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When It (Didn't) Change*September 11, 2007 So I wasn't going to write a 9/11 anniversary blog, but this morning I was noodling around on the computer and it sorta came up. Don't blame me: blame my fingers, and the muses that my fingers channel. Here are my current thoughts on the subject. They look a lot like previous thoughts I've had on the subject, and on other subjects too. I guess I'm in reruns. If you want to see something new, though, skim down to near the bottom. There's a book mentioned down there that I just heard of (and ordered three copies of) today. "Everything changed on 9/11" I'm really, really sick of hearing this. Sure, some things changed on 9/11. Several thousand people lost their lives, and many were injured. Things changed big-time for everyone directly affected by the events of September 11, 2001, but the same is true for, say, Hurricane Katrina and the recent mine collapse in Utah. How often are we told that "everything changed" on the day Katrina made landfall? I could speculate in some detail about why we aren't told incessantly that Hurricane Katrina "changed everything," but you've probably figured it out already. On 9/11, a couple of tall buildings disappeared from the New York skyline. A big hole appeared in the Pentagon. If you live or work in New York or regularly visit the Pentagon, these are big changes. Most of us do neither. In the weeks and months after 9/11, the U.S. government started shredding the Bill of Rights. This is nothing new either. From the founding of the Republic, government officials and a significant chunk of the population have been ready to throw civil liberties and human rights overboard at the first sign of trouble. They think the Bill of Rights only applies in good times, and to nice people like them. Even Thomas Jefferson, who when he was still a rebel knew better, as president went gung-ho for the Alien and Sedition Act. In the wake of 9/11 things did change somewhat in Afghanistan -- more of the bombs and more of the soldiers came from the U.S. -- and from 2003 on things changed seriously in Iraq. If there's a place in the world where 9/11 "changed everything," it's Iraq. That's not, however, what the "everything changed" faction is referring to. 9/11 only "changed everything" for people who thought bad shit couldn't possibly happen to them. This does not include most of the world, or even most USians, though six years of relentless repetition of The Mantra have probably persuaded some of us otherwise. Women and people of color and anyone who isn't rich enough to be shielded from economic realities know that bad shit can, and not infrequently does, happen to us. The people who died in the Fall of the Towers are no more or less dead than people who die in a mine collapse. The big difference is that the people who think they're immune to bad shit can't even imagine having to work down in a mine or live in a neighborhood where there's a gang war on; they can, however, and very easily too, imagine working in places like the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. So 9/11 freaked them out big-time. It also freaked out all the USians who thought that bombs were something we drop on other people, not something that someone else could possibly drop on us. In significant ways, 9/11 was like the arrival of AIDS. Like 9/11, AIDS hit a lot of people -- relatively young, class-privileged white gay men -- who thought they were immortal. None of us are immortal. Bad shit can happen to anybody. AIDS and 9/11 were cruel teachers, but the lessons are still worth learning. Of Pitches and Wild Cards Sean Gonsalves, whose column I read regularly on AlterNet, yesterday posted a piece about a book, The Ultimate Counterterrorist Home Companion, by Zack and Larry Arnstein. I knew almost immediately that I had to have this book: it pokes fun at the post-9/11 hysteria, and several of the snippets Gonsalves quoted are things I wish I'd said myself. Like this: "The invasion of Iraq was just like throwing a wild pitch every now and then to keep the batter guessing, and you know what? It worked. Our enemies and friends alike no longer consider us capable of rational thought, and that, friends, is right where we want them." I believe that the best thing we can do to combat "terror" on U.S. soil is to school ourselves and each other in seeing through pitches of all kinds. Several generations of USians have grown up jumping at our own shadows, and it's not all that surprising: we're relentlessly warned that We're gonna get fat! We're gonna get cancer! We're gonna have BO and lose all our friends! -- unless, of course, we do what the advertisers and the experts tell us to do. It's so bizarre. Here we are scaring the pants off the rest of the world in a futile attempt to make ourselves feel safer. It's bizarre, but it's not exactly new: isn't that what underlies most repression (political and personal) and many wars? The other thing I wish we could get through our collective heads: The great thing about the U.S. system of government is that it allows for the wild card. It allows for -- even encourages -- change at all levels, from the checks and balances at the top to the Bill of Rights at the grass roots. That's what dictatorships and absolute monarchies lack, and it's why the U.S. system has lasted this long. We've headed down Repression Road plenty of times, and it's always been the wild card -- the opposition -- that recalled us to our roots and our better selves. Here's hoping we can pull it off again. The Ultimate Counterterrorist Home Companion is available from the Independent Publishers Group.
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