Yeah. There was a reference somewhere the other day, maybe in Frank Rich's column, about a photo of some guys hanging out in Brooklyn Heights with the carnage in the background, not obviously affecting them. I felt like the people around me (many of them) were respoonding to what was going on where I was just plodding along in my daily course same as ever.
I moved to the midwest two weeks before 9/11; when I lived in NYC I worked in the World Financial Center. None of my co-workers were injured but plenty were traumatized.
I used to hate the WTC buildings. I went to the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Preserve years ago and could see the towers even from there, and I resented being reminded of my much-hated job on my day off. But the skyline looks undistinguished without them.
I have an even more reprehensible 9/11 story. On 9/11, since no one was getting any work done, I skipped work and went surfing. It was real good that day. Apparently it was good on the east coast too because some people who work in the towers skipped work for that reason.
In my defence, my wife and kids were on the east coast visiting family, so the whole "spend time with the ones you love most" option was denied me.
Anyone else here make the walk? I thought I remembered one of the female commenters, possibly ac, having access to her apartment blocked by the aftermath of the attacks.
I was home in Sacramento when we got the news, and largely baffled by grief and weeping of my classmates. Yes, it was a terrible thing but there are often terrible things, and here in California it was beautiful out and our immediate lives were entirely unchanged. I kept my mouth shut.
I was feeling sad that it had happened, but also thinking that it wasn't surprising. A colleague just couldn't wrap his head around that idea and thought I was somehow sick for having it.
I do remember by the end of the day finding it tedious the number of people around me (never mind not in New York, not even in the US !) who were losing it acting as if this were the biggest thing to happen in living memory --- I kept biting my tounge against saying : "get some perspective". I only personally know one person who was really directly affected. She lost her husband there, and I'm pretty certain she is causing her children psychological damage by refusing to let it go.
I've left my first impressions at B's. My principal memory of the period is the heedless desire so many people had to hit somebody, the shape of their aversions imagined, hard. A nation of Friedmans, inescapable.
here in California it was beautiful out and our immediate lives were entirely unchanged
This is certainly true, but I seem to have reacted more strongly than a lot of you. I had trouble sleeping for weeks, and I'd start awake if a plane flew overhead.
I wonder how well the intensity of reaction correlates with support for the Iraq war.
I had trouble sleeping for weeks, and I'd start awake if a plane flew overhead.
I'm pretty surprised by that reaction. I checked to make sure no one I knew had been killed, worried a little about our possible response, and was mostly just stunned that it happened.
My 1 is striking me now as bit unreflective. I am thinking suddenly that the events of September 11 may have been an important factor in the genesis of the depression that has been plaguing me on and off for the last several years.
I wonder how well the intensity of reaction correlates with support for the Iraq war.
Since LizardBreath and I had much the same reaction (indeed, mine was, I gather from her post, even more muted), I would say this thesis is not supported by the facts.
12: Mine as well. I found the weeks following mostly pretty depressing, for that reason. Also how callously it was co-opted by many people to push various pre-existing agendas.
I mean I remember thinking on that day or seen after, "Oh shit, now we're going to go to war." But I did not protest the war, wasn't even that strongly opposed to it -- it seemed like the only thing that could happen. And then that played into my not organizing against the Iraq war more than to march in a couple of marches. Thinking about it now I'm seeing a connection between the fatalism I've been mired in and the experience of the bombings. Though I can't really tease the precise connection out right now.
I heard about it on the internet before heading off to work (in Oregon where I lived, 3 hrs time difference). The first thing I did -- really -- was to ask if it was April Fool's day. Then I for awhile thought that "the towers" were radio towers on something on top of the buildings themselves.
And then, you might have guessed, once I realized what had happened I said "George Bush is going to have a field day with this".
Exactly what Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rove were thinking, I'm sure; George wa probably just trying not to soil himself again.
I woke up bright and early that morning to teach classes. (I was living in Alabama at the time.) Everything unfolded on the TV over the length of my morning routine.
By the time I got to campus, both towers had fallen. An earnest student was standing outside my building handing out little strips of paper that said "What we need now is prayer" and gave the time and location for a massive prayer rally.
I couldn't teach my set lesson plan, that was clear. But I also couldn't talk to my students about what was happening for very long without them saying really fucked up. The day after the attacks, one of my favorite students said "We should kill them all, even the little Palestinian kids who were dancing in the streets when the towers fell."
Everyone kept saying “the whole world is different now,” especially the guy I shared an office with. I had not felt so politically and socially isolated since Junior High School.
I was initially shocked, then kind of hit by an adrenalin rush of excitement and disbelief, which I tried to counter by spending the rest of the day trying to convince my brother in law that we should withhold judgment about who was responsible until we knew more. I tried hard to get in touch with my friend, who like LB lived in Inwood, even though I was sure she was fine; it turned out she had been downtown for (I think it was) jury duty, and did have ash showered on her head and found herself reassuring people who'd escaped the towers before she managed to walk far enough to find a cab to share with other folks from the neighborhood. When I heard that, my excitement sobered up pretty fast.
I felt torn about going to war with Afghanistan, but I participated in an ecuminical peace march and service when the war broke out, mostly as an expression of sorrow and concern than of real opposition to the war. There were "no war" signs all over our neighborhood, but I couldn't bring myself to put one up (I also couldn't bring myself to put up a flag, although especially in the first few days, I wanted to.)
The whole thing made me terribly sad. I started getting angry when Bush started encouraging everyone to go shopping.
It just all really sucked. I remember trying to lead classes while everyone was in their shocked and praying mode. I said "well I can think of two issues that we can discuss philosophically here. One is whether this should lead to restrictions on civil liberties, and the other is whether this should lead to some sort of violent act against an Middle Eastern nation." The reaction of my students was essentially: How can you even think about protecting civil liberties or promoting non violent solutions at a time like this?
I remember empathizing with people who were angry, and feeling equally bothered by people who jumped to anger and who jumped to "let's analyze this situation." It seemed to me at the time, and still seems, that the only proper response (if one wasn't directly affected) was a deep sorrow.
One of my most memorable impressions from that day is of an acquaintance of mine, a very wonkish grad student in some sort of International Relations program with a focus national security, bouncing around like an overexcited five-year-old and declaring that to be (and this is a direct quote, seared into my memory): "the awesomest day ever." In context, I (sort of) understood where he was coming from -- all the dry garbage he'd been reading about in all those books finally coming to life with relevance, and being played out in real-time on CNN. But I just looked at his giddy demeanor and thought "Awesome?? People are fucking dying."
The postscript is that he didn't think it awesome at all when he was shipped to Afganistan that December. (He was a reservist.) I haven't heard from him since -- I hope he survived his tour.
I wasn't so enthused about analyzing things, so much as I thought that it was my job as a philosophy teacher to be doing that.
I do, however, typically use analysis as a coping tool, and really qucikly began to wish that more people would think about the things they were saying, because they were proposing some really crazy shit, most of which has actually occurred.
I think that Brock's story illuminates the warbloggers and super-hawks. A lot of people had a hole filled in their lives on 9/11.
Some guys like that were eager to go to Afghanistan -- there are too many chickenhawks out there, and I do think that the chickenhawk critique is a valid one, but plenty of hawks are completely for real.
I was a senior in high school, heard about it during third-period choir. Seemed pretty abstract until a few hours later, when I heard that the father of a good friend of mine had been killed in the Pentagon. Had been in English class with him half an hour before it happened. He dealt with it far better than I could have imagined--didn't repress everything & pretend it was all fine, didn't completely fall apart.
I had a similar reaction to B--I lost any temporary approval I had of Bush a week or so later when it started becoming clear that it wouldn't be a nonpartisan response.
I certainly noticed planes flying overhead, in a different way than I had noticed them previously, for months after. I'm not sure this has completely gone away, come to think of it. I didn't have any particular trouble sleeping, but the amount of alcohol I was putting away may have had something to do with that.
