The Spirit of 9/11
Tuesday September 12, 2006
Category: War on Terror
Today marks the fifth anniversary of September 12th, 2001, when the immediate crisis had passed and our leaders woke up wondering how they were going to respond to this new terrorist threat. It is a cliche, and had almost become cliche even then, to say that 9/11 changed America forever. It isn't clear which writer was the first to say "the age of irony is over," but for the time being, it was, and it was inconceivable to many of us that the age of irony would ever come back.
We would no longer be a triumphalist country, our leaders told us. Patriotism would become important. Unity would become important. The anti-establishment vibe of the sixties and seventies would be gone forever. We would trust the government and trust our cultural values because the alternative would be death.
We all know where we were the morning of September 11th, I guess. I was sleeping in, having injured my knee two days earlier--massive swelling, floating bone chip, the whole nine yards--when I heard the television in the next room report something that sounded very urgent. I grabbed my crutch and hobbled over to the television set to see the impact of the second plane on the World Trade Center. My first thought, once I realized it wasn't a nightmare, was that we were being retaliated against for refusing to support that recent U.N. resolution condemning Israel. I did not suspect domestic terrorism; I immediately suspected religious extremists from the Middle East. I was angry. And--this may surprise some of you--I was extremely grateful, at the time, that we had elected a Republican president with a Cold War foreign policy cabinet. I blamed the Clinton administration for the tragedy. I blamed the "age of irony." I blamed our culture. America had been victimized, and it's human nature to blame the victim.
Like many Americans, I spent the rest of the day glued to the television set. I think I wore a little flag ribbon every day for the next three or four months, and it was a long time before I was able to completely comprehend why civil liberties mattered. Oh, sure, I understood the theoretical importance of the Bill of Rights--but it seemed churlish to discuss all that when there were still people buried under the twisted metal of the World Trade Center, charred into the walls of the Pentagon, buried and cremated in a Pennsylvania fireball after the plane hurtled to the ground under circumstances that I didn't want to imagine. We were at war, and there is no room for technicalities, for second-guessing, in wartime.
But as everyone knows, that's not how the story ended for most Americans. Over time, I took a hard look at that American flag and realized that I had committed grave idolatry--that I had ignored the voice from the top of the mountaintop and worshipped the golden calf instead. I had pledged my allegiance to the flag when I needed, more than ever, to pledge my allegiance to the American spirit--allegiance that left no room for "unity," no room for the death of irony. The attacks of September 11th changed me forever. They made me look hard and deep into the mysterious heart of this country and realize that this is the nation of Benjamin Franklin's Fart Proudly, the nation of the Gadsden flag (a rattlesnake with the slogan: "DON'T TREAD ON ME"), the nation of MTV and ESPN and Playboy, the world's sole remaining superpower. That sort of nation can never afford to be "serious," to be united in its resolve, to be perpetually devoted to war with a competing ideology. It must be an open society.
Is nothing sacred? Not in America. Not since the Puritan era. The patriotism of World War I brought us suffrage and the ACLU; the patriotism of World War II brought us second-wave feminism and the civil rights movement. We have never been a nation in lockstep; that's not what the American experiment is about. As we look back on this national crisis, we should remember the qualities that have made America what it is--and we should be proud of those qualities.
This doesn't mean that we were wrong to grieve. It is entirely appropriate to respond to a national tragedy by lowering the flag to half mast. But when a suitable period of mourning is over, we need to raise the flag high again so that we, and the rest of the world, can see it.
People like to talk about how wonderful it was when Congress joined together and sang "God Bless America," but the truth is that self-serving partisan acrimony is the American way, going all the way back to John Adams' attempts to censor Jefferson supporters in 1798. There is no reason to be ashamed of that; self-serving partisan acrimony has made us the most powerful nation on Earth.
Americans are deeply patriotic, but we express our patriotism in unusual ways. We express our devotion to our government by doubting and ridiculing our leaders, we express our devotion to our armed forces by sometimes questioning the wisdom of foreign conflicts, and we express our unity by calling each other traitors and fascists. These are our shared values. This is the indestructible American spirit. Violent religious fanatics can't compete with that spirit, because they don't have anything comparably liberating to offer--which is why I am confident that one day, their inferior product will be driven off the market.
We are Americans, and as Americans we must have the courage to never trade in our plowshares for swords, our tabloids for propaganda, our flip-flops for jackboots. We must never permanently become a nation at half mast. We must keep irony alive.
