some thoughts on 9/11

[rivendellrose]

I'd guess a lot of people today are writing out their feelings on seeing the first newscasts about the 9/11 attacks, today. Mine are somewhat anti-climactic - I was awakened by the phone, a few minutes before my alarm was set to go off. My mom called, and immediately launched into how awful it was, couldn't I just not believe it was happening?

I had no idea what she was talking about.

So that's my first impression of that day - sleep-dulled confusion. Planes hitting buildings, terrorists... what? After it sunk in a bit, I became acquainted with the resignation that I've felt ever since - resignation to patriotism, to war-mongering, to guilt and sorrow and fear. I spent the rest of that day listening to NPR until I left for work, and then dealing with requests for American flags and white votive candles. The news was on in the break-room. All the customers mentioned it, and there was a group on the corner outside with signs as I left, shouting and waving. I honked the horn of my ancient car as I passed them, one of the few times I ever used the horn.

Strange the things you remember.

I kept a little vase of forget-me-nots, yellow poppies, and rosemary on my windowsill for the rest of the summer, and chatted with people at work, at the bank, and pretty much anywhere about how this would affect gas prices, college, whether or not the draft would be re-instated...

Those deaths bothered me, yes, but no more those deaths than the worry about the deaths that came from them. As American flags popped up everywhere around us and the infamous 'freedom fries' issue began to crop up, I got an increasingly sinking feeling. My first week of college, I played flag football against teams from other floors in my building, and then came home to hear that we'd declared war. I cried and felt stupidly guilty.

I've been asked many times what I thought our reaction should have been to the events of September 11th. I don't know - I'm not a political science major, I'm not even the sort of person who follows politics as a hobby. I know that our claims of "freeing" the Afghani and later Iraqi people would have been a lot more convincing years ago, and that the war wasn't really about the appalling state of the people in those nations. I suspect the Weapons of Mass Destruction were a ploy from the start, and that this whole thing really has a lot more to do with oil than freedom. I know I get a sinking feeling in my gut whenever Bush speaks, and I make not-quite-serious jokes about applying as a political refugee if ever I really do jump ship and leave the US.

A lot of people call September 11th a loss of innocence. I feel more like it was the day everything I'd neurotically feared for several years started to come true. My college years have been years of war, of blind-eyed patriotism and nationalism the likes of which I thought I'd never see, smacking of the 1940s and 50s and the era of McArthyism. Years when the Unites States is called a 'Christian Nation,' openly and by our president, and when the Bill of Rights seem to be limited to those that are convenient for those in power.

For me, today isn't just a day to remember the people who died in the attacks that occurred on this day. It's a day to remember all the deaths that occurred as a consequence of this day.

Comments

[shadawyn.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

I understand on the anticlimatic. I was on summer break, slept in, got online and went into the large RPG chat I was a mod in and asked "Why is there a Twin Towers Discussion room?" I started getting PM'd with "turn on the TV" and "the US is going to war!". I checked my email and a friend in NYC replied to an earlier email discussion and said "Our building is being evacuated now. Turn on the TV and you'll find out why." Oh, how he knew me. I finally turned on the TV.

Then I spent the rest of the day trying to help keep the chat from turning into a political flame war and watching the same footage of planes flying into buildings over and over again.

I was a small person then, and I'm small person now.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure entirely what you mean by being a "small" person (other than the obvious physical size issue), but it seems to me that it's the 'small' things that mean the most. No, we have no amazingly huge insights or involvement - thank the gods, on that last one!

But when you think about it, if that's the sense you mean, the world is full of small people. Our worlds are small, and what matters to us are the small things. Bigger issues only have major importance when they interfere with our small lives.

[shadawyn.livejournal.com]

That's more or less what I meant by small person. I have my own little bubble world that I deal with, and I don't deal with the bigger picture/politics/etc. unless it directly threatens my little bubble world.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I don't think many people are all that different from us. There are some, I'm sure, who have much bigger spheres of direct concern, but for the most part...

There are bigger issues that concern me, but they are those issues that connect to things I consider within my bubble. Religious freedom (a potential issue in my own life), gay rights (an issue for many of my friends), and environmentalism and animal rights, both of which are spiritual as well as personal concerns in my mind. So I guess it's a bigger bubble in some ways than my personal life, but I think of it in a very personal fashion.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_hannelore/]

My thoughts on that day sort of reflected the story the Onion did for the occasion. The headline? "Holy Fucking Shit." With the true sidebar, "Hugging Up 110%"

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I definitely agree with that.

9/11

[narsilion.livejournal.com]

I think my first thought when I heard of the attacks were, Oh my God, the horror the people who were going through this first hand must be feeling, and the fears of the people who had loved ones in the
buildings, and on planes anywhere at that time. My secondary thought was: holy shit we'll be going to war.
I remember crying off and on all day, for us, but also thinking how lucky we have been until now. We've been watching other countries
go through versions of this for years, though not necessarily on this scale.
I don't believe in war for the most part, and my GOD I wish Clinton had still been in office on September 11th, because I believe as you do that Bush was able to get an amazing following from this, while also using it to his own advantage.(the war with Iraq being the main one, but so many other things also.)
I wonder, specifically, about the terrorist attacks, if each one of you have thought about if YOU were president on that day, how would you have responded? I have so many times. Those of you who know me, know that I hate Bush, and one of my worst fears is that he will get back into office for another term,( Bushes annoying voice saying "Texas and the United States are a Christian Nation" comes to mind and makes me shudder, What the Fuck happened to freedom of religion? Isn't that what this country is based on? That,and many of the other rights I'm afraid we'll be losing if he gets back in) but how do you react to the thousands of deaths? Do you just say, HEY! Don't do that again? Do we just strengthen our security and try to keep it from happening again?
It haunts me because I think of the senseless deaths of innocent lives in Afghanistan, and then Iraq, which, WTF, leave your Daddy's fight out of this! What would have been a better way to handle that. It would be wonderful if there really was a James Bond who could go in and root out Osama Bin Laden and his main guys, but there isn't, so I ask all of you, the future of our country, (hopefully there WILL be a future, PLEASE VOTE!!!!) what would you have done? Let's get some better ideas for the future!
Sorry, I know it's long.

Re: 9/11

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Hehehe. That was indeed long, but it also had a lot of good points. *Hugs*

And don't you remember? Freedom is only for the majority. *Rolls eyes* That's the thing I really don't get about Christians - you folks are the majority in this country, and a loud-ass minority in the rest of the world. And yet we still hear shit all the time about how Christians are 'persecuted' or how it takes courage to be a Christian in the US. Which is just a crock of bullshit, as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't take courage - it takes bowing to the unspoken norm.

Anyway. That wasn't meant as a personal attack on you or any other Christian... it's just meant as a rant about the mentality that some Christians seem to take. Christianity has been increasingly the dominant religion in the western world since fucking Constantine. Time to drop the martyr complex.

*Rereads, blinks, then hides under a rock* Ahem. Sorry about the rant.