A Facebook friend posts the following:
It's not that I'm not patriotic...I am. I love this country. I just don't want to watch anything, read anything or talk about anything related to 9/11. You know why? Because every story ends the same. Thousands of Americans died and our country has been ruled by hatred and fear since. Period.
I remember two distinct statements from September 11, 2001. I was just a couple weeks into my new job at Montrose High School, teaching a bunch of courses that I'd never taught before, getting to know a whole crop of kids. A senior walked into our Comp IV class and said the first and only 9/11 joke I've ever heard: Now they'll have to change the name of the Pentagon to the Square.
The other statement came from my own lips. As disaster launched a two-month marathon of wall-to-wall news coverage of terrorism, bin Laden, and Afghanistan (NPR didn't really cover anything else until Enron collapsed in November), students asked me that sunny morning if we could skip the day's lesson and watch TV. I said that if we disrupted our routine, if we didn't hold class, the terrorists would win. And that morning, TV off, we studied grammar.
There's an uncertain boundary between handing those who've hurt us another victory by obsessing over them and giving our past due critical study so we may learn, grow, and avoid past mistakes. If I take my grammar-class admonition too seriously, this blog post and my friend's Facebook comment extend the terrorists' victory right along with the arbitrary tenth-anniversary observations (ten years: more significant than nine or eleven only because evolution favored ten danglies on our hands, and we use their tips instead of our knuckles for counting).
Another friend contemplates the predictable "credible but uncorroborated threat" of anniversary mayhem and asks "Didn't these bastards learn the first time not to mess with our people?"
I would suggest the bastards learned the lesson of 9/11 quite well: with a scaled-back plan that cost just 19 lives and a half-million dollars in spare change from sheiks' couches, a handful of cranky fanatics can drive America at least a few trillion dollars closer to bankruptcy. (See other discussions of the costs of 9/11, many self-imposed, from John Hudson and Joseph E. Stiglitz.) With a conservatively calculated return on investment of 6.6 million to 1, we should be surprised more cold, calculating killers aren't crashing things into our buildings.
This weekend of Goldsteinian rebroadcasts and commemorations isn't quite the Two-Minutes Hate... although I am alarmed to find it seems "impossible to avoid joining in." There are worse things we could watch on our telescreens this weekend than concerts and discussions of foreign policy and the Constitution. Attentive citizens may find teachable moments in the commemorations.
But as my friend notes, the lessons have been clear from the beginning of the endless Global War on Terror: America is easy to scare away from its principles. Prick America, and you can drag America into waging unncessary wars, conducting warrantless searches, detaining suspects without charge, torturing prisoners, and other violations of that raggedy old Constitution whose principles are America's greatest bulwark.
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Related Reading:
- The Mall of America epitomizes America in numerous ways. NPR's investigative reporting reveals the grand-mall's interrogation and detention of innocent citizens engaged in suspicious activities like taking pictures and notes.
- Jen Holsen recalls her visit to the Top of the World in the 1980s, "a time when we feared no one and had the freedom and accessibility to experience standing on the 110th floor of the World Trade Center South Tower."
- Not enough people appreciate the greatest counterpoint to 9/11's terrorism: Philippe Petit's mad tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers on August 7, 1974. In so many ways, his plan mirrored the terrorists': a wild-eyed iconoclast leading fellow conspirators through years of detailed study, training, and subterfuge in hopes of worldwide media coverage. Yet Petit committed not terrorism but joyful mischief, daring for the sake of art and beauty and a chance to walk where no man ever had. Forget 9/11; remember 8/7. Remember Philippe Petit, a man winged with one slender pole, dancing from to tower in defiance of fear.
He was bouncing up and down... His feet were actually leaving the wire and then he would resettle back on the wire again... Unbelievable really... [E]verybody was spellbound in the watching of it [Sgt. Charles Daniels, Port Authority Police Department, rooftop witness to Petit's performance].
Update 21:17 MDT: Mr. Gebhart shares a sentiment similar to Shane's and declares no 9/11 links in his weekend post.
I'm with you, Cory. For me it's even more personal because I'm NY born and raised. If I were to stand in front of the house I grew up in, I could look in any direction and point out the houses where a father or son, friends and classmates lived who built the WTC. From every trade involved. Some of those fathers had already passed. And the afternoon before Philippe Petit walked the wire, I was in Central Park with a friend and we were standing just a few feet from Petit as he rode a unicycle and juggled. The very next day while listening to the radio the news guy came running into the studio, interrupting the DJ all out of breath and excited. I immediately ran down stairs to turn on the TV and then call my friend. These memories are still clear and vivid as if it were yesterday. In 1983, I almost took a job with NYC EMS. I had interviewed 6 weeks earlier and didn't expect to be called since there were approx. 600 people ahead of me on the list. Experience and the fact that those ahead of me had most likely taken jobs with benefits or moved, had helped me to jump that list. I was in the midst of moving and the fact that I was told I need to re-certify as an EMT beforehand and concern regarding the physical, I passed on the opportunity. I had friends already with EMS. I knew people in the NYFD and NYPD, along with those I worked with whose spouses at the time worked in the Windows on the World restaurant. I had lived in Manhattan for two years when they first broke ground for the construction. Yeah it's personal. It took 9 years before I could look at a list of those who died.