I had a similar reaction to B--I lost any temporary approval I had of Bush a week or so later when it started becoming clear that it wouldn't be a nonpartisan response.
I remember being deeply embarrassed when I found out that Bush had flown to Nebraska, then hopeful when he made a very good speech noting that we weren't at war with Muslims. I know that I when I found out that Rumsfeld had stuck around at the Pentagon and done what he could to help out, I put him in the "my kind of people" category; I know I've left him in there far too long.
My reaction was like LB's, and I've been scolded for that, though by my aunt; what your crazy family does doesn't really mean much about the rest of the population.
I did feel really upset at times during the aftermath, most memorably once the Friday after, when some Chasidim, preparing to ask if I wanted a shabbos candle, asked me if I was Jewish, and because I was already upset, I heedlessly said, "half." You can imagine what ensued, though they finally gave me one for my aunt, when I told them that she was "100% Jewish." I should say that I had the feeling the younger of them, who I took to be the son, would have liked to apologize for his father. Anyway, after this interaction, thinking "way to rise above sectarianism to recognize our common humanity, guys" I burst into tears and ironically wandered into a Catholic church.
The next morning I listened to a beautiful string quintet (?) playing in Columbus Circle in front of missing posters and it really lifted my spirits, the small gestures people make, and then stunningly, a year later when I started taking cello lessons in part inspired by that experience, my teacher turned out to have been one of them. (No cello for me anymore, no money or space.)
But mostly, it was something I saw on the news, and I felt really baffled by people who said their world view had changed. I was like, dudes, our isolation from horrific violence could easily be construed as the aberration, not the other way around.
I was, unnvervingly enough, on my way to a job interview when I heard the news on NPR. I spent the remainder of the drive trying to get in touch with my NYC relatives.
As you can imagine, the interview itself was distinctly odd.
Oh, and since I wasn't working at the time, I had the next two weeks to pretty much lie on the couch and watch the news. I think that contributed to my (relative) political radicalization.
The lady had outpatient surgery Friday, removing an encysted piece of plastic from her forehead. The auto accident, she was rear-ended into the windshield, that put it there happened thirty years ago. She is always on me about seatbelts.
There is more plastic, undetectable or not worth detecting. She had plastic surgery to improve major scarring twenty years ago, for a decade she had a noticable square up there. I think the feelings of a near death experience came back a little, and the unfairness that it can't be over and past.
Re. planes overhead: I'm reminded that we lived in the flight path for the local airport, and that it was really strangely quiet for a couple of days. And feeling quite moved, actually, when I saw a jet again.
Re. changing world view: I think it is fair to say that my world view changed. Not intellectually, but emotionally. I think there is a genuine difference between the empathetic *knowledge* of what it's like to have your country attacked, and the actual experience of living through it. I'm sure that my world view would change yet again if, say, the city or state I live in were attacked, or if someone I knew personally were killed in a war or attack.
But selfishly, I pray to god that I never find out.
31: The personal reactions of administrations folks didn't matter so much to me, really. I don't disdain anyone (particularly those in positions of authority) who takes advantage of their official protection; it's irresponsible not to, even (imagine if Rumsfeld had been killed or incapacitated by a secondary attack because he stuck around, e.g.)
It was the actions in their official capacity that were particularly misguided and harmful, I thought.
I have more or less the same feelings as LB, but I will say that one of the coldest chills I've felt in a long time was around 9:30 that morning when a bunch of us had gathered in my boss' office (she was the only one who had a tv) and while we were all watching in stunned silence, the college intern suddenly yelled, "Let's nuke the fuckers!" Of course, I have nightmares about nuclear war to begin with, but this seemed so entirely possible at the moment, it scared the living bejeezus out of me.
Oh, and we worked at the top of the tallest building downtown, near an airport, and seeing planes and helicopters at eye level did make me nervous for awhile. Then I remembered I was in Ohio, and the feeling would pass.
41: about changing world views: I guess that is what I would think of as a less significant change, compared to those who apparantly `just didn't believe anything like that could happen here'. And just couldn't understand `why those nasty muslims hate our freedom so much, especially after we've been so nice to them ...' Etc. etc. ad nauseaum.
I think there is always a disconnect between intellectually grasping something and actually experiencing it; but usually it's more a reinforcement and/or adjustment.
I certainly think that if your life was completely changed by the WTC attacks and you were not directly involved... then that is about you, not the magnitude of the WTC attacks. Conversely, if you lost a loved one or whatever, and it has fundamentally changed your life --- it could just have easily been a less far reaching disaster would leave you in the same place, roughly. No?
I spent a lot of that day sitting quietly in Riverside Park, watching armored military vehicles roll off the Westside Highway. I think that day did change my perspective because from the very first I knew that it meant war, somewhere.
I don't disdain anyone (particularly those in positions of authority) who takes advantage of their official protection; it's irresponsible not to,
Disagree entirely. Part of the President's job is ceremonial, and that was a moment we needed him to show up in DC and say, "Everything's OK." Lots of people were actually worried, and the risk to him (let's be honest, here) was trivial. Worst case scenario: he gets killed. Who cares? We have a designated spare.
I think I'm probably a bit of a coward, but I like to think that, at least at the far margins, I have a sense of shame. Bush didn't.
My thoughts were pretty much: "Where is everyone I know who might have been in NYC?" [email email email] "Let's smack the person that did this." "Let's make sure we smack the right person and not just anyone."
About two months after the attack I took my then-12-year-old sister to see the Harry Potter movie, and the theatre was on the flight path to the airport. Planes always fly low there, so I was somewhat startled when I suddenly had a little sister wrapped around me, terrified, because a plane flew quite low overhead.
Disagree with SCMTim. Had Bush been killed, the anger & damage would have been much greater, and while we have a spare designed for such an occasion, on 9/11 no one really knew what was going on and I think this included the top levels of government. Ceremony's fine but the damage to our sense of security would have been worse. I can't imagine what we would have nuked had 9/11 killed a president.
One of the more interesting stories to my mind is the 'My Pet Goat' saga. At the time -- look it up -- Bush was hailed for remaining calm after the report of the first attack. Two years later it was the poster for 'Bush is an idiot' moment for not rushing out of the room (and then, presumably, waiting in the hallway while figuring out where the Secret Service was going to take him.)
if you lost a loved one or whatever, and it has fundamentally changed your life --- it could just have easily been a less far reaching disaster would leave you in the same place, roughly. No?
No. Again, thank god I have not experienced this personally, but I imagine that the emotional complexity of losing a loved one in a terrorist attack is not something I can imagine. I'm not saying it has unique status in that respect--I can't really imagine losing a loved one in, say, a massive epidemic, either. I can imagine losing someone in a far-away war, or a car crash, or to a heart attack, though those things haven't happened to me, because they're within the realm of the kind of thing I've grown up thinking of as "normal." Although I'm quite willing to acknowledge that being able to *imagine* those things and actually experiencing them is not the same thing, I think there's an additional degree of magnitude involved in a personal loss that comes from a source that, while intellectually conceivable, isn't really something a person in my circumstances is emotionally prepared for.
"...or if someone I knew personally were killed in a war or attack."
Growing up in the 50s and 60s, most everyone older I knew had been affected by war. Most of the WWII vets died prematurely young. That was also the Cold War, I can't say how constant fear of nuclear war felt. I feel pretty safe from military attack these days.
I don't want to offend survivors and grievers today.
But in my recent memory Oklahoma was ripped in half by tornados, and Katrina ate New Orleans. Death tolls and casualties were not magnitudes different from 9/11. But 9/11 "changed everything."
John's 28: We build the narratives around tragedy, and make the counter-narratives available. Part of my pessimism is that this desire that the human part of nature be comprehensible and just is precisely what creates the 9/11s and over-reactions to it. I don't disapprove, I participate, but it makes me sad sometimes. And I could be wrong. Maybe someday it will be comprehensible and just.
