9/11 at GW

We shouldn’t have “bonded together to keep the country moving.” We moved in the wrong direction.

Fuck romanticizing how well we recovered. WE HAVEN’T. We’re still spiraling like so much toilet water.

Going to work — or Sam’s Club or Target Greatland — is not heroic: it’s expected. I don’t mean that as a pejorative.

In which class did you have this discussion?

When did everyone band together and decide to work for the American good?
People in New York, sure…people helped each other, but the country? I don’t remember that happening.

I remember freedom fries; I remember racism; I remember sadness; I remember anger; I remember the institution of colorcoded terror alerts; I remember being told everyone had come together for ‘merica, but I don’t remember any material evidence of that.

If I’m wrong — and it’s likely that I am: I was fourteen and apathetic — somebody tell me.
Really.

“The girl was completely unaware of the conversation going on, but was instead clicking through pictures from last weekend’s ironic 80s party.”
If that isn’t a microcosm of the sickening narcissism and apathy that plagues this school, then I don’t know what is. I hope she had fun getting drunk andthrowing up to the sounds of WAM!

I wouldn’t be too hard on her. When people say, “Never forget 9/11″ what are they really telling us not to forget?

9/11 was probably the only time in my life I’ve actually felt pure, unbridled hatred. I hated the people who did this to us. I hated anyone who supported them. I hated anyone who was at all like them. I remember walking into school the next day and declaring that I wanted the US to turn the Middle East into an ash tray.

Like Kirk said, we were 14. What did we know?

I honestly don’t see how anyone could forget the events of 9/11. But as for how I felt that day and the things I said-I would really prefer to forget that. Better to look at ironic 80s party photos than remember those feelings every 11th of September.

I can understand the apathy–perhaps it’s the product of narcissism, or maybe just honesty.

To be truthful, my reaction to 9/11 was intense but short-lived. I was angry, but ultimately able to calm down. It took me a day or two. I said some intemperate things about the Muslim world. I got over it.

We’re (or I’m) too sheltered (by distance, if nothing else) from the reality of things like terrorism to have the sort of life-altering reaction to the attacks which seems expected of me. The 9/11 attacks were, for me, images on CNN. Disturbing images, yes, but still little more than a long movie. I imagine the situation is much the same with this girl. Would it be better for her to FAKE some sort of emotionality on the anniversary of 9/11?

I think it makes sense if the girl had the sentiment expressed by Kirk or Pat, and didn’t want to deal with a frustrating conversation. But that doesn’t mean the conversation, and the day as a whole, doesn’t deserve more respect than that, just on a general level.

Pat & Bill,
I never got angry, a lot of people around me were angry.
I was sad and anxious.

Darren,
I don’t think my sentiment has anything to do with Pat’s.

Why does the conversation deserve respect?
Even more, why does the day deserve respect?

I mean, it’s pretty shitty that someone was ignoring everyone in class during a discussion.

I don’t respect the day that four planes flew into three buildings and one field. I don’t respect the conversation that suggests America recovered magically. I don’t respect sentimentalizing a massive amount of death.

I feel bad for those who lost family members.
I feel bad for those who lost family members because of the way the country grouped together to move forward and bomb wantonly.

The recovery was not courageous. It was ostensibly different, but it was essentially the same. What I mean by that is: there was an awareness of a significant difference between September 10th and 12th. The difference made people pause to consider the people lost, but not why we were attacked. A fresh pot of jingoism was brought to the table and embraced without a second’s pause.
People understood that the US was in a different position than previously, but the understanding went no further than that.

After 9/11, everyone was talking about how we had to band together and help America recover (ie. keep making money). Later, everyone said We Did It!
We didn’t save the economy, we just postponed the crash.

What I mean is: We got punched in the back of the head, so we closed our eyes, turned around, and haven’t stopped swinging yet.

What do people want us to remember on 9/11? People want us to remember those who died and are no longer with us. Why? Because as Americans, well some of us, value human life. Maybe I’m the odd person out, but I don’t remember hatred that day. I remember being shipped home from school and being held by my mom as we watched the news. I remember wondering what was going to happen next and praying that no more of my fellow countrymen would die that day.

In any case, I’m sad to see there is still obviously so much aggression (albeit pointed at different groups now) when it comes to that day.

Obviously remembering people who lost their lives on 9/11 is important. My point was that I think 9/11, or the memory of 9/11, has been used to justify a lot of really terrible things (Iraq War, PATRIOT Act, Gitmo, etc.) since that day. When we’re constantly reminded to “Never forget”, it seems like they want us to sustain or recall feelings of fear, anger, or anxiety that made us think things like those listed above are necessary for us to be safe or remain free.

This entire coversation is predicated on the premise that muslim terrorists attacked america on september 11 without the “help” of the united states government. That premise is not entirely uncontroversial. September 11 reminds me of Hitler burning the Reichstag.

I also don’t think “valuing human life” is uniquely American or that we as a people generally value all human life equally, but that’s a different issue.

“This entire coversation is predicated on the premise that muslim terrorists attacked america on september 11 without the “help” of the united states government.”

“Help” in the broad sense of a foreign policy that encourages anti-Americanism and terrorism, perhaps. Also, the Reichstag comparison is apt in that neoconservatives have clearly used the memory of 9/11 to push for their pet policies. I have yet, however, to see any convincing argument that the US government was involved in the terrorist attacks to the extent that the Nazi Party was involved in the burning of the Reichstag.*

Personally, I think neoconservative foreign policy is foolish enough (and their benefitting from 9/11 repugnant enough) to earn condemnation, without the need to allege that they had a hand in the actual attacks.

* This is, itself, “not an uncontroversial” claim. The historical debate about the extent to which Hitler and the Nazis were involved in the Reichstag fire is hardly settled. We only know for sure that they profited from it.

Bill, you yourself said they had a hand in the attacks.
American foreign policy for the last 60 years, be it neoconservative, Carterian, Nixonian, &c. has been a series of requests for something like this.

Inotherwords, planning & execution aren’t really the only factors one needs to take into account.

Well, by “help” I actually meant they (us government) placed explosive charges in the buildings to facilitate the collapsing of the buildings.

“Bill, you yourself said they had a hand in the attacks.
American foreign policy for the last 60 years, be it neoconservative, Carterian, Nixonian, &c. has been a series of requests for something like this.”

Yeah, that was my point. I was arguing against what I (correctly) took to be Max’s claim that the government had a more direct hand in the carnage.

The whole gamut of “emotional” reactions to 9/11 are extreme, in the worst way that can mean in this country. Extreme emotions are fine, but there’s no reason for a person to be so hopped up on their own (nationwide) insecurities that he or she constantly overcompensates for what could be construed as a potentially human emotion. Grief, anger, sadness–all forms of suffering that have their own social, mental, physical and spiritual consequences and effects. If we (Americans) had simply allowed ourselves to feel what we felt, there would be no need for extra efforts to “remember” or “never forget” or “observe” the subsequent anniversaries of it. Grief, in one form or another and the effort to assuage of it should have been the only response to the whole thing. Instead the Ribald Hamfisted Pageant of the American news media has transformed it into a GMC commercial or, perhaps you movie-nuts out there will remember, a high-budget remake of a cartoon from the 80’s about transforming robots. We as Americans have forgotten how to have real emotions, and that is more pressing an issue than who is going to be the country’s next president or anything else.

Fuck yeah!

FUCKIN’