Did you really write:
"Forget 9/11; remember 8/7."
? Wow.
I have had very wrong things happen to me and the church people just say, accept it as God's will. They are also sure they need to beat up two whole countries because two,three, buildings got knocked down. I told a Bible study group on a tour of a homeless shelter that a percentage of those people overreact to a wrong look of negative word by striking back with force. They totally agreed, thinking that it is there own fault that they are homeless, and then I said it was just like beating up two whole countries for two buildings getting knocked down. They had a real problem with this since they were for the war. So I let them escape by saying that was different. (Sighs of relief) Then I said that the difference was that it was them and this was us.
But do we over react. One terrorist fails to blow up with a bomb in his pants and now we have our own cops groping us in airports in public.
The modern day church, not saying all of them, tell the one who is wronged to just walk away from it as if it never happened and trust God. No guarantee or effort so that it will not happen again. I do still believe in God, he just is not in the church anymore.
Thank you for using my facebook status Cory (for the record you can always use my name with my stuff I trust you always to use good judgement.)
The continuation of the thread is where I do actually express why I feel the way I do when a friend points out to me that my line of thinking is letting the terrorists "win".
This is my answer to her:
"...I am sorry that any family lost members due to the attack. I'm sickened by what has happened since in the name of Patriotism and safety.
The terrorists aren't winning.
Our Government and the disgusting amount of control over our lives and the invasion of privacy is winning.
Politicians still playing off of fear are winning.
Morons committing hate crimes in the name of 9/11 from the Government down to street punks are winning.
War mongers are winning.
Big business is winning.
Money diverted from our children and parents to the war on terror is winning.
We gave away individual power in the name of peace only to be caught in a trap.
I support our troops...but even the soldiers I personally know that have been to Iraq and/or Afghanistan are tired of this fight on terrorism.
We beat Bin Laden...why are we still there? To make more enemies? To profit? To "keep our shores safe"?
We are all losing more and more every day and it has nothing to do with terrorists."
She then counters with the fact that she agrees with everything I am saying but I'm still letting the terrorists win by not seeing the "good" in the anniversary.
"The good we see is what keeps us going and makes us demand change. Without seeing the good, there is no chance of seeing hope."
I responded with this answer:
"You and I will agree to disagree. I see zero good from 9/11. I'm not dishonoring anyone. I hold them in my heart and remember vividly every single moment of that entire week. I just don't need to relive it to honor them. I don't need to light a candle or wear a wristband.
By doing what I can in my small, angry, loud ways to change what has happened to our country since I am honoring every single one of the lost and those that serve."
That is honestly the way I feel. 9/11 ruined our country not through terrorists acts (and guess what no matter how great our security measures and stripping of rights, if they want to hit us, they will) but through revealing the underlying fear, hatred and the willingness of a large portion of our country to exploit that fear and hatred to their own gain.
Shane Micheal Gerlach 9/10/11
(It also ruined my dad's birthday 9/11/47)
Vincent, that's a heck of a story. A few feet from Petit, the day before his WTC performance: wow! Thank you for telling it!
Shane, thanks to you too, for getting my thoughts rolling and sharing more of your thoughts here.
And Pastor Steve, yes, I did say that. I will happily show my daughter pictures of Petit's high-wire act and read to her from his book over and over again. I feel no such urge to repeatedly show her pictures of the planes crashing or the towers falling. Now, would you care to elaborate on your "wow"?
9-11 is a celebration of Bush administration incompetence and the one-day victory of insane terrorists. We should move labor day to 9-11 and celebrate all those who go to work everyday as well as those who went to work for the last time on Sept 11.
The patriotic nonsense that goes with this is sickening. People apparently do not realize that this hype is all about wasting our children on oil wars.
In South Dakota, Bill Janklow pulled all the maps of WPA dams out of circulation. One more way to remove indication of Franklin Roosevelt, but couched in patriotic fear and fervor.
Has anybody seen the interviews of Afghan people who do not even know about 9-11 and have no clue why Americans are still in their country? Billions of dollars squandered and that ignorance is astonishing.
The billions wasted on fraud amount to about $239 per man, woman, and child in the US.
I do not want to diminish the sorrow and cost to the people killed, injured, orphaned, etc by the terrorists on 9-11, but in the 10 years since then, something in the neighborhood of 100,000 US citizens have probably been killed by drunken driver terrorists of the highways and streets of the US.
