(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)
One of the things that Bush and his fellow Republicans are so fond of saying in political speeches is that “9/11 changed everything”. Most people probably think it’s a load of bullshit – and from a policy standpoint, it probably should have been. It’s true that something terrible had happened to our country, and something had to be done about it. But instead of learning from our mistakes, we have compounded them. Instead of showing compassion, we became a nation seemingly filled with anger. And instead of being an honest, upstanding country in the wake of our national tragedy, we have sunk to a lower standing in the world’s eyes than I have ever recalled reading in my history textbooks. In short, there was no reason to steer America as far off-course as our current leaders have done. Such radical change was not required.
But for me – and for people of my generation who have come of age under the shadow of September 11 – 9/11 really did change everything. And as a New Yorker, it’s something I will never forget.
September 11, 2001, started out like any other day for myself. I got to school at 7:30 in the morning, chatted with my friends in class, and mildly paid attention to what was occurring around me. It wasn’t until I arrived at my band’s daily meeting at 10:05 – I remember the exact time that my watch showed – that I found out from our conductor that something was terribly wrong. All we knew was that there was some sort of airplane crash at the World Trade Center towers. While we went through practice, the rest of the day was a horror story being played out. I called home during my lunch break, only to hear my mother tell me that both towers were ‘gone’. “What do you mean, gone?” I replied. They had disintegrated and collapsed from the jet-fueled fires, killing thousands of innocent people. The memories I had of gazing up at them wondrously as a little kid sightseeing in 1993, or of attending a world chess championship match in 1995, when the towers were engulfed in low clouds, or of gazing out at the rest of New York City from the rooftop – it was the only thing I’d have left of them. No pictures, no videotapes; only my mind’s eye.
I came home that night and did no homework. I didn’t read my textbooks. I sat at home and watched in stunned shock of the second plane hitting the South Tower, its demise, and finally the North Tower crumbling to the ground. Although I was tangentially aware of the time of Osama bin Laden and other terrorist factions, it still confounded me that anyone could be driven to commit such an act. In the short time thereafter, I had that same patriotic surge that I’m sure many others had. I wanted to get a clip-on flag for our car windows. I was thrilled to read about our success in driving the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. In short, I was a typical gung-ho American. They fucked with us, and now we were going to bomb them all to hell. Good for us. bin Laden and al Qaeda deserved it. They still do.
But somewhere along the way, what happened on September 11 – a day that used to be notable only because it’s my stepfather’s birthday – became something twisted…something sinister. It transformed into a political tool that has become thoroughly exploited by the far right. Nevermind that most of those same people probably would wish nothing but bad things upon New Yorkers, a group that is more liberal, more tolerant, and more compassionate than they could ever claim to be. No, September 11 is now used as a measure of patriotism and as a justification for injecting more poisonous rhetoric into our political culture. Sure, the right-wing pundits were out of control when Clinton was president. But now, any disagreement with their foreign policy goals is branded as being anti-American or treasonous or a similar epithet. A day supposed to be marked by solemn remembrance of those who have passed from this world is now used as a political cudgel by one side to justify anything and everything they undertake.
Of course, the political ramifications of 9/11 led us into Iraq, something that the neoconservatives within the Bush administration had been planning for several years. It was in the run-up to our occupation of Iraq that made me lose complete faith in Bush. I knew he wasn’t the ‘compassionate conservative’ he had spun himself to be in the 2000 election, and I knew he wasn’t the brightest light in the room, but I figured he’d come around. When Clinton was president, everything seemed to work out alright. I guess it was the naive idealism of youth that made me believe such a thing. As the clamor for invading Iraq grew louder, I became more cynical about government. No longer did it seem like a proper representative of our country. Instead, it had become a method for the few to propagandize and influence the beliefs of many. By the end of the summer of 2002, I was resigned to the fact that war was inevitable. It wasn’t a necessary war. It wasn’t a war that would help us find the people who had brought the Towers down. It was fueled by fear. By anger that could be directed to any source. And as I woke up to the news in March 2003 that we had invaded Iraq, I wondered how many more people were going to die. Our soldiers…what were they going to give their lives for? It wasn’t to bring those who had wrought tragedy on us to justice. What was it for? Why did we do it?
My first visit to the site where the Towers once stood was in May of 2003. I had a school trip to the NY Federal Reserve Bank, which is located a couple blocks from the site. Looking through the fence that surrounded the site, I was gripped with an immeasurable sadness. New York may be the city that never sleeps, but standing at that gaping hole in the ground…the physical emptiness and its presence simply stuns you into a deafening silence. I’ve returned a couple of times since then, and it’s still hard to come to grips that the Towers are…gone. Just gone. America’s heart was ripped out on September 11, and I feel like we’ve lost our country’s soul since then. We’re seen as mean-spirited, as petty, as exploitative of anything possible. Cynicism runs abound. So does anger and hate and greed. Losing the Towers didn’t bring out the best in us…instead, it brought out the worst. And justice has still not been served for those who were behind the September 11 attacks. For me, that day forever changed who I was. I became informed. I became aware. But there will always be a creeping fear in me…one that will never quite trust our government again. Instead of Americans embracing each other, this government has sowed the seeds of distrust far too deep for me to ever rely on our democracy ever again. That’s why I became active – because I want to work towards a government that we can trust again, that we can rely on, that we don’t have to dismiss as full of liars.
So today, I will be attending classes. I’ll be giving my stepfather a call to wish him a happy birthday. I will suffer through the readings for class. But through it all, I’ll remember silently what happened September 11. I don’t watch anything about the day, as I’ll be brought to a state where I simply can’t function. For many of you who are older than I am, perhaps it didn’t change your world outlook all that much. But it indelibly shaped the person that I am today. And unlike the Republicans, it is something that will forever be burned into my memory.
Never forget.
