Gotta say, I think it’s more important to never forget September 12.
9/12/2001 was the day we, as a nation, decided to go bugfuck insane.
If that day may have affected you personally, diredctly or indirectly, that’s fine. React how you react, remember how you remember.
But on a national level? We went insane with jingoism. We turned deeply unworthy people like Bush, Rumsfeld, and especially Rudy Giuliani into heroes when they absolutely did not deserve it, and we’ve been paying for it ever since.
To this day, we take off our shoes to go through airport security and weirdos with power trips get little thrills every time a squeeze tube of sunscreen breaks the arbitrary three ounce limit.
And obviously, our geopolitical response to it was a fucking nightmare, a tragedy compounded a thousandfold.
But maybe the most toxic result? The idea that if we allow this tragedy to change our way of life in any way, we lose and someone else wins. Reflect on our foreign policy in the Middle East? The terrorists win. Stop shopping? The terrorists win. Question Dubya in any way? The terrorists win.
Flash forward to 2020 and beyond, and that same attitude got applied in an even dumber way to COVID. We have to “live with the virus”, or… someone not us wins and we lose? But by “live with the virus”, we don’t mean taking precautions or fixing indoor air systems, because, again, someone not us would somehow win.
If the past 22 years have taught me anything, it’s that we, as a nation, collectively decide how we respond to tragedies of all sizes and types. And we do so in a way that reinforces, not challenges, the status quo and the mythical version of America, because that’s what the people with the money and the power need to happen to keep their money and power.
On Sep 12, 2001, we all got a lot crazier, and most of that madness has stayed with us ever since.
Amen. I miss the America I knew from before the WTC attack. Maybe this madness was always there and I wasn't looking hard enough. Maybe it was just easier to keep it in check.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn’t new, as such. I’m old enough to remember the toilet paper with Ayatollah Khomeini’s face printed on it, then, a decade or so later, the same schtick repeated with Saddam Hussein’s face.
DeleteBut the post-9/11 madness was bigger in scale and much more permanent in its long-term effects.