It never occured to me before any of you said it, but, being that I live next to a large (largest?) military base, planes -- especially low-flying planes -- made me nervous for a long time after.
49: I think that makes sense to me. For whatever reasons, I guess things like a terrorist attack do lie within my realm of `normal'. At least in the sense we are talking about. Reflecting a bit, there are things I can't really imagine happening; I suspect you are right that there would be an additional layer of complexity.
I wonder how much of this difference has to do with our personalities, and how much with upbringing --- which I'm guessing was largely similar with possibly important differences in detail.
I lost any temporary approval I had of Bush a week or so later when it started becoming clear that it wouldn't be a nonpartisan response.
I have distinct, vivid memories of being as cynical about this as I would ever be (something like "now Bush will surely be reelected"), driving home on the afternoon of the 11th. Nothing has surprised me since then.
But in my recent memory Oklahoma was ripped in half by tornados, and Katrina ate New Orleans. Death tolls and casualties were not magnitudes different from 9/11. But 9/11 "changed everything."
Bogus analogy. My sense is that the actual body count was more or less immaterial to the broader impact of 9/11. If the bad weather had been sent over from Iran, maybe.
Besides, isn't it a fact that 9/11 changed everything, and we should be discussing whether it ought to have changed everything?
i remember when someone told me what happened, i thought, "so? they tried to do that a few years ago, its not surprising they finally succeeded. people die, thats how life is."
and then when classes were cancelled in favour of campus [hwatever the secular equivalent of prayer meeting], i skipped and played video games with my friends and joked about how people were overreacting.
Oh yes, planes. I worked at that time very close to a little municipal airport in a pretty rich part of California, which translates to 'lots of hobbyist flights all day.'
I remember being startled one day.. was it December, was it February?.. when I saw the first Cessna I'd seen in months.
Then there was the one from the same day that we started bombing Afghanistan. What I didn't remember is that it was the same night that the city I lived in held an annual fireworks display, at the boardwalk 2 blocks from my house.
I damn near jumped out of my skin when I heard the concussion from the first blast. I'm sure I wasn't the only one.
God (as metaphor) bless the people who cry for tsunami victims, and strangers in Sudan and Kashmir. I cry for Riverbend and Zayad. I cried for Nancy Olsen, cause I knew her from TV. I cried for a lot of faces I knew from the financial channels.
My first reaction:"There will be war."
Second, soon after:"There goes Social Security." I may have been wrong, but it ain't over yet. Very unlucky to have a Republican President, horribly cursed to have the Washington we had at the time of the attacks.
I had the future in rough outlines within hours. Advantage would be taken, as much as conceivable. I immediately started calling for massive mobilization, hoping to dilute the power. Everyone thought I was an uberhawk. Many still do.
54: Something being repeated often doesn't make it true. I'm certainly not convinced it has `changed everything' but that is a pretty vague term, after all....
You're certainly right that it isn't the body count alone that is important. The WTC attacks have a fairly small count as disasters go, after all.
"My sense is that the actual body count was more or less immaterial to the broader impact of 9/11."
That is not far from my point. Oklahoma City/McVeigh didn't change everything, although for a few days it was dangerous. There a lot of reasons 9/11 generated an overreaction, a mass hysteria.
In a certain way, I don't approve of the whole 'remember where you were on 9/11' thing and seeing it done here sort of drives that home. Rarely do you see so many people say 'well, I remember thinking it wasn't much of a big deal' but then, rarely do you get so many smart cookies in one place.
The most interesting 'outsider' story I've heard is this one. My mother was at work when she first heard about the attack; the boss, though, was a business-as-usual fanatic and wouldn't allow anybody to watch TV. They had Internet, of course, so they could keep up with the facts. But it wasn't until she got home and flipped on the television, she said, that the emotional impact got to her.
There was some heavy-duty propaganda going across the air waves that day. I suspect the main effect of this propaganda was to convince YOU, the viewer, that THIS ATTACK AFFECTED YOU. Not just other people.
54: Something being repeated often doesn't make it true.
Insofar as "liberals-are-living-in-a-pre-9/11-world" arguments have been successful -- which is to say a lot, I think -- the administration has in fact created post-9/11 world in which everything has actually changed, whether 9/11 be the direct cause or merely the impetus.
61: Perhaps. or Perhaps that's just the sort of partisan sniping that would have taken another form if they didn't have that one handy. Politicians have been telling us that their opponents don't live in the `real world' since before Rome burned, at least.....
I think you can argue just as effectively that almost nothing significant has changed. The rhetoric is all about change, but what really has? As far as I can see, the defining policies of the Bush administration would have been pretty much the same, with the possible exception that they may not have felt comfortable enough to ram through an Iraq war withough the momentum built on post 9/11 posturing. The degree to which they are running up debt might have been modulated a little. Other than that?
I believe that Iraq and the debt are designed catastrophes that Republicans, since they designed them, are much better prepared for than the opposition. How these playout is not completely predictable.
But a bankrupt internationally despised America is an outcome favorable to Republicans. Perhaps we will attack Iran. Perhaps Republicans at some poiny will say:
"Ok, libs were right and we are wrong. Let us pull all our troops back from overseas and downsize the military by 50%. We can't afford it. There are still dangers, so w devote a lot of those resources to the National Surveillance State. And losing the fiscal stimulus of the war will cause a recession without more tax cuts and entitlement reform."
I mostly agree with Bob, though not necessarily in detail.
One question I've wanted to ask: what happens if things crash. Because there are are often people who benefit from disasters. I think that there would be advantages, for example, in controlling a larger share of a smaller economy, after the crash.
You may return to your regularly scheduled programming.
I'm not talking about "just rhetoric"; I'm talking about the extent to which Americans believe the rhetoric. The extent to which they do isn't evidence that "everything changed"; it is the very change itself.
I mean, we're seriously talking about regime change in Iran. Does anyone believe that would have been possible without 9/11??
66: Sure, I believe that is possible. Some of the current administration wanted this long before 9/11 came along as an excuse, or they were in power. I certainly believe they would have tried other ways to construct a favourable climate for it. Would they have been successful? I don't know. So yes, in that sense, I think that nothing has really changed. Certainly a percentage of the population has been convinced that `everything changed'. On the other hand, a significant percentage of this population has been convinced that alien abductions are real, even without any help from government propoganda. Ok, that's a little bit strained, but you see the point?
On a more somber note, they've made a clusterfuck of Iraq, and I can't see Iran being anything but much worse. So the idea that 9/11 has a domino effect that ends up giving them just enough support to go in and make that mess is pretty depressing, yes.
Remember when we were all told to "buy buy buy" show them err THEM that we will carry on, we will remain America? Seems to me, that for most people in the country, that is to say that those who escaped harm and did not have loved ones in harm's way, little really changed.
On 9-11-01, my office was in a building between the White House and the Capitol (on E Street NW near the National Press Club), so we were very interested in where Flight 93 was going. We (stupidly) kept our office open until about 11AM --we should have dispersed everyone as soon as we heard of the Pentagon hit (we watched the Towers fall on a TV in our conference room). There was gridlock/chaos on the streets until about 11:30, rumors of a bomb going off at the State Department (false), rumors that I-395 near the Pentagon was closed (false), rumors that the Metro had shut down (false). A buddy and I walked outside our building around noon and found that several delis on F Street were giving away food from cancelled lunch meetings. I for one was starving so had two sandwiches. At 1:30 I drove my buddy home to Virginia on an empty and open I-395 past the Pentagon, which was spewing smoke and surrounded by fire engines. At 3:15, I picked my kids up from school and found that (1) a woman from our church had been killed in the Pentagon, and (2) an uncle of one of my son's youth soccer teammates (really, LB) had been killed. We flew our flag from our house but our neighbors wouldn't because they didn't want to be targets. That night, and for many more nights, we heard roaring in the sky -- fighters and helicopters, because nothing else was flying.
