Reflections on the 30th anniversary of the OKC bombing

[ColoradoBlue]

Breaking news: There's been an explosion at a federal building in downtown Oklahoma City.

It was April 19, 1995, and my husband and I were on the road to the Grand Canyon with my sister when we heard this on the radio. My sister and I were immediately worried; our father worked at a federal building in Oklahoma City. But with no cell service, we had to wait until we arrived at the visitor's center to use a pay phone.

I don't know how many times we dialed - we repeatedly got a message that our call could not be connected - before we were finally able to reach our grandmother. She told us that Dad worked in another building and was safe and that it was probably a gas explosion.

In those early moments, no one knew the extent of what had happened so, reassured that Dad was okay, we spent the day exploring the Grand Canyon in blissful ignorance.

But when we returned to our hotel and flipped on the TV, the world turned upside down. The images were unimaginable and the emotions overwhelming. We finally were able to speak to Dad, who had been in his office a few blocks away when it happened. He was more angry than anything at that point, convinced, as most people were, that this had been planned by foreign terrorists.

In just a few days, however, we learned that the mastermind of this horror was one of our own. A clean cut white American about my age. A decorated veteran who had been radicalized by far right militias and influenced by The Turner Diaries, a novel written by a neo-Nazi leader, in which the protagonist blows up a government building as a part of a revolution against the government.

That day, 168 people died, including 19 children, and almost 1,000 were injured. Countless other lives were forever altered and an entire state - the place where I grew up - was traumatized.

My husband and I lived in Dallas at the time but when we visited family several weeks later, my mother insisted that we go with her to the building site. I had seen the videos and pictures, of course, but seeing it in person was surreal. The building was nine stories tall and a full third of it was just...gone. Debris fluttered in the wind and incomprehensibly, in some of the offices, desks and other items seemed undisturbed, as if someone had just gotten up for a moment to take a coffee break.

It felt wrong to be there, staring at this place of pain. As if I was a peeping tom, looking into someone's window when they were at their most vulnerable. All these years later, I have never visited the memorial for this reason.

But the experience, much like the global rebellion and protests of the 80s, shaped how I view and understand the world. I stood on that hallowed ground and saw with my own eyes the devastation that the radicalization and extremism of our own countrymen can cause.

What I didn't know then was that it wasn't a rogue event. It was the seed of something that would take root and lead us to where we are today, 30 years later. And although it's not a literal bomb, radical ideology is blowing things up all around us, inflicting harm on innocent people, and putting all of us at risk.

But unlike April 19, 1995, we have the power to stop it. I am resolved to do my part.

[Hekate]

1. I am also resolved, and I stand with you

[617Blue]

2. Waco, Ruby Ridge. All three happened with a Dem in WH.

[Boomerproud]

4. Ruby Ridge was under Bush41.

You'd swear it was Clinton by the way it was talked about by Rush, and the RW media.

[617Blue]

5. Ok. You know i think the hearings they had were when Clinton was in

But I could be wrong. I remember thinking at the time, these GOP fuckers are defending these criminal cowards who killed an FBI agent from S Boston.

[Boomerproud]

6. Understand.It happened in 1992 and Repubs desperately

Tried to tie it to Clinton.

[617Blue]

8. The GOP has been off the rails for 40 years. *

[Boomerproud]

3. CNN had a long segment about a mother who lost 2 sons

and the youngest survivor, now 30 years old. We all remember 9/11, rightfully so, but OKC has completely gone down the memory hole. The reason, of course, because it was DOMESTIC terrorism. There's no way the anniversary is being talked about in rw circles. Very happy Bill Clinton is there.

[hauckeye]

7. I was heavily pregnant with my daughter, she was born a week later

We were glued to TV that week, watching in horror.

[alarimer]

9. This movement has only gotten worse

We haven't done much stomp it out

[moondust]

10. Indeed.

The Guardian has an article today discussing some of the parallels between the McVeigh nuts of the 1990s and the January 6 nuts of today.

...echoes of the blast, and its perpetrator, Timothy McVeigh, are heard today as far-right ideas storm the US