What do you say about a tragedy like what happened on Tuesday? At least, what do you say that every news agency in the world hasn't spent the last three days saying over and over? It's so huge, so massive, that it's beyond words and even, in a way, beyond emotions. It's almost like, watching all this on TV and reading about it in the papers, you think you can't possibly feel enough or say enough or express enough, and even if you could it wouldn't make one bit of difference.

Everyone talks about it and everyone has opinions and theories about everything, from what happened, how they did it, what it means, how we should respond, and just everything. I'm not going to talk about any of that, although I definitely have my own opinions. But I will offer some thoughts just on what I've observed and from what people are saying and what I see on TV.

The first thing I usually notice from the people around me (and by that I mean those who are just observers like myself) are the people who try to steal sympathy. They're the people who always claim some special connection, or some reason why they feel it so much more deeply than anyone else, when it's clear they're either exagerrating or outright lying. I don't know why they do it. I suspect it's just for attention, but I think it's a crappy way to go about it and it dishonors both the victims of the tragedy and those who really are affected by a tremendous personal loss. In a similar way, you see people who start to use the situation for their own personal gain, like gas stations who automatically jacked up prices. Or the working people who live nowhere near the affected area, calling off work because they "don't feel safe" and making everyone else carry the load for them, and even risk their own lives if there were a real danger.

Then, of course, everyone's opinions. The first thing people say is, why couldn't we have been ready? They seem to think that adopting stringent security measures now is like closing the barn door once the cow's got out. But I don't think there's a lot that we're going to start seeing now, like personal searches before boarding a plane, no curbside servive at the airports, or thoroughly examining every bag that goes on board, people would have accepted before. They'd have balked at that and talked about rights and freedoms. Which I'm not criticizing; I'm just saying, you have to give some to get some.

A lot of people are asking why. I wonder that myself. What I mean is, if the terrorists' objective was to hurt the United States, well, I reckon they did it, but I don't imagine that anywhere in their precise military timing and planning did they think much past what would happen once the planes actually blew up. I'm sure they might have forseen Palestinians dancing in the streets, but did they imagine the British playing the American National Anthem at the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace? Condolences and sympathy even from Cuba and Iran? Russians laying wreaths and crying outside the American Embassy?

For the last few days it's all you see on the news. People helping people and pulling together. It doesn't even look like there are Democrats or Republicans anymore, or North or South, or black or white; we're all just Americans, as it should be, and at least for now our differences seem to have dissolved.

I heard Bill Clinton give support to George W. Bush without qualifying it any way, I saw Democrats and Republicans singing together on the steps of the Capitol Building, and I even saw a man of peace like Jimmy Carter calling for a military response. I see volunteers lined up for three hours to give blood, a Deli owner in Brooklyn emptying his shelves to feed the rescue workers, and heard stories of a guy dying because he stayed behind to help his wheelchair-bound friend.

The news is slowing down, though, at least til something new happens. I saw one guy, just a regular old passenger, too, describing the new security procedures he had to undergo while boarding one of the first passenger flights to depart since the attack. It wasn't a man-on-the-street thing, either, he was actually in the studio dressed in regular old street clothes. It was unremarkable even so, til I saw the same guy on two other networks. He's famous now just for boarding a plane! I saw the baseball commissioner talk for 20 minutes about his decision to delay the weekend games...over 5000 people dead, and we listen to the baseball commissioner for 20 minutes. Also, this just in: Pop star Madonna is urging President Bush to "carefully consider" before he launches any military strikes. Madonna, our new Secretary of Defense.

I think it's a horrible tragedy and it's just beyond description, but I think I've said all I'm going to say, except this one last thing:

Right now, everyone is in praying mode. I mean, everyone is going to church and holding prayer vigils. Any anger being expressed right now is directed towards the terrorists. But sooner or later (probably sooner) someone is going to say something like, "Where was God when all this happened?" I don't always know what to say to people when they ask stuff like that and I don't reckon it makes much difference anyway, because anybody who asks that question ain't looking for God anyway. I mean, God's the same place He is whether things are going good or bad, and if you don't see Him at one time you won't see Him at the other. I think it's interesting that no one's asking "Where was the Devil?" Maybe the answer to that one's obvious.