September 12
September 12, 2007
I just noticed that Kathryn Jean Lopez is upset Google didn’t change their logo to commemorate September 11.
I went to work yesterday, which is what I did on September 11, 2001. Unlike that day six years ago, I managed to work the whole day. Six years ago on September 11 I had to evacuate the city.
A couple of days later, I — like the majority of people not immediately affected by death of loved ones — sucked it up and went back to work, not knowing if terrorists had anything more in store for us on the highways or in the subways. For months as I rode the train through L’Enfant Plaza in DC, the vision of the city with victims of biological or gas attacks laying in the streets was alive in my mind. As I am sure it was for many others. Especially during the now apparently forgotten anthrax attacks.
But my point is we tried to get back to normal, determined that terrorists were not going to take what we had away from us. We didn’t give up, we persevered. We practically dared them to try it again.
For just a few months shy of six years, my wife and I rode the Metro to work every day in one of the biggest terrorist and military targets on the planet. I saw military police with automatic weapons patrol Washington DC like it was East Berlin. For six years.
For six years we have been trying to persevere, to protect what is American, to live our lives like citizens who own their own government. But this administration has spent six years explaining that terrorists changed everything when they flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And that America couldn’t be America any more.
We could not have privacy in public, we could not have privacy in private. We could not have civil rights in airports, we could not have civil rights in court. We would have to watch what we say lest it “embolden” a terrorist. We would have to torture and detain and give up habeus corpus. And people like Jerry Falwell suggested liberals, pagans, and abortionists had to take responsibility for the actions of religious extremists apparently sent by God to punish us for not being righteous enough.
I can understand why people want a moment of silence or two. Why people want to remember friends and loved ones that died that day.
But it is not a holiday for anger. We do not all need to gather to shake our fists and snarl and snipe at people who aren’t being angry and snarly enough and remind people 9/11 changed everything.
In terms of who we are as a country, 9/11 should have changed nothing. We should have taken our American ingenuity and American stubbornness and, with the help of our good friends and allies around the world, fought terrorism like the crime syndicate and disease it is instead of the army that it’s not. And we should have done it without torture, without spying on our own citizens en masse, without sacrificing our most sacred political principles.
We should have persevered, but we didn’t. We let them change us. We let them turn us into something not American. And I don’t want to commemorate September 11 because I already remember September 11. And the damage that was done to us on September 11 is still being done to us now, even now, even six years and a day later, with the help of George Bush and his supporters and the Democrats Who Have No Spine. The damage is being done overseas and in our military brigs and in the data centers where they store the phone calls of innocent civilians they tapped and in the airport where people are walking, shoeless and shampooless, through metal detectors. Meanwhile K-Lo pulls a hissy because Google didn’t change its logo.
Over six years ago terrorists tried to scare us. And we sure as hell look scared, don’t we?
It’s been six years. It’s time to pull it together. Address the real problem. Reclaim our values. Be America again.
Posted in Terrorism
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September 12th, 2007 at 9:38 am
All I can say to this post is love. It’s wonderful to see a good, fresh perspective on ourselves that’s not one of the typical mainstream thoughts. (I posted such an opinion on my own blog) Wonderful post! Please keep at it.
September 12th, 2007 at 11:51 am
I spent some time yesterday (more than I would have liked) arguing with someone via e-mail about the September 11 memorials and what he thought of as their fetishizing of grief. “Enough already” was his basic premise, adding that the victims and families probably didn’t deserve all (or any) of the compensation money they’d been given.
I argued that there were a lot of factors that went into that compensation — even *if*, as he seemed to think, greed was one of them — and, on that day of all days, the anniversary of their loss, I wasn’t going to deny anyone their genuine grief. I don’t like the way the memorials are co-opted by politicians to score easy points, while at the same time doing everything to actually make us less safe. But I’m not going to get angry or upset because a family wants to light a candle or a fire company wants to read off the names of its fallen members.
At the same time, however, anger that some people are *not* doing this — that Google isn’t properly commemorating the event, for instance — is ridiculous.
That said, are you sure this isn’t just a bad joke?
September 12th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Our government and our own religious extremists want to preserve the fear and the anger. If we were less angry and less afraid of the terrorists, we might turn a light of reason and truth on this administration and its army of god. Then we would all see what harm they have done to us as a democracy.
We would also see that with their lies and by their ill-conceived and poorly managed prosecution of the Iraq war they have emboldened the terrorists, increased their numbers, and given them rhetoric and weapons to use against us. I stand amazed at the docility of Democrats in government who received a clear mandate in 2006 to do something about this stupidity.
September 12th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
[...] September 12 (Thudfactor) For six years we have been trying to persevere, to protect what is American, to live our lives like citizens who own their own government. But this administration has spent six years explaining that terrorists changed everything when they flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And that America couldn’t be America any more. [...]
September 12th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Amen.
September 12th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
There was an interesting conversation at work yesterday. My boss (B)looked out the window at the rain and commented that it wouldn’t be a good day to be at the beach.
Coworker (C) was horrified: Why would anyone go to the beach on 9/11?
B: If we made every day that something terrible had happened into a memorial, they would fill up the whole calendar.
C: Today should be a holiday. My calendar says it’s “Patriot Day.”
Me (glancing at my calendar): Mine says that too. I hadn’t noticed.
B: Patriot Day?? (rolling eyes)
Now here is the interesting aspect of this - C is not an American citizen and B is usually an ultra-conservative. I would have expected their views on this to be swapped.
September 12th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
In my classroom today, I managed to turn “Patriot Day” into a lesson about why they need to learn history. I pointed out that things that happen in the past still affect us today, and that’s why you need to be aware of them. I pointed out the change in airport travel, war in Iraq, passport changes, etc. The principal did his 30 minute ramble about it, and we had to watch a powerpoint with the images from NYC and DC. Most of my students were in Kindergarten when this happened. So most of them could care less, unless they had a relative directly involved. I didn’t focus on the anger; I focused on the changes wrought by the event.
September 13th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
I’m over it for exactly the reasons you state. I’ve suffered for my opinion too which I shared aloud at my beauty parlor. I brought down the wrath of an old lady in the form of a formidable whack with her handbag.