I choose to look away

Thoughts on 9/11, one year later. Part one.

It's t-minus 14 days until the attacks of Sept. 11 will be officially remembered. And I'm dreading every minute of it. And it's not because of the media orgy that I can smell coming on the wind, although that alone makes me what to head for high ground. No, it's a bunch of things, and over a series of e-mails with my poet friend Cori, along with some personal reflection time; I've been trying to figure out just what's haunting me. Turns out its several things.

I think what first got me sick was the constant coverage of it that went on for days, with no half-life showing to mark when the footage or rhetoric would be toned down. I should have learned my lesson ages ago with coverage of O.J., Monica, Election 2000 and other faux-tragic operas that CNN served up in grotesque splendor. There was no other news, there was no other discussion, no other footage than the falling, burning spires and smoke and dust and screams and tears. And it ran constantly, thanks to the events happening mostly in the media-heavy corridor of Washington D.C. and N.Y.C.

After a while though, it was the same footage. Over and over again on some disaster loop. And, as the replays went by, I just detached. Say any word a thousand times and it turns into verbal mush. See any scene repeatedly, no matter how grisly, and it's just video. It loses all meaning. You'll expect the same things over and over: the shrill scream 17 seconds into the shot, the crunch of metal in one end of the building and sideways mushroom of flame out the other side, the blare of fire trucks by 38 seconds into the segment. Repeat every hour until better stuff comes along, which it won't because what's more eye-grabbing than a fully-fueled 747 hitting a skyscraper at 9 a.m. in sunny New York City? Keep running that footage. Keep pumping it out there. We got ratings to maintain. And out there, the audience, too mixed-up to change the channel is channeling U2...too much is not enough. I feel numb.

But the disaster footage was merely part one. Even though it's less kinetic on TV, any aftermath can be as visually compelling as a disaster. Terrified as we were, we gravitated towards the only mother ducks who looked like they could lead us out of hell on earth. With Bush hiding in Nebraska, the reassurances came by way of footage of cops and firefighters, digging in the rubble trying to find any survivors, including lost comrades who vanished when the World Trade Centers were reduced from global icon to Kosovo-style rubble. Cops and firefighters were instant celebrities, and the news media were quick, too quick, to market these working stiffs as superheroes. And American bought it. We needed something to hold on to, and we grew tired of Hollywood caped crusaders anyway. The cops and firefighters felt like a good fit, harkening back to the days of the manly man, the cowboy in the Wild West, the steelworker, the construction worker...all professions which were romanced by advertising experts, glossing over the fact that most of the examples were uneducated meatbags who did most of the work for their bosses, but got paid crap and were relegated to low-prestige blue-collars jobs in an ever-growing white-collar culture.

Personally, I'm ambivalent about the cops. I grew up in a cop family. I've seen the police at their best and at their worst, but I don't see them as heroes. I feel a bit differently about firemen. Yes, they do tough and dangerous tasks, but that's what they signed up to do. I find it hard to get really choked up about guys who are trained to go into burning buildings and fight fires. Yes, it's sad to see a firehouse lose nearly all their staff after 9/11, but man, that's their gig. They died in the line of duty against impossible odds, but so did the workers in those towers. Those folks on the upper floors who because trapped when the airlines bisected the structures into impassible hunks of metal upon impact...those bastards never had a chance. I think the true heroes were the workers who, once they made it out, turned around and braved the flames and smoke to try to help others escape, only to get swallowed up in a mass grave when the towers fell. Those folks, in their silent moments of dignity and quiet strength, will mean more to me than the losses of all the deaths of fire and police personnel. Of course, their stories will never be told, but I think true heroes don't look for fame. All they see are the helpless in aid, and they rush in without thought or training.

True heroes were also the folks who lined up the night of the attack to give blood, back when we had the naive notion that rescue teams would be pulling scores of weakened survivors out of the rubble. No one told these people to show up to give blood; they just did. Some beacon in their souls was tripped and people piled in, rolling up their sleeves and dripping into plastic bags, knowing whatever else they did today, they would be doing good. Some may be have been driven by some mutated form of survivor's guilt (Why New York? Why not Seattle?). Some thought this was the only thing they could do that would empower them. "Crash a plane into a building," they mused. "I'll show those fuckers. I'll give up some of my blood." It was a pacifist's revenge. But when my wife and I were turned away at the blood center, she quietly mused, "This blood, it's not going to do any good. No one's coming out of the rubble alive." A few days later, she'd be proven right. But at the time, everyone in that blood blank felt like a hero, from donor to staff member to those crammed without complaint in the waiting room. Sometimes, in a crisis, feeling like you are doing good is enough to drive off fear and madness.

