Just a tiny moment in time
On April 19th, 1995 at 9:01 I honestly couldn't tell you what I was doing or where I was. It's possible I was sleeping. My view of the world at that time was fairly naive. MTV was still a thing. Alternative Rock ruled the airwaves I listened to. Friends, Seinfeld, Roseanne and the X-files were top shows. San Francisco had won its 5th Super Bowl but hasn't won another one since (at least at the time of this writing). Michael Jordan came out of retirement after his baseball hiatus. Windows 95 was released; DVD's became a thing and E-bay started. Boris Yeltsin, John Major and Bill Clinton were world leaders. Technology was going through the roof it seemed but the world still appeared relatively normal. At this stage in my life my world was still small. I hadn't done much traveling and I was struggling with understanding who I was and where I was going. I had two very young daughters and had separated from my ex a few years earlier. She and I had moved on from each other but I had been relegated to a part time dad. I had a business I had been trying to make work, but it was failing. In truth, I wasn't in a good place in my life.
On April 19th, 1995 at 9:03 am, the world for the most part... changed. Even if we couldn't see the bigger picture at that time of the consequences of such an action, it still forever changed. The way the government did business and perceived threats changed. Laws changed. Our personal privacy changed. American eyes became a little wider open and the worldview of the United States was dramatically revised. Till this day, on April 19th at 9:02 am, church bells ring and people still stop what they are doing or pull over in their vehicles to give 168 seconds of silence.
Some of those people are survivors or maybe they actually lost loved ones in what is still the largest domestic terror event caused by an American citizen. At 9:02 am a massive bomb went off and decimated 1/3 of the Alfred P. Murray Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Around 90 minutes after the explosion Timothy J. McVeigh was pulled over for a traffic stop because his vehicle didn't have a license plate. In 2001 he was executed.
Americana - Who are we really?
Timothy McVeigh had earned a Bronze Star for his service along the Kuwaiti border during the first Iraq war. His commanders even put him up as a candidate for Green Beret training but McVeigh never followed through with it. After his military service McVeigh spent significant time at gun shows and hanging out with militia groups. Inspiration for his attack was said to come from a book called the Turner Diaries, which was a fictional dystopian novel about a white supremacist revolution in the future that overthrows the American Government. In the book, a truck bomb similar to the one McVeigh built is used for similar purposes.
White Nationalist groups have held the book sacred and the writer of the book, William Pierce, became the leader of the National Alliance, which at one time had been called the most dangerous and well-organized neo-Nazi group in U.S. History. After his death in 2002, the group splintered up and lost significant members but around 2017, largely due to current political rhetoric, they started recruiting again and have claimed thousands who have shown up at their events and rallies. Dylann Roof, who murdered innocent black parishioners in cold blood in 2015 in South Carolina, was also inspired by Pierce's book.
The group that McVeigh had held in high regard, the National Alliance, had been around since 1974. In 1995 on April 19th at 9:02 am, their dreams had become realized with the blood of McVeigh's 168 victims, 19 of which were children. It was a cowardly act. McVeigh later claimed that the FBI raid on the Branch Davidian Cult in Waco, TX served as the moment he decided to plan out the attack. He claimed the Waco raid was over reach by the government.
At 9:03 am, on that fateful morning another lifetime ago, the world became aware that no one was really safe and that our mortality was only a daily reprieve. Our naive notion that life was somehow fair or that racism and bigotry was mostly a thing of the past would come to light over the coming weeks as the motivations for McVeigh's heinous crime became apparent. After the attack, many on the far right tried to distance themselves from the militias and the rhetoric they had been following in cult like fashion. The effect was short lived. Newer generations eventually started once again joining the Nationalist call. 9/11 helped that along. It gave new reasons to hate and justify bigotry. It also moved the needle away from the Oklahoma bombing as the largest terrorist attack on American soil although McVeigh still holds the distinction of being a home grown domestic terrorist who had pulled off the second largest. 9/11, to a degree, took away white America's concerns about their other white neighbors and instead put the focus on others who were culturally and religiously different than what America's myth was perceived to be. Governmental agencies may tell you they didn't take their foot off the pedal when it came to domestic terrorism, but the general publics attention span moved away from white local militia groups to anyone who resembled an Arab... even if they weren't an Arab. 9/11 helped bigotry and racism along while McVeigh's act, just over 6 years earlier, actually made some in the movement stop and think.
Where do we go from here?
Today, in 2020, we find ourselves in a vastly different world than existed prior to 9:02 AM on April 19th, 1995, but the underlying disease that is racism and bigotry has always been here. There are those that had an agenda then and still have an agenda today. Some of those people are probably the same people albeit a bit older and maybe with a little more power and therefore a lot more dangerous.
My personal experience when I had visited the Memorial in 2010 was one of somber remembrance, as it should be. The Gates of Time were striking in their poignant philosophy regarding the passage of time and the changes we experience in our lives. Some of those changes happen in the blink of an eye. Some changes are dark. Many lost loved ones then. The 168 empty chairs, with 19 of them being child size, is heartbreaking. The names of the over 600 survivors on the four granite tablets saved from the Alfred P. Murray Federal Building is a reminder that even in the face of great evil and pain, we somehow still manage to move on.
I can't help but think that the Oklahoma Bombing that McVeigh and Terry Nichols had masterminded in 1995 is more important as a lesson in true Americana because of everything that is going on today socially and politically. To me it not only is a reminder of our darkest hours but it also sheds more light on just how dangerous extremist views can be. It may remind some of the worst of us but the words inscribed by Searcher Team 5, which remains at the site till this day, are also a reminder of the best of us.
America, as the worlds been reminded of lately, is a complicated nation. Racism and bigotry isn't so complicated though. Social injustice isn't that complicated. We all should have that innate feeling of what is truly right or wrong. That same come to Jesus moment that some who had followed the white supremacist rhetoric and movement back in 1995, must have felt when they decided to distance themselves and walk away from some of the organizations like the National Alliance. McVeigh, after all, looked exactly like many of them when they looked in the mirror.
I suppose writing a story like this exposes me in some way. In the Turner Diaries, anyone who was a "race traitor" would be marked for planned mass murder the neo-Nazi's believed would happen after they defeated the American Government. A day some White Nationalists still refer to now as the "Day of the Rope" on Internet chat sites and the dark web. Yes, there are those who view some as race traitors for speaking out and strongly insist those who continue to speak out will one day be pulled out of their homes and dragged out into the street on their Day of the Rope... their day of reckoning. At least I'll be in good company. There are many followers of Pierce's novel to this very day and since 2016-2017 the National Alliance neo-Nazi group, which are actively recruiting and growing, has once again been energized and organized behind new leadership. The same group McVeigh aspired to be a part of. There are many other groups as well. Just because a group doesn't call itself the National Alliance doesn't mean its not virtually identical to prior incarnations of the late William Pierce's dogma. I'm not sure where our Nation is going but I absolutely know what side I'm on. In the words of Searcher Team 5,"We search for the truth. We seek justice". There is not now, nor ever, any justification for McVeigh's actions. Those that aspire to be like him and that admire him need admonishment by us all. We should all always admonish those that follow the ideals of an organization like the National Alliance or one of their many other clones that are out there. The memory of the Oklahoma City Bombing and the 168 lives lost at 9:02 am... demand it.
America, as I thought it was in 1995 before the attack was a myth and I was naive. That doesn't mean we can't aspire to resemble that myth or work towards it. That doesn't mean we can't one day become closer to the myth the World hoped we were. That Nation they thought they could count on to stand up for everyone is not a political impossibility if we have the will. What can be so wrong with taking a knee to stand up for everyone?