Dave Johnson of Seeing the Forest has been doing these every day. Along with a bunch of economics bloggers, but Dave, I think, understand the politics of it in ways ecobloggers, excepting Krugman, fear to tread. This has a nice graph for comparison with the 14 yr Japanese slump.
The Clinton impeachment may have been intended to distract from what Greenspan was doing. Stealing the babyboomers retirement money has in the works since the mid 80s. Real men steal trillions. And the millenials hate us, not coincidentally.
I was in Prague, in a flat with no TV and no radio. So I didn't even hear about it till the 12th when I checked my email and had a 'circular' one from an American friend telling us about another friend of his -- someone I hadn't met at the time -- who had gotten out of the building OK.
The US Embassy in Prague was completely surrounded by kids drawings and paintings and flowers.
Czech TV news was extremely tacky -- Carmina Burana playing over slow-mo footage with a deep voice intoning 'Utok na Ameriku' -- so when I did see the thing on TV it was almost unreal.
The only person I knew in New York at the time was my B.Phil supervisor who was, apparently, very close to the buildings when they came down. He described running in total terror which must have been heart-stopping as he was a (lovely but) hugely obese guy.
I've never been patriotic. On 9/11, my concern was what we were going to do to other people as a result of this -- even though "proportionate revenge" is morally bankrupt, I knew it wouldn't even meet that standard.
Experiencing the whole aftermath at a Christian college was not fun. There was a group of peaceniks, of course, but they were not very politically conscious -- still, I'll take knee-jerk peace-mongering over knee-jerk war-mongering any day.
I was in a hotel in Hobart, looking after our son while my wife attended a medical conference. Friends came to visit - one got bored with the news and footage which she couldn't make relevant to her life on the outskirts of a tiny city on the outskirts of a tiny country, but her partner and I couldn't turn away from the television. He said semi-seriously, gesturing at the 10 storey-max Hobart skyline, 'it could be here next'.
The next week in Melbourne I was out walking one evening when a plane flew low overhead. I said to a neighbour 'That one's heading for the Rialto' (being the shiniest and tallest building), and she was horrified, but later admitted that she was thinking it too but would never say it.
"I wonder how well the intensity of reaction correlates with support for the Iraq war."
Not well.
I was not in great shape. Insomnia, anxiety, trouble concentrating at work, had to follow every plane with my eyes to make sure it didn't hit a building. There'd been a family crisis not long before that was very hard, so that was probably part of the problem, as was the fact that I worked at a trauma psychiatry program (not with patients though; boring clerical stuff but it involved a lot of entering data about PTSD symptoms into a computer)
I was more scared and sad than angry though. I am, frankly, kind of a wuss. I was more ambivalent about Afghanistan than I should have been, partly because I was afraid of it leading to extremists getting a nuke in Pakistan. Angry seemed inadequate to murder on that scale. I didn't have a real clean "oh fuck you Osama" moment until much later, when he released that video that mentioned "My Pet Goat."
I opposed the Iraq war, and the pictures of the first day of bombing brought back memories of 9/11 very strongly. It looked and felt completely different than the Gulf War, because you could imagine it happening to your city (I actually haven't lived in NYC since I was 2, except for one summer, but I grew up in the suburbs and my in laws are in Brooklyn and I go there all the time).
That's been the biggest lasting change in my worldview: It's been easier imagine horrible things happening to people I know, so I take them more personally. Not that I've become all wonderfully universalist and empathetic, or anything--the 7/7 attacks in London got to me a hell of a lot more than Darfur.
the big event that changed my political affiliations:
one of my good friends remarked as we all were watching bush's big speech to congress after 9/11: "wow, i'm really glad we have a republican like bush in office. Can you image what al gore might do?"
it was then i realized even though i had come over to liberal positions logically, i still had an emotional fear of 'liberals' that was totally unfounded.
I suppose this is before the terminology of 'blogs' was widespread, but I had one 'blog-friend' -- someone I was in semi-regular contact with on an online discussion forum -- who became completely monomaniacal after 9/11. I t was deeply sad. Every single thing she wrote, for months afterwards, was just endless repetition about 9/11 and how no-one else really knew how bad it was and the horror, the horror, the horror and 'nuke Arabs'. She lived in New York but, as far as I can tell, didn't actually know anyone who'd died.
What made it particularly sad was that some of the people she excoriated for their insufficiently robust reactions and their hostility to her obsession were people who lived in Manhattan too, and had closer, and in some cases, much more traumatic connections to those events than she did.
I haven't heard from her in a while, I hope she's over things.
I'm rather ambivalent about sharing "where were you when" stories, but nevertheless: it was the first day of classes at Brown, and while I didn't have anything to actually do, I was planning to head over to campus, say hello to people, hit the library, and get ready for when things started for me the next day. Checking the headlines online one last time while putting my shoes on, I saw the news about the first plane and went to the tv. Spent the rest the of the day drinking (surely I can't be the only one here?).
The annual department "greet the new grad students" party was that night. I was in no shape to go, of course, but found out the next day they held it anyway. K3rmit Ch4mp4, the éminence grise of our department at the time, evidently was furious the event was going on. The next day, I met the fellow who I'd be TAing with for Ch4mp4 that semester. He's now the M4nanging Editor of The N3w Crit/3ri0n; I only learned a couple of years ago that his father was part of the architectural team that designed the towers.
On 9/11: At work, in the financial industry. First thought when I had a moment to spare: "Technically sweet, but now the Palestinians are really fucked." Stayed at work all day, one of 3 people (out of about 80 on my floor) who did. [Everyone else was freaking out, but as occupants of a 13-story building in downtown Minneapolis, I kinda figured we were probably pretty safe.] After work, met a friend at a dingy Mexi-American restaurant that had bizarrely put a chain across the end of their entrance hallway (although you could still just lift it and go in.)
Most important net results personally: Getting arrested at an anti-Iraq War protest a year and a half later and deciding I could finally stomach voting if there was even an irrationally small chance that it might give people a little more breathing room. And that's why I'm an election judge today (or tomorrow).
I wish Rumsfeld had taken shelter. It was nice he helped out on the ground, but we didn't know what might later happen here or overseas.
Reminds me of the movie Air Force One, where the H. Ford character acts to save his family instead of his nation. Understandable but that isn't what the president signed on for. Similar for Rumsfeld.
I was shocked by the attacks but I can't say I was surprised. Years ago with friends I had talked about big planes as a potential weapon (they reminded me later). To me it was no more of a surprise than a package bomb on the subway or a car bomb. On the latter, I am not happy about the nicely labeled US armed forces (e.g., US Air Force) buses that shuttle between the Pentagon and local office comlplexes. Could they at least try not to make it easy for a bomber?
I was a freshman in high school, not really politically aware enough to immediately understand how important the attack was. Anyway, Missouri felt pretty safe. So I shared LB's attitude, but I'm surprised she was so detached -- I evacuated from New Orleans the day before Katrina hit, but even watching the news on TV from a safe distance was wrenching.
90: New Orleans got hit harder than New York. Not in terms of the death toll, but I didn't have a personal connection to any of the casualties. But the New Orleans that was here last year is very largely gone. The New York of 2000 is still here.
I was at work, on the phone, arguing with a lawyer in Providence about a document production. He was saying he was going to go complain to the judge about the pace at which I was producing stuff, and I just happened upon it on the internet. Told him we all had bigger things to think about, but if he wanted to call the judge, he should feel free. And hung up.
I heard about the Pentagon a couple of minutes later, and went up on the roof to see -- smoke billowing up, and a guy over across the street says that he's with the Secret Service and if we don't get back inside in 2 minutes he's going to shoot us. That's when I heard a loud explosion over towards the West of us -- I figured it was at State, thinking there'd be no point in attacking the GSA. Went right back in, of course.
