O My America: 9/11 x 10 = Zero

by Lawrence Bush The commemoration of 9/11 has gone the way, for me, of Memorial Day, Veterans Day and Presidents Day: I experience it as near-empty spectacle, a day to feel isolated and alienated from the culture, in spite of myself. My sadness and horror about 9/11 are fresh, still accessible (I watched the Towers come down while waiting in a hospital for my wife to come out of surgery), and my pride about how New York, my international city, rose up and displayed its working-class heart, remains strong — but the rah-rah propagandists, bunkum peddlers, and professional killers have replayed 9/11, slo-mo’ed 9/11, orange-alerted 9/11, “U!S!A! ‘ed” 9/11, exported 9/11 to Iraq, classified 9/11, tortured 9/11, drained 9/11 of all significance besides stale emotion — and left me tongue-tied. In fact, the events of September 11, 2001 planted seeds of thoughtful patriotism in me. I began to reconsider my stances about the U.S. military budget and the need for national defense — and I was ready for us to try to round up or kill every member of Al Qaeda — but whatever “concessions” to conservative “realism” I was prepared to make were quickly trumped by the Rumsfeld Doctrine of preemptive war and Bush’s unbounded “War on Terrorism.” I was also reconsidering my reluctance to view Muslim fundamentalism as a global threat — but whatever immigration and security restrictions I might have been prepared to support were quickly trumped by round-ups, Abu Ghraib, the Patriot Act, and Christian fundamentalist lunacy. I even supported the U.S. military action to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan — but whatever concessions I was ready to make on self-defense were quickly trumped by the reality of Afghanistan as an obviously impossible place for American-imposed nation-building. And I felt more a part of America — until my thoughtful patriotism became unpatriotic in no time flat. I couldn’t dare speak about 9/11 in terms other than American victimization; I couldn’t dare speak of it as a wake-up call for anything but the monster of militarism. I couldn’t ask that question: Why do they hate us? I couldn’t even whisper, What have we done? I couldn’t even fantasize: How can we make it better? Today, I see the footage of the World Trade Center in ruins and I harbor thoughts about all those miniature versions of that scene that the U.S. fostered in Iraq. I see souvenirs of 9/11 in shop or apartment windows and I assume the people who own them are conservative creeps. I listen to “specials” about 9/11 and it feels to me like I’m attending a beer party on the Titanic: People are throwing up at the railing and not noticing the waves getting higher and higher as the ship sinks... Maybe this Saturday, on the 10th anniversary, I will dare to ask a few people what this day means to them. Between now and then, please consider writing here about what it means to you.