My sister said something interesting to me today. Do we or have we ever celebrated when the British invaded Washington, D.C. in 1812, when Santa Anna came across our border in the 1840's, the sinking of the Maine in 1898, the bombing of Pearl Harbor? No we didn't and we don't. She went on to say "We have good relations with the Japanese and Japanese Americans because we moved on from Pearl Harbor. How can we ever have a relationship with good, loyal American Muslims or moderate Muslim's around the world when we make this day and event so significant."
America celebrates and remembers its victories. Yes, our Presidents rallied us like Bush after 9/11 or FDR after Pearl Harbor. But after that we celebrated our victory and not the initial cause of the war. All today did was remind us we haven't won the war that actually started with the bombing of USS Cole.
Nothing I'm saying is intended to denigrate the sacrifice of those who died on 9/11, especially of the first responders who charged into danger without regard to themselves. They are heroes just as the people are who were on the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor. But, I'm pretty sure these heroes would rather have us celebrating victory so their lives weren't lost in vain and not patting the terrorists on the back as I heard someone say this morning "America was forever changed ten years ago today."
WTF! I'll be darned if some crazy guy from another country is going to change the United States of America.
Man on Wire is maybe the most beautiful documentary I've ever seen. It is the anti-9/11.
Excellent point, Troy. Where is our Victory Day? I hate the "America was forever changed" rhetoric: we should not let any one fanatic change our country.
Perhaps a related sentiment: as I rode through Lead, I saw flags at half-staff. My gut reaction: Get Old Glory back at full-mast! We can move on from grief and celebrate our victories without denigrating those lost on the Cole or in the Pentagon or the towers.
In fact, we can only honor them with victory. Anything else is a disappointment to these heroes. Nobody wants to die for no reason.
Of course, Troy, "victory" can take many forms. I think some of my Buddhist and Christian readers might argue that the greatest victory against violence is to act in non-violence.
Cory, exactly. As per MLK and Gandhi, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. In the end, tyranny, oppression and terrorism has always lost. Every time. No exceptions.
MLK?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2035461/Jackie-Kennedy-look-image-Martin-Luther-King-sex-party-claims.html
And Gandhi's theology of Freemasonry:
http://www.masonindia.org/MInfo_59.htm
That's because liberty is at the ground of our being.
It is the work of those who would own and control us to deceive us into believing that we don't have it and must fight for it.
And the work of the revolutionary to remind us what nonsense that is.
We not only "have" liberty, it is what we are.
We can't NOT have it.
Notice that Sibby here is lost in the brainwashing process. Time for the lights to go on, Steve. You're not getting any younger, brother.
"We can’t NOT have it."
A double negative.
We lose liberty when we follow evil...specifically the Luciferian Doctrine of Freemasonry.
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/pike.htm
It's not a double negative, Steve. We are what we are. We cannot be otherwise.
Again, notice that it is more important for Sibby to believe he has lost his liberty than to affirm that he has it.
That's the paranoid construct.
It is only because he is fundamentally free that he can even imagine such a thing. The irony here is that liberty includes the freedom to delude oneself and to pretend that you have surrendered your essence.
Now, why would anyone want do this?
Because there is power in it.
"Again, notice that it is more important for Sibby to believe he has lost his liberty than to affirm that he has it.
That’s the paranoid construct."
So why are you accusing me of following evil? Or did you not read my comment closely enough?
I didn't say anything about evil, Sibby. I never do. That's your territory. You have to have it, or your propaganda won't work.
Question for you Sibby. What would you do if you weren't afraid?
Bill: "...tyranny, oppression and terrorism has always lost. Every time. No exceptions." George Orwell bothered me deeply by conceiving of a world in which tyranny ensured its victory unto the death of humanity. We could blow it, couldn't we?
I want to take heart in your assessment of history, but I won't take it as an assurance that we can relax and have faith that everything will work out fine. The bad guys lose only because we bust our chops to beat them.
Cory, I read Orwell as a cautionary tale. Same with Cormac McCarthy who is even darker. But if you will allow me a religious sounding comment (because right now, I can't think of a better way to put it) "God can forgive every sin except despair."
I agree that Orwell should be read as a cautionary tale. I may be guilty of the sin of despair as well as many others, but it seems to me that some are using Orwell as a road map. The manipulation of language and the mindless talking points help politicians succeed even though Orwell warned people against them.
If I may permitted a bit of philosophy without a license, Orwell seems to have become the total opposite of Machiavelli. Although some may argue that Machiavelli was writing a complete satire, he probably was writing a "how to" that is now being used as warning against totalitarian regimes. Orwell warned against totalitarianism but people are now using it as a "how to."
Coll how-to comparison, Leo! And Bill, good quote. I've not been tested as much as others, but I have been tested, and I've not despaired. I wonder... can too much 9/11 remembrance lead to despair?
Cory, another quote perhaps? This one from Henry David Thoreau: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."
So, short answer? Yes. I think so. I assumed that's why you made this post.
"can too much 9/11 remembrance lead to despair?"
Only if we wallow in it, which is what too much of the teevee and the rest of the media want us to do, for cheap ratings.