Back in my office, talking with a couple of friends/colleagues, the PA came on and said there was another plane coming, and we should all go to the bunker in the 4th parking level down. 'F That S,' said I, and three of us started walking home, on foot. We kept hearing conflicting rumors about whether the Metro was operating, and anyone one colleague had lived in Tokyo during the sarin thing, and she wasn't interested in subways. A couple of military ambulances trying to get through traffic obviously coming down from Walter Reed, headed across the river in traffic. A group of soldiers running along in front acting as an escort, getting cars out of the way -- miraculously it worked.
So we walked about 5 miles.
She came by today at about 6, asked if I wanted a ride home. I wasn't really done, but the look in her eye made me say 'Sure.' We talked about it a little on the way. She was glad it wasn't such nice weather today, and couldn't have stood it if it had been the same. Something we'll always share, I guess.
92: Well, sure. But I didn't even live in New Orleans, I'd just been there for less than a day, and it wasn't that big a deal to just go to Minneapolis instead. My reaction to Katrina wasn't (just) horror at the number dead and the appalling response at the government; there was a dizzying element of "whoa, I've been there." Granted, this may be just because important things do not happen in Kansas City, but I think if I'd ever been to New York, let alone walked past the towers, let alone actually been a native New Yorker, 9/11 would have seemed much more serious to me.
I get what L.'s saying. A few years ago I saw a news story about a bridge in Oklahoma that collapsed, killing several people in their cars, and my main thought was "holy shit, I've driven over that bridge!" That's the kind of small tragedy that happens all the time, but it stands out in my mind because of the (admittedly tangential) personal connection I felt to the place. I never went to the WTC when it was there, but I think if I had I would have felt the same way on 9/11.
Part of the difference is that you didn't have five years of people pushing differently-shaped cartoon versions of the bridge collapse at you. 9/11 has been stretched to fit so many different purposes that I don't think there's anything personal left for some people. (Not saying this is Ideal or LB.)
95, 97: Oh, I felt that way -- I talked about it in the post as having someone take my stuff. I was using the WTC, dammit!
But from day one, the authentic traumatized New Yorker reaction has been constructed in terms of the gritty ash everyplace, and the everpresent smell of smoke, and the memory of running for your life from the great cloud of dust and smoke billowing down the street as the towers fell, and the loss of friends and loved ones. None of that happened to me -- I saw it on the news instead.
Somebody in the office found a report and obviously everybody stopped what they were doing and started frantically looking for news sites that had any bandwidth left. My boss, who I'd worked with for years and got on with really well, was in a meeting, and when he came out to get some document I said, "You might tell them some bastard's hijacked a couple of airliners and flown them into the World Trade Centre", and he didn't even react.
And then later, the meeting finished and he came back and clocked the mood in the office, and he said, "What's happened?". And I said, "I fucking told you what happened." And he said, "I thought you were joking."
I got my coat and went home without saying another damn thing.
Later I said to somebody, "Well, I suppose it was predictable." And she said, "You think that was OK?" And I said, "I said predictable, not excusable." And I spent a long time wondering how many people don't actually understand their native language, and how that affects stuff.
Like Ttam, I was out of the country - we were in Tuscany, in an apartment with no tv etc. The evening of the 11th, we went into town for dinner, and did notice that in one particular bar, there were an awful lot of very serious-looking Italians watching tv, but we couldn't see the tv, so assumed it was some domestic thing. The next day we went to Florence, and on the way home on the train could see some German bloke's newspaper enopugh to work out that there had been a terrorist attack, but nothing else. So when we got off the train we bought a newspaper. Very weird being away from normal life. But I'm very glad that I mostly missed all the horrendous footage - I could avoid it when we got home again, but I'm not sure I could have on the day.
very glad that I mostly missed all the horrendous footage
I have viddied very little footage of the attack, beyond the ubiquitous still photos of the plane crashing into the tower or the tower with smoke pouring out of the side. Not sure if I actively avoided it or what -- I generally watch very little TV news.
I found it grotesque that a terrorist attack immediately became an excuse for football rivalry kinds of craziness. The 'next to of course god america i/love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh' rhetoric was very alienating to me. I was not particularly nationalistic at the time and over the years have become considerably less so.
That view is not highly popular here, since of course everyone was deeply affected by what happened in spite of most of them not being able to locate NYC on a map.
There's a 9/11 picture of people in mid-air, having jumped from one of the towers. For some reason, I have a very hard time with that photo. I wonder at what they were thinking and feeling before and while jumping to certain death instead of waiting for death to find them. And the idea that some people held hands when they jumped...holding hands is a small gesture, but it can be so comforting and so intimate. Yet for some reason, I find that image so incredibly sad.
Is that the photo that was withdrawn from circulation soon after it was published, immediately after the events? I have never seen it. But Frank Rich mentioned it in his very good essay of this weekend, "What happened to the America of 9/12?" which is only available through the verdammte Times Select. So I can't link it.
113: I'm fairly sure that I would have been pretty angry if I'd been issued a Patriot Pin. Depending on circs., there might not have been much I could do about it. But it's unbelievably crass, and it would have made me really, really angry.
118, 116: I was actually trying to make a distinction between a gentle pride of one's birthplace vs. some holier-than-thou self-righteousness. Perhaps at this point, such a distinction is no longer possible. (You fucking commies.)
85: Much the same here, except that I taught on the first day of classes. I'd woken up early, probably because I was a little nervous, so I decided to call my parents 'cause I hadn't talked in ages. While on the phone with my mom I turned on the TV -- nervous tic, really, I just wanted pretty pictures to look at -- but mistakenly punched in CNN's numbers on my remote instead of VH1. [I kid you not.] So I saw, completely by accident, the entire thing, or at least everything that was televised.
The kicker was: I had to leave to teach a class of predominantly East Coasters (somewhat odd out here in the Midwest), most of whom had been in classes all morning and so didn't know what was going on, while the fate of the towers was still up in the air. [Nothing like being late to your first day of classes with the line "I'm sorry, I think someone's just attacked New York."] Raced back home immediately after class, was glued to the TV for another few hours, raced back in for a seminar, raced back again and spent most of the next few weeks doing pretty much that.
As an aside, I'd been pretty resolutely apolitical for the previous five, ten years, even going so far as to stop following the news entirely. Not so much after 9/11. In fact, the one community service I was able to do was to provide near-real-time summations of all the major news stories during that month -- which necessitated continuously [and I mean continuously] tracking four cable channels, five papers and something ludicrous like 20 newsfeed websites -- for friends of mine without the time or resources to follow the stories themselves. Posted updates pretty much every hour (during the day at least) for two weeks. It was intense but gratifying at the same time, though it's hard to articulate exactly why. Nowadays, after the way the American political scene has degenerated, it's hard for me to muster enough energy to read blogs, let alone try to winnow out the truth as I did then.
110/112- those photos aren't around anymore? I find that so hard to believe in this digital age. I saw them several times in the days/weeks after 9/11. Truly haunting.
Re: the red/white/blue pin. I really don't quite understand the objection, maybe I am missing something. Perhaps I am envisioning a different tone. I suppose it would be offensive if The Company handed out patriotism pins that employees must wear as a pledge of nationalism, or some similarly Orwellian scenario. But I'm envisioning something more along the lines of: the WTC and Pentagon have just been attacked, thousands of Americans are dead, people are feeling scared and sad and angry and confused, and the managers of the company, as a gesture of goodwill, and solidarity, and just a general morale boost, give out complimentary red, white and blue pins to the employees. There is no Official Proclamation that all employees must swear fidelity to their president and their flag, just pins, given out voluntarily to help make everyone feel a bit better (in a very small, but not entirely insignificant, way). In such a case, and given the emotional state of the country at the time, I can understand why co-workers might look askance at someone who refused to wear their pin. It's an explicit rejection of emotional solidarity, solidarity with the workers who died in the towers, with those who died or were injured trying to rescue them, indeed with all Americans who at the time were feeling vulnerable and threatened. I think *I* would have been a little wary of someone like that, not out of fear of coruse but just out of a sense of "what the hell kind of message are you trying to send, and is this really the time or way for you to try and send it?" I can certainly see something like that getting an employee "in trouble", especially if that phrase is meant relatively informally.
