ghostly conquer

23

New York City has often been heralded as one of the most diverse cities in the United States, a fact contributed to by its status as a port for many immigrants seeking a new country to call home since the 1890s. The same people that have come to the land, welcomed by the iconic beacon of hope called the Statue of Liberty, have come to bring the cultures of their past homes with them, contributing to its melting pot of society.

Throughout the years, the people who had come to this city had taken their families with them or started some of their own, bringing new individuals that carried the ways of life both their home country and their forefathers' countries. Today, after many new generations, New York City holds citizens of many races, creeds, ethnicities, heritages, past and present nationalities, and beliefs.

Despite no two citizens holding the same religious and spiritual beliefs as one another, the people of New York still carry a mutual respect for one another, acknowledging that their beliefs are equally as believable and worth respect and tolerance as a guideline for human morality.

But on the fateful day of September 11th, 2001, they had come to find out that some beliefs were more equal than others.

In an act of radical Islamic terrorism, the twin towers of the World Trade Center came crashing to the ground, bringing 1,368 feet of steel, concrete, and glass, along with the occasional human body, coating the city with destruction and death unlike any before seen in the history of the United States of America.

Glorious human architecture brought down by an airplane hijacked by men convinced that their deaths would allow them ascension into paradise with the death of infidels, the only natural response seemed to be to retaliate. For an unspeakable act of violence as this, no punishment is too great, so went the mindset of the country.

However, military contractors and war profiteers were just as quick to the fervor as the American public, interesting themselves only in gaining profits for themselves out of the matter. Invading two separate nations in the Middle East against international law in the name of avenging the lives lost on 9/11, the violence perpetuated into a neverending cycle of death and destruction that bred worse results than the original sin.

At the same time, the war, carried out with perverted cries of liberty and justice, emboldened the American public with a sense of superiority, creating an innate imbalance of right and wrong, as if no wrong could be done by their hands. Deciding to take justice into their own hands, they began to turn on their own fellow Americans that believed in the same god and religion as those who committed the act: Allah, and Islam.

Swept up in the fury of the war, many Americans began to turn on their fellow citizens, all on the basis that they had worshiped the same god as the terrorists who attacked their homeland, leading to more violence and death on American citizens perpetrated by their own fellow countrymen.

Antipathy and disfavor began to reflect on those who held even the slightest deviation in the beliefs they supposedly shared, labeling those who differed in league with the terrorists; the other. In its act retribution, those who sought to strike back against the terrorists became no different in practice, carrying the same ultimatum to put upon everyone else:

'If you're not with me, you're with them, and if you're with them, then you must die'.

Whether out of irony or a complete lack of self-awareness, also located in New York City is a building which acts as the headquarters of the United Nations, an organization meant for all countries on Earth to come together and discuss international issues plaguing all of their nations to be resolved.

The idea is pure and virtuous in its own way, but the merits ultimately mean nothing with the wars and conflicts which the nations of Earth share with one another, or the polarizing differences in their culture that prevent any agreement on true solutions to their problems, or the monetary corruption which makes those without morals lord over these issues so they may never be resolved for their own gains.