See also:
|
We would no longer be a triumphalist country, our leaders told us. Patriotism would become important. Unity would become important. The anti-establishment vibe of the sixties and seventies would be gone forever. We would trust the government and trust our cultural values because the alternative would be death.
We all know where we were the morning of September 11th, I guess. I was sleeping in, having injured my knee two days earlier--massive swelling, floating bone chip, the whole nine yards--when I heard the television in the next room report something that sounded very urgent. I grabbed my crutch and hobbled over to the television set to see the impact of the second plane on the World Trade Center. My first thought, once I realized it wasn't a nightmare, was that we were being retaliated against for refusing to support that recent U.N. resolution condemning Israel. I did not suspect domestic terrorism; I immediately suspected religious extremists from the Middle East. I was angry. And--this may surprise some of you--I was extremely grateful, at the time, that we had elected a Republican president with a Cold War foreign policy cabinet. I blamed the Clinton administration for the tragedy. I blamed the "age of irony." I blamed our culture. America had been victimized, and it's human nature to blame the victim.
Like many Americans, I spent the rest of the day glued to the television set. I think I wore a little flag ribbon every day for the next three or four months, and it was a long time before I was able to completely comprehend why civil liberties mattered. Oh, sure, I understood the theoretical importance of the Bill of Rights--but it seemed churlish to discuss all that when there were still people buried under the twisted metal of the World Trade Center, charred into the walls of the Pentagon, buried and cremated in a Pennsylvania fireball after the plane hurtled to the ground under circumstances that I didn't want to imagine. We were at war, and there is no room for technicalities, for second-guessing, in wartime.
But as everyone knows, that's not how the story ended for most Americans. Over time, I took a hard look at that American flag and realized that I had committed grave idolatry--that I had ignored the voice from the top of the mountaintop and worshipped the golden calf instead. I had pledged my allegiance to the flag when I needed, more than ever, to pledge my allegiance to the American spirit--allegiance that left no room for "unity," no room for the death of irony. The attacks of September 11th changed me forever. They made me look hard and deep into the mysterious heart of this country and realize that this is the nation of Benjamin Franklin's Fart Proudly, the nation of the Gadsden flag (a rattlesnake with the slogan: "DON'T TREAD ON ME"), the nation of MTV and ESPN and Playboy, the world's sole remaining superpower. That sort of nation can never afford to be "serious," to be united in its resolve, to be perpetually devoted to war with a competing ideology. It must be an open society.
Is nothing sacred? Not in America. Not since the Puritan era. The patriotism of World War I brought us suffrage and the ACLU; the patriotism of World War II brought us second-wave feminism and the civil rights movement. We have never been a nation in lockstep; that's not what the American experiment is about. As we look back on this national crisis, we should remember the qualities that have made America what it is--and we should be proud of those qualities.
This doesn't mean that we were wrong to grieve. It is entirely appropriate to respond to a national tragedy by lowering the flag to half mast. But when a suitable period of mourning is over, we need to raise the flag high again so that we, and the rest of the world, can see it.
People like to talk about how wonderful it was when Congress joined together and sang "God Bless America," but the truth is that self-serving partisan acrimony is the American way, going all the way back to John Adams' attempts to censor Jefferson supporters in 1798. There is no reason to be ashamed of that; self-serving partisan acrimony has made us the most powerful nation on Earth.
Americans are deeply patriotic, but we express our patriotism in unusual ways. We express our devotion to our government by doubting and ridiculing our leaders, we express our devotion to our armed forces by sometimes questioning the wisdom of foreign conflicts, and we express our unity by calling each other traitors and fascists. These are our shared values. This is the indestructible American spirit. Violent religious fanatics can't compete with that spirit, because they don't have anything comparably liberating to offer--which is why I am confident that one day, their inferior product will be driven off the market.
We are Americans, and as Americans we must have the courage to never trade in our plowshares for swords, our tabloids for propaganda, our flip-flops for jackboots. We must never permanently become a nation at half mast. We must keep irony alive.
See also:
- How Many Dead Since 9/11? (Jen Brea / World News)
- Debunking the 9/11 Myths (Amy Hess / U.S. Conservatives)
- Five Years Later, Politics Dominates 9/11 Observance (Robert Longley / U.S. Government Info)
Comments
No comments yet. Leave a Comment