I guess winna will have to clarify which of the two scenarios is closer to what happened. I know I think (in the abstract -- not commenting on winna's situation) that the latter is much more likely.
There was a lengthy documentary on British TV recently where they tried to track down the identity of guy in the most well-known of the jumper pictures, the so-called 'Falling man'. It's a very powerful image.
n such a case, and given the emotional state of the country at the time, I can understand why co-workers might look askance at someone who refused to wear their pin. It's an explicit rejection of emotional solidarity, solidarity with the workers who died in the towers, with those who died or were injured trying to rescue them, indeed with all Americans who at the time were feeling vulnerable and threatened.
Why would you think that a small pin would embody solidarity with the workers who died in the towers? Why would you think that anyone who refused to wear the pin was implicitly rejecting such solidarity? I don't understand the equivalence between the pin and the 'morale boost'.
In such a case, and given the emotional state of the country at the time, I can understand why co-workers might look askance at someone who refused to wear their pin. It's an explicit rejection of emotional solidarity, solidarity with the workers who died in the towers, with those who died or were injured trying to rescue them, indeed with all Americans who at the time were feeling vulnerable and threatened. I think *I* would have been a little wary of someone like that, not out of fear of coruse but just out of a sense of "what the hell kind of message are you trying to send, and is this really the time or way for you to try and send it?" I can certainly see something like that getting an employee "in trouble", especially if that phrase is meant relatively informally.
It depends on the pre-existing political situation. Think of a 'Support our Troops' ribbon. Every decent person wants only good things to happen to the innocent members of our armed forces who've gotten sucked into this mess. But someone with the ribbon on their bumper almost certainly means by "Support the Troops", "Support the war and the policies that got us into it." It's using an unobjectionable statement as a synedoche for all sorts of other stuff that reasonable people don't necessarily want to sign on to.
Likewise with the RW&B pin. If you're in a place that breaks down into people who think of flagwaving patriotism as equivalent to Republicanism, and to an aggressive military foreign policy, then getting handed a pin right after 9-11 might feel less like 'We're all in this together' and more like "I too, agree that an appropriate response here is to bomb someplace, doesn't much matter where, until the rubble bounces."
1. My love of and loyalty to my country doesn't run through my company; winna's company seems unclear on that point. I'd be equally offended if someone in a supervisory role asked me to do extra work "for the troops."
2. If my co-workers are such bitches that they are discomfitted by my not wearing a pin, fuck'em. I don't want "emotional solidarity" with them. They need to get the fuck out of my country. As I am now defining the US not to include S.C., it's a comparatively easy move for winna's co-workers.
3. I don't have emotional solidarity with the people who died or lost a loved one; it's offensive to imply such solidarity. It amounts to putting on someone else's bloody clothes and claiming injury. It's also what gets us into these cartoon messes where we (or really, the Keyboarders) feel like they have been at risk because they supported others going to Iraq.
Forgot to say in 85 that I remember thinking, "Things are going to get really bad now." Haven't been disappointed on that score. I also had to break the news to my mom, who called late morning. She was at home by herself, hadn't looked at the tv or turned on the radio, and was in a very chatty mood. As she began to talk about some minor thing or another, I asked her, "Do you know what's happened?" and she said no. I told her and she turned on the tv. I then listened to my mom scream through the telephone for a while.
112, 122: I didn't know there'd been attempts to suppress any photos. The one I'm thinking of is not the falling man photo. I'm googling but not finding the picture I mean. I can't find the picture I don't want to see, but I don't want it suppressed.
In googling for the picture, I came across pictures of jumpers after they'd hit the ground. I was about to say 'horrible', but that's not enough and I just don't know what word would suffice.
125- I don't think "Support Our Troops" is as nefarious as you suggest, or at least in many circumstances in which I've encountered it. I *know* people who use, and mean, that phrase -- having adult children overseas right now, and who yet object vigorously to the mess in Iraq and would like nothing more than to see them come home. I think many people (again, in my experince) use that phrase to imply that the lives and well-being of the soldiers we have overseas ought to be and remain a preeminent concern in all major political decisionmaking. Of course no one (or, more accurately I think, relatively few people) actively wants bad things to happen to our troops, but some people are certainly willing to put other political concerns above the well-being of the military. Is voting agaist funding for more military equipment a responsible way to voice objection to the war? Is the preservation of some amorphous idea of 'national credibility' sufficient justification for keeping soldiers in harms way, with no real plans for (or realistic hope of) progress? Those sorts of concerns all come under the "Support our Troops" slogan, at least as I'm familiar with it's use. (Although sure, some people who supoprt the war also use the phrase. I'm just pointing out that their use isn't exclusive.)
Maybe I live in a different country from the rest of you?
The pin ends up being a symbol of unity, and I can see how refusing to wear it could be construed as making a political statement at the wrong time. I can also see how wearing the pin could be construed as supporting any military action that the U.S. could have taken in response to 9/11. It seems out of line for an employer to pass out pins.
I hated it when people placed small flags on the corners of their vehicles. Especially SUVs.
I do think 9/11 changed a lot of attitudes, if not everything, and I'm sort of surprised at some of the studied nonchalance on display in a few posts here. 9/11 wasn't the worst possible thing ever ever, but it was a pretty impressive act of terror (the BUILDINGS came DOWN! GONE!) and you had to know that we were going to smack something. The sort of 'ah, no big deal, I'm off to get ice cream while the plebes go to church or hug their children, foolish dimwits' strikes me as very strange, especially given that early reports (wrong) had many planes unaccounted for, and tens of thousands of expected casualities. It's easy to say now, pah, Katrina nearly killed as many, but if you had that reaction on Sept. 11 I commend you for your ability to read the future.
126- okay, is the "supervisory" thing the trigger here? Would it have been less offensive if such pins had been given out at an unrelated charity dinner (something pre-planned for 9/12, to raise money for homelessness or education, etc.)? There would still be considerable social pressure to put on the pin, and a lot of weird -- and probably angry -- looks at anyone who refused.
I guess I'm envisioning the company giving out pins in basically a similar, supportive role, rather than in an official, supervisory role. (Though admittedly, being your company, of course, they can't relate to you in an entirely unsupervisory way.) That's basically the distinction I was getting at in 122.
The use of phrases like 'support the troops' tends to be to shut down debate about what might actually be best for the nation and/or for the troops and to prevent that answering, one way or another, of the various questions you suggest come under that heading.
Man, I'm proud of the responses, through 125, I've just read to 122. We have to be able to say: doing this, or doing this in this way, is wrong, and we can't go along with it. There will always be people for whom such resistance is an occasion for their own self-righteousness or impulse to bully, and of course bosses are very often such people. But many other people will find themselves thinking about it, and perhaps that will have a cascading effect.
Whenever I see the yellow ribbons, now weathered to white, on cars I think how easy and uncontroversial a step that must have been for millions of decent people, because nobody they knew felt liking speaking up, even though most everybody knew somebody who did have these reservations.
It's easy to say now, pah, Katrina nearly killed as many, but if you had that reaction on Sept. 11 I commend you for your ability to read the future.
