IP: UA #93 vote: fractal democracy in action

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> To: dave () farber net
> From: Rohit Khare <Rohit () KnowNow com>
>
> [A minor observation of possible interest to IP... Rohit]
>
> Just after watching a remarkable interview with Dan Rather on Letterman 
> (how long ago Cronkite seemed -- and yet here he is again, in Rather's 
> visage, where the too-young dark-haired Texan once stood. I searched his 
> face for the "new" face of my childhood, and saw only an old man, vaguely 
> Dole-ish), I flipped back to NBC for an interview with Hillary Clinton.
>
> In general, the Bush team hasn't come close to the rhetorically perfect 
> pitch of the Clintons, or even Rudy Guliani. Hillary had something to say 
> to Jane Pauley that was genuinely novel, made me pause, and smile.
>
> Pauley was asking Hillary about Jeremy Glick, one of the men on United 93 
> that struggled to regain control over Pennsylvania. She said something 
> very simple:
>
> "Can you believe they took a vote? That in the face of such terror and 
> horror, the spirit of American democracy was at work? That's what makes 
> them heroes!" (paraphrased; no transcript available)
>
> It is a graphic testament to the clarity of the American experiment that I 
> never even noticed this fact, even after a week of constant repetition.
>
> Voting. It's like oxygen in this Republic, and even in the face of Death, 
> I am proud to see it at work.
>
> I seriously look forward to celebrating this story further; I hope Bush's 
> speechwriting team does justice to this spirit on the eve of a violent 
> struggle to re-establish peace.
>
> Thankfully,
>   Rohit
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/14/college/spotlight.html?searchpv=past7days&pagewanted=print
> SEP 14, 2001
> On Doomed Flight, Passengers Vowed to Perish Fighting
> By JODI WILGOREN and EDWARD WONG
>
> They told the people they loved that they would die fighting.
>
> In a series of cellular telephone calls to their wives, two passengers 
> aboard the plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field instead of 
> possibly toppling a national landmark learned about the horror of the 
> World Trade Center. From 35,000 feet, they relayed harrowing details about 
> the hijacking in progress to the police. And they vowed to try to thwart 
> the enemy, to prevent others from dying even if they could not save themselves.
>
> Lyzbeth Glick, 31, of Hewitt, N.J., said her husband, Jeremy, told her 
> that three or four 6-foot-plus passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 
> from Newark bound for San Francisco planned to take a vote about how to 
> proceed, and joked about taking on the hijackers with the butter knives 
> from the in-flight breakfast. In a telephone interview last night, Ms. 
> Glick said her husband told her "three Arab-looking men with red 
> headbands," carrying a knife and talking about a bomb, took control of the 
> aircraft.
>
> "He was a man who would not let things happen," she said of her high 
> school sweetheart and husband of five years, the father of a 12-week-old 
> daughter, Emerson. "He was a hero for what he did, but he was a hero for 
> me because he told me not to be sad and to take care of our daughter and 
> he said whatever happened he would be O.K. with any choices I make.
>
> "He said, `I love you, stay on the line,' but I couldn't," added Ms. 
> Glick, 31, a teacher at Berkeley College. "I gave the phone to my dad. I 
> don't want to know what happened."
>
> Another passenger, Thomas E. Burnett Jr., an executive at a San 
> Francisco-area medical device company, told his wife, Deena, that one 
> passenger had already been stabbed to death but that a group was "getting 
> ready to do something."
>
> "I pleaded with him to please sit down and not draw attention to himself," 
> Ms. Burnett, the mother of three young daughters, told a San Francisco 
> television station. "And he said: `No, no. If they're going to run this 
> into the ground we're going to have to do something.' And he hung up and 
> he never called back."
>
> The accounts revealed a spirit of defiance amid the desperation. Relatives 
> and friends and a congressman who represents the area around the crash 
> site in Pennsylvania hailed the fallen passengers as patriots.
>
> "Apparently they made enough of a difference that the plane did not 
> complete its mission," said Lyzbeth Glick's uncle, Tom Crowley, of 
> Atlanta. In an e-mail message forwarded far and wide, Mr. Crowley urged: 
> "May we remember Jeremy and the other brave souls as heroes, soldiers and 
> Americans on United Flight 93 who so gallantly gave their lives to save 
> many others."
>
> ...



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