This is how my mother feels about the day JFK was killed. She was in Dallas that day.
She's said that the country seemed to change, after that. Things went inexplicably sour.
From a historical standpoint, I know that the pendulum swings back and forth, and September 11, 2001 was not really the beginning of this country's slide into the new dark age of neo-conservatism, anti-intellectualism, and get-whatcha-can and fuck the poor...but I think the events of that day hastened the slide.
And shame on us, for allowing it.
6 comments:
Hi Mac - I know I won't know the answer to this until my son is perhaps my age, but as I drove him to a birthday party at the Cleveland Zoo yesterday, bright, sunny Sunday morning, we listened to This American Life. Which, interestingly, made not a single mention of 9/11. It was completely focused on Katrina.
The stories were fascinating but my son, being only 11 with the brain of an adult, was in and looked as though he was in shock as he listened to one woman tell her story of being in a hospital for safety and then in Convention Center and how they weren't allowed to cross to the West bank.
Then the next story was about tourists who'd come to N.O. for a paramedics convention and the story of how they got across the West bank.
And one of the last stories was from an 18 year old, reacting to Bill O'Reilly's comment that Katrina shows that if people got educated, they wouldn't be poor.
Huh? I guess he's not thinking about those millions of college-educated folks who've lost their jobs so that his uber capitalist friends can make more money for them there educated selves in a variety of ways that undercut the working poor and unemployed.
Anyway - my point is: It was 9/11. I went to a store to buy something for the party (gift card from Walmart to send to Katrina victims - that's what the child wanted), wrote a check and didn't even think of 9/11 as 9/11/01 until I wrote that check - that was at least three or four hours after I'd been awake.
I was amazed at how out of my consciousness it was. Very scary indeed.
I wonder what my son will remember.
As awful as it sounds, Jill, I sort of deeply feel that the events of 9-11-o1 have been so thoroughly appropriated as a bludgeon used by the neo-cons as justification for the terrifying erosion of civil rights--not just in this country, but other democratic nations, as well--that I find myself emotionally distanced from the whole event.
I resent that.
All very interesting observations. The Australian government announced the introduction of counter-terrorism laws following 9/11 and then announced "tightening" of counter-terrorism laws almost immediately after 7/7. It has also been observed how the recent tightening of counter-terrorism laws has been timely introduced to deflect attention from a serious allegation of Prime Ministerial misconduct in relation to witholding information to the public to expedite the sell off of a public utility. Very convenient.
Oops that last post was from moi...
I figgered...
Indeed!!!
Post a Comment