I don't think it's nonchalance on display, and I doubt it's studied. I don't think reactions are a function of the specific number of casualties, or reading the future. It's a recognition that we are, as a country, and at this moment in time, unkillable. We don't even have willing enemies who can inflict massive, crippling damage. There's little reason to fear anyone but ourselves at the moment. Though we've pissed away a good deal of our various advantages in the idiot WOT.
Brock, I think a lot of it is that it would be impossible to refuse the pin in such a charged atmosphere without looking like a supporter of terrorists, and that while the pressure may indeed exist in other forms in the community, the church group & the homeless benefit and the charity organization don't have power over my employment.
I don't think we're unkillable, but that's beside the point as what is likely to kill us isn't terrorists flying planes into skyscrapers, but our insistence that the Constitution really didn't mean that there needed to be warrants before searches.
You didn't have to think the U.S. was in immediate danger to realize that there were going to be a lot of changes, and that most of them would probably involve starting a war.
131: I don't think a choice between `holy crap everything has changed' and `no big deal, let's get ice cream'
What about the reaction that mingles sadness for the people involved and a certain resignation because you had long felt that something like this was overdue? I imaginge it's sort of like hearing about a big earthquake on the west coast would be. I remember thinking that afternoon that probably an awful lot of innocent people were going to get killed because of this, and fervently hoping that wasn't true. Hoping like that was unrealistic, and I knew it --- so found that rather depressing. I was pretty certain (in the days that followed, once it was clear we were looking at thousands, not tens of thousands) that orders of magnitude more innocents would be killed in the name of this than died that day. Being right about that hasn't made me feel any better about it. Beyond fairly minor activism/education efforts, I haven't seen much I can do about that though.
Honestly, I find the whole thing so depressing I try not to think about it too much. I find it depressing that people would feel driven to do such a thing. I find it depressing the part we played (and play) in constructing the world they live in, where such an action seems the best course to them. I find it depressing how manufactured and propagandized the reaction to this has been. I find it depressing how many people have tried callously to manipulate the events to match their pre-existing agendas, all the while trumpeting how this `changes everything'. I find it depressing how many people seem to have taken comfort in the fact that people were getting blown up `for this' without asking many critical questions about who, and why. I find depressing the idea that it is entirely possible that manipulation of these facts allowed the US to invade Iraq without justification, and made the US population complacent about it. All this and more I find very depressing --- I just don't find it surprising.
as an addendum to 138: I should note that one of the reasons I don't feel that this `changed everything' is that I suppose one of my internalized defining characteristics (predating 9/11/01 by many years) of the US is that given the right mix of administration and impetus, the US will go and blow something up. It will not in general, neccessarily take particularly good justification or well reasoned planning in this. Nor will it be likely that this proves particularly effective at anything except killing a bunch of poor buggers who happen to be in the wrong place.
Yes this is depressing. Perhaps I just have just developed an overly cynical view, but there it is.
137: but our insistence that the Constitution really didn't mean that there needed to be warrants before searches.
Ah. Well, at least for me, it was a tremendous lack of foresight that allowed me not to worry too much. I just never, ever thought something like the Padilla policy was possible, even as a proposal. Not today, and not in the face of a relatively trivial threat. Had I considered it, I would have been sure that the Congress, and even the country, would rise up and clout the President in such a situation. I really didn't think we would invade Iraq, even days prior to the invasion. I just thought we'd deal with shit and move on. I also didn't have any sense of the various conceptions of America abroad in the land. The success of Clintonism covered up a lot of sins; I assumed that everyone thought more or less like me, and was pretty happy with the way that had worked out.
bah. typing too fast. `nor will it be likely' should really be `nor will it necessarily be likely'.
I'm certainly not trying to suggest that every military action taken was ill conceived, badly executed, or both. I'm just saying that in my world view it is entirely plausible that this will, and has, happened. And nothing following the WTC attacks has caused me believe otherwise.
I just never, ever thought something like the Padilla policy was possible, even as a proposal. Not today, and not in the face of a relatively trivial threat. Had I considered it, I would have been sure that the Congress, and even the country, would rise up and clout the President in such a situation.
Also puts the 2nd amendment weenies in a new light. 'We need guns to protect our constitutional rights' ....
I was shocked, and scared, and spent most of the afternoon of the eleventh feeling nauseous. I spent the whole week trying to tell everyone I knew who were for bombing the shit out of something that Muslims/Arabic people/foreign persons aren't some big bugaboo. Remember all the crazed anti-Muslim sentiment? It was everywhere down here. So I was not only having an emotional reaction to what had happened, I was finding out how many of my coworkers and acquaintances were scary xenophobes who wanted to turn the Middle East into a plain of glass.
I was going every lunch to the little Middle Eastern restaurant because they'd gotten things thrown through the window. I was writing the newspaper to attempt to counter the 'intern all Muslims' movement and listening to my Muslim friends talk about how scary it was to have to have police protection on their mosque. It was like everyone had went insane.
I was affected by what happened, but my reaction wasn't to go and kill people as messily as possible, in the meantime hurting a bunch of Americans whose only crime was to be Muslim or even just 'look' Muslim. And here was a group of the same people who were making me feel like a stranger in my own country because of the difference between my reaction and theirs, trying to make me part of their reaction. Hell no I wasn't putting on that pin- the flag was rapidly coming to symbolize something of which I wanted no part.
Other than that, SCMT's 126 is completely correct in all respects.
Yeah. There was a reference somewhere the other day, maybe in Frank Rich's column, about a photo of some guys hanging out in Brooklyn Heights with the carnage in the background, not obviously affecting them. I felt like the people around me (many of them) were respoonding to what was going on where I was just plodding along in my daily course same as ever.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:09 AM
My reaction to 9/11 is much like yours, maybe even more sanguine. I do not think your reaction is that uncommon.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:17 AM
I moved to the midwest two weeks before 9/11; when I lived in NYC I worked in the World Financial Center. None of my co-workers were injured but plenty were traumatized.
I used to hate the WTC buildings. I went to the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Preserve years ago and could see the towers even from there, and I resented being reminded of my much-hated job on my day off. But the skyline looks undistinguished without them.
Posted by dagger aleph | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:21 AM
BTW LB, did you walk uptown on that fateful day? I did, from Soho to Queens, and I remember that walk as an interesting one.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:23 AM
I have an even more reprehensible 9/11 story. On 9/11, since no one was getting any work done, I skipped work and went surfing. It was real good that day. Apparently it was good on the east coast too because some people who work in the towers skipped work for that reason.
In my defence, my wife and kids were on the east coast visiting family, so the whole "spend time with the ones you love most" option was denied me.
Posted by Joe o | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:24 AM
Nope. I was on maternity leave in Inwood, nowhere near of the events.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:24 AM
I was thinking of stopping by the site sometime this evening, for no particular reason other than being a sentimental sap.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:27 AM
Anyone else here make the walk? I thought I remembered one of the female commenters, possibly ac, having access to her apartment blocked by the aftermath of the attacks.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:29 AM
I know Becks has a story -- ac might as well, but I don't remember it.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:31 AM
I was home in Sacramento when we got the news, and largely baffled by grief and weeping of my classmates. Yes, it was a terrible thing but there are often terrible things, and here in California it was beautiful out and our immediate lives were entirely unchanged. I kept my mouth shut.
Posted by Megan | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:35 AM
I was feeling sad that it had happened, but also thinking that it wasn't surprising. A colleague just couldn't wrap his head around that idea and thought I was somehow sick for having it.
I do remember by the end of the day finding it tedious the number of people around me (never mind not in New York, not even in the US !) who were losing it acting as if this were the biggest thing to happen in living memory --- I kept biting my tounge against saying : "get some perspective". I only personally know one person who was really directly affected. She lost her husband there, and I'm pretty certain she is causing her children psychological damage by refusing to let it go.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:35 AM
I've left my first impressions at B's. My principal memory of the period is the heedless desire so many people had to hit somebody, the shape of their aversions imagined, hard. A nation of Friedmans, inescapable.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:37 AM
here in California it was beautiful out and our immediate lives were entirely unchanged
This is certainly true, but I seem to have reacted more strongly than a lot of you. I had trouble sleeping for weeks, and I'd start awake if a plane flew overhead.