A couple days ago, I remembered something else about 9/11 which didn't set right with me. Most of the talk after the attacks was how "America recovers" or "America rebuilds"...something about America...how we were all standing united or something that could be fit easily on a window decal. But when you look at the reports of those who died in the towers, you'll find out that dozens of nations were represented in the smoldering grave at the World Trade Center site. It wasn't just an American thing; it happened on American soil, but the world grieved.

Maybe the U.S. needed to cling to this, to grab onto this scar for sympathy. The U.S. rarely suffers damage of this scale on its shores, and rather than have the spotlight shift to the intelligence failure that made this possible, the nation pouted and cried with its skinned knee. The only previous destruction of this scale was the federal building in Oklahoma City, and that was a home-brew concoction by a good ol' white kid who had Army training and everything. Instant death tolls of such scale before that on American soil and you'll have to go back to the Civil War...maybe Custer's Last Stand or the fire in rural Peshtigo.

The fact is, we got soft on stories like JonBenet and school shooters to not pay attention that over the past decade some folks around the world weren't happy with the U.S., and were seriously going to do something about it. We closed off our borders and pulled our news bureaus back home to cover the latest celebrity wedding or pop fad. We were cruising on dotcom-flavored meth on a party we never thought would end, but, somewhere on the distance watching and waiting were the toy monsters we made for use in the Cold War and discarded when their cherry paint jobs faded. Sure, we thought, there are some nut-jobs in turbans chanting "death to the U.S" but we've seen this movie before. It'll be fine.

We got deluded with years of Bruce Willis movies and all the talk that we were number one. We never had to answer to anyone, and we'd fund your little civil war if you cut us in on the oil your country has. We had rock-and-roll capitalism, Coca-Cola, blue jeans and MTV. Fuck it, if we could win over the Soviets, we could push over a bunch of ragheads.

9/11 marked the day the other side pushed back, shoving American machinery into American skyscrapers. We gotta know why they did this. I'm not saying we should be sympathetic, but at least understand why.

But good luck finding the answer in the shitpile of 9/11 anniversary stories that's coming down the pipeline. The newspaper I work at is planning pages of retrospective stuff: Where were you on 9/11? How has 9/11 changed you? Fuck it, it's the same recycled crap that every news organization does during the anniversary of a big event. It's the safe route. It's the poignant, touchy-feely sound bite harvesting that's news these days.

I should back off a bit: I think my newspaper going to a bit on the treatment of Muslim and Arab Americans after 9/11. That should be played up and played hard. We didn't get to do that with the Japanese Americans on the left coast after Pearl Harbor. Upon retrospect, I think we've done really well in not herding up everyone with dark skin and caging them...although I immediately think of the hundreds who were (and still are) detained for no real reason and without access to family or a lawyer. I think of them and cringe. It could have been a lot worse.

I'm torn. I'm drawn to see how the coverage will be, but I know I'll get sick about 10 minutes into it, like being exposed to some radioactive isotope. Maybe I'm just bitter because I can't grieve on command like I'm supposed to. Maybe it's because I didn't lose anyone. Maybe it's because I knew we'd be hit by a terrorist attack one day, and N.Y.C. seemed like an understandably juicy target.

Maybe I'm bitter because the attacks were just so American: on live TV and on a picture-perfect day. Within hours we had grieving widows on TV. We had, before 48 hours came and went, a slogan commanding us to let's roll, even if we had no idea where to roll to, or who to roll on. We had a scrolling ticker filling us with updated information, giving us one more hit just when we sobering up and ready to shut off the TV. The crashes were cinematic and clear. The sound was sharp. The misery was hypnotic. Death on a grand scale...the only way terrorism will ever be done in America.

Maybe I'm bitter because I just don't care. And I'm bitter because I've been driven here by folks who want me to grieve and yell and march off to war, but nobody on TV or in power asked me how I felt. Grief isn't top-down, mister. Grief isn't a commodity. It's not installed on a toggle switch. It's not something that fits in between commercials and it's far too fucking complex to put on my car's aerial or bumper. It's unique and mysterious and I prefer to be silent until I need to be audible with my tears. Damnit, it's my right, and no one can tell me when to feel it.

Coming soon...9/11 for fun and profit, and a question of faith

French Word of the Day

nuit blanche (nwee blahsh): “white night”; a sleepless night.