftermath.
One of the firefighters said, (my paraphrase) that he had not known evil could be so evil.
Yes, evil is ugly. Three thousand people butchered with the demonic dream of killing hundreds or thousands more.
Staring evil in the face is distressing.
Other evils you can stare into the face of.
If you wish to see evil, shift to a different outlet of evil other than the one we cannot name – try studying communism.
Stalin killed 20,000,000 or maybe 30,000,000 people. He intentionally starved about 3 or 4 million Ukrainians to death.
Mao deliberately killed around 60,000,000 Chinese as a matter of intentional policy. Well, the best guess is 60 million. Could be as low as 40 million or as high as 80 million. Variety of his preferred tools included starvation, persecution, mass executions, and prison labor.
Yes, the terrorists of 9/11 murdered about 3,000 Americans. That is the strongest view of evil most living Americans have seen.
Evil is real. It is alive today.
For a view into modern evil, look at any of the 9/11 documentaries.
To study evil a several decades in the past, read up on communism.
To study evil 80 years ago, read up on Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. Don’t forget to check out Japanese chemical warfare on POWs or the Rape of Nanking. Look up ‘comfort women’ only when you are feeling particularly strong.
Yes, evil is real.
