I wrote a piece on September 15, 2001, as downtown Manhattan was engulfed in flames, fear and dust, panicked about the notion of seeking revenge by targeting the wrong people. I was thinking of innocent Afghanistan citizens who were already targets of the Taliban, who would likely bear the brunt. I hadn’t even contemplated Iraq.
What changed for me permanently on 9/11 was magnitude. I couldn’t comprehend the damage or loss of life from the first tower as it was hit, and then the second, and then the collapse, of the first, and then the second. Sure there was Hiroshima, but that was before my time. And I didn’t watch it live on television.
By that point what happened to the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvanian field was almost collateral damage – a sideshow away from the main feature. The notion that a hijacked commercial plane flying into the Pentagon seemed trivial was simply a result of the magnitude of what had happened in Manhattan. That the apparent heroics of Mark Bingham and others who brought down Flight 93 could be so easily relegated to an afterthought unless I actively force myself to consider what happened, and what could have.
The article I wrote was a desperate plea to take a step back. A foreboding prediction of what might otherwise become, which came true far worse and much quicker than I had imagined.
Timing and our capacity to heal wounds – both physiological and psychological — plays a significant role in how we respond to tragedy and how we recalibrate our world view and human understanding. The notion of “too soon†applied to comedians that use humor or artists that use their craft to laugh or comment on something that is still raw is the first step in permission to heal.
On the second anniversary of 9/11 I produced a piece called Phoenix Rising, the identical landscape as the first, except that the Statue of Liberty wore a gas mask, her outstretched arm like a Sig Heil salute. The once proud towers morphed and twisted into a swastika. Perhaps more misunderstood than any piece I’ve done (and for which I bear responsibility) the image was a warning. We were already heading that way. Godwin’s law renders the reference of Nazis or Hitler out of bounds in the pursuit of consensus or intelligent debate, but when the comparisons are so stark, why not?
The passage of the newspeaky Patriot Act that made emergency powers commonplace and threatens the very tenets of democracy, that fundamental extremist terrorists abhor, which continue. The denial of habeus corpus and our extraordinary rendition program. An ironic exercise in which we “extradite†detainees to countries like Egypt (although that now remains to be seen), where they can be tortured legally, because we supposedly don’t. (And of course, when we do, we pretend we didn’t really, and “look forward†instead.) America doesn’t torture so how can we prosecute ourselves for it?
And so now, ten years later, having seen a new generation, who were too young to experience 9/11, dance in the streets at the death of Bin Laden – orchestrated by a Commander in Chief who put an enormous amount at stake for only a momentary boost to his approval ratings, without any understanding as to what else we lost that day, or how similar the dancing in the streets looked on 9/11 in various parts of the Middle East.
America has become a very different place from that fateful Tuesday. The outrageous costs of life and treasury in two wars that have done nothing other than to give credence to Bin Laden’s ugly predictions have left our economy in ruins, our political system immobilized and useless and our moral standing lost in the ashes of the rubble at Ground Zero.
Thousands upon thousands of lives later, countless tortured confessions later, we are no safer nor better off than we were on September 11th. Only more universally reviled and just as likely to blame every Muslim that lives and breathes – or those killed on 9/11 – for the events of that fateful day. Millions of photos and tears later, we rage without introspection, still unable to separate our anger from our self-righteousness.
Billions of confiscated bottles later, we still wait barefoot in lines at airports, subject to radiation or molestation by the TSA. While our unsupervised railway lines, busses and uninspected ports remain just as vulnerable as they ever were, thanks to regulation loathing politicians who would sooner give a billionaire a tax break than a federal job that serves us all to someone who desperately needs it.
Thousands of gay bashings later, and concerted efforts to brand, scapegoat, marginalize and ensure or retain second-class citizens, far too many Americans still seek to deny rights to anyone who isn’t straight or part of an idealized nuclear family. The same rights they would deny Mark Bingham, or Father Mychel Judge as they weep over their memorials. The same ugly, dangerous, hate-filled vitriol vomited by the likes of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell remains unchanged, other than that Jerry Falwell is now somewhere answering to his bitter, uncompromising God. As the Pamela Gellers and Michelle Malkins of the world fill the void in a sad, ironic salute to gender equality.
Millions of hypocritical musings and flag-draped, lip-serviced, patronizing mutterings later, the first responders hailed on Fox News and other right wing blogs and websites and radio stations, are the same people whose membership in unions have deemed them enemy number one, as America seeks to cut their wealth and weaken their collective bargaining rights to ensure greater profit and less accountability to anyone or anything other than the bottom line.
Millions of iPads and iPhones and smart this and smart that later, our incredible advances in technology come with very costly strings attached. Secret Apple “investigative units†acting in concert with the San Francisco Police Department, cell phone companies (that were aiding and abetting illegal secret wiretapping policies) and transportation agencies cutting off service to quell First Amendment rights of protestors against police brutality, fifty-four page intellectual property contracts and draconian digital rights management policies, and an unprecedented erosion of privacy that we complicity accept in the name of convenience, just like we do unconstitutional legislation under the guise of security.
Millions of underwater homes later – both from loan-sharking predators killing the lives and dreams of those seeking to better themselves, and literally underwater from an old, crumbling infrastructure – we continue to prop up banks and financial institutions that got us into this mess, while cutting vital services we expect from the government, such as the Federal Aviation Agency, so vitally important on September 11th.
Billions of carbon emissions later, we still choke our environment with shrieks for reduced “job-destroying†regulations that fly in the face of science, deny the realities of climate change, and allow giant corporations like BP to continue reckless drilling experiments at the expense of our oceans, marine life and livelihoods, while they “remedy†accidents by pouring toxic, inadequately tested dispersants to hide rather then fix the devastation.
Had so many of the victims not been regular, hard-working people going about their day, or homeless victims asleep in the subways below, or first responders rushing to help and save their fellow citizens, the symbolism of Bin Laden’s attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon might be a lot more readily understood, if not applauded, by Main Street — would it have happened today.
Ten years later, we are just as stupid, pathetic, unsafe, and deluded as we ever were, if not more. The only thing that’s changed is that we have grown older as the memories and potential lessons of 9/11 fade into the distance. And unless and until we do something about it, Osama Bin Laden won.