I wonder how well the intensity of reaction correlates with support for the Iraq war.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:41 AM
I had trouble sleeping for weeks, and I'd start awake if a plane flew overhead.
I'm pretty surprised by that reaction. I checked to make sure no one I knew had been killed, worried a little about our possible response, and was mostly just stunned that it happened.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:45 AM
My 1 is striking me now as bit unreflective. I am thinking suddenly that the events of September 11 may have been an important factor in the genesis of the depression that has been plaguing me on and off for the last several years.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:48 AM
I wonder how well the intensity of reaction correlates with support for the Iraq war.
Since LizardBreath and I had much the same reaction (indeed, mine was, I gather from her post, even more muted), I would say this thesis is not supported by the facts.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:49 AM
Well then you're just a murderous bastard, aren't you, Idealist?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:51 AM
12: Mine as well. I found the weeks following mostly pretty depressing, for that reason. Also how callously it was co-opted by many people to push various pre-existing agendas.
Posted by soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:53 AM
I mean I remember thinking on that day or seen after, "Oh shit, now we're going to go to war." But I did not protest the war, wasn't even that strongly opposed to it -- it seemed like the only thing that could happen. And then that played into my not organizing against the Iraq war more than to march in a couple of marches. Thinking about it now I'm seeing a connection between the fatalism I've been mired in and the experience of the bombings. Though I can't really tease the precise connection out right now.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:54 AM
I heard about it on the internet before heading off to work (in Oregon where I lived, 3 hrs time difference). The first thing I did -- really -- was to ask if it was April Fool's day. Then I for awhile thought that "the towers" were radio towers on something on top of the buildings themselves.
And then, you might have guessed, once I realized what had happened I said "George Bush is going to have a field day with this".
Exactly what Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rove were thinking, I'm sure; George wa probably just trying not to soil himself again.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:56 AM
I woke up bright and early that morning to teach classes. (I was living in Alabama at the time.) Everything unfolded on the TV over the length of my morning routine.
By the time I got to campus, both towers had fallen. An earnest student was standing outside my building handing out little strips of paper that said "What we need now is prayer" and gave the time and location for a massive prayer rally.
I couldn't teach my set lesson plan, that was clear. But I also couldn't talk to my students about what was happening for very long without them saying really fucked up. The day after the attacks, one of my favorite students said "We should kill them all, even the little Palestinian kids who were dancing in the streets when the towers fell."
Everyone kept saying “the whole world is different now,” especially the guy I shared an office with. I had not felt so politically and socially isolated since Junior High School.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:56 AM
Well then you're just a murderous bastard, aren't you, Idealist?
I am sure that you are not the only person here with this view.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 11:56 AM
I was initially shocked, then kind of hit by an adrenalin rush of excitement and disbelief, which I tried to counter by spending the rest of the day trying to convince my brother in law that we should withhold judgment about who was responsible until we knew more. I tried hard to get in touch with my friend, who like LB lived in Inwood, even though I was sure she was fine; it turned out she had been downtown for (I think it was) jury duty, and did have ash showered on her head and found herself reassuring people who'd escaped the towers before she managed to walk far enough to find a cab to share with other folks from the neighborhood. When I heard that, my excitement sobered up pretty fast.
I felt torn about going to war with Afghanistan, but I participated in an ecuminical peace march and service when the war broke out, mostly as an expression of sorrow and concern than of real opposition to the war. There were "no war" signs all over our neighborhood, but I couldn't bring myself to put one up (I also couldn't bring myself to put up a flag, although especially in the first few days, I wanted to.)
The whole thing made me terribly sad. I started getting angry when Bush started encouraging everyone to go shopping.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:00 PM
It just all really sucked. I remember trying to lead classes while everyone was in their shocked and praying mode. I said "well I can think of two issues that we can discuss philosophically here. One is whether this should lead to restrictions on civil liberties, and the other is whether this should lead to some sort of violent act against an Middle Eastern nation." The reaction of my students was essentially: How can you even think about protecting civil liberties or promoting non violent solutions at a time like this?
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:02 PM
I remember empathizing with people who were angry, and feeling equally bothered by people who jumped to anger and who jumped to "let's analyze this situation." It seemed to me at the time, and still seems, that the only proper response (if one wasn't directly affected) was a deep sorrow.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:07 PM
One of my most memorable impressions from that day is of an acquaintance of mine, a very wonkish grad student in some sort of International Relations program with a focus national security, bouncing around like an overexcited five-year-old and declaring that to be (and this is a direct quote, seared into my memory): "the awesomest day ever." In context, I (sort of) understood where he was coming from -- all the dry garbage he'd been reading about in all those books finally coming to life with relevance, and being played out in real-time on CNN. But I just looked at his giddy demeanor and thought "Awesome?? People are fucking dying."
The postscript is that he didn't think it awesome at all when he was shipped to Afganistan that December. (He was a reservist.) I haven't heard from him since -- I hope he survived his tour.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:09 PM
I wasn't so enthused about analyzing things, so much as I thought that it was my job as a philosophy teacher to be doing that.
I do, however, typically use analysis as a coping tool, and really qucikly began to wish that more people would think about the things they were saying, because they were proposing some really crazy shit, most of which has actually occurred.
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:12 PM
I think that Brock's story illuminates the warbloggers and super-hawks. A lot of people had a hole filled in their lives on 9/11.
Some guys like that were eager to go to Afghanistan -- there are too many chickenhawks out there, and I do think that the chickenhawk critique is a valid one, but plenty of hawks are completely for real.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:15 PM
I was a senior in high school, heard about it during third-period choir. Seemed pretty abstract until a few hours later, when I heard that the father of a good friend of mine had been killed in the Pentagon. Had been in English class with him half an hour before it happened. He dealt with it far better than I could have imagined--didn't repress everything & pretend it was all fine, didn't completely fall apart.
I had a similar reaction to B--I lost any temporary approval I had of Bush a week or so later when it started becoming clear that it wouldn't be a nonpartisan response.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:20 PM
I certainly noticed planes flying overhead, in a different way than I had noticed them previously, for months after. I'm not sure this has completely gone away, come to think of it. I didn't have any particular trouble sleeping, but the amount of alcohol I was putting away may have had something to do with that.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:21 PM
I had a similar reaction to B--I lost any temporary approval I had of Bush a week or so later when it started becoming clear that it wouldn't be a nonpartisan response.
I remember being deeply embarrassed when I found out that Bush had flown to Nebraska, then hopeful when he made a very good speech noting that we weren't at war with Muslims. I know that I when I found out that Rumsfeld had stuck around at the Pentagon and done what he could to help out, I put him in the "my kind of people" category; I know I've left him in there far too long.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:26 PM
w/d, if you were in New York at that time, those planes flying overhead were fighter jets, for about a month. Hard not to notice them.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:30 PM
My reaction was like LB's, and I've been scolded for that, though by my aunt; what your crazy family does doesn't really mean much about the rest of the population.
I did feel really upset at times during the aftermath, most memorably once the Friday after, when some Chasidim, preparing to ask if I wanted a shabbos candle, asked me if I was Jewish, and because I was already upset, I heedlessly said, "half." You can imagine what ensued, though they finally gave me one for my aunt, when I told them that she was "100% Jewish." I should say that I had the feeling the younger of them, who I took to be the son, would have liked to apologize for his father. Anyway, after this interaction, thinking "way to rise above sectarianism to recognize our common humanity, guys" I burst into tears and ironically wandered into a Catholic church.
The next morning I listened to a beautiful string quintet (?) playing in Columbus Circle in front of missing posters and it really lifted my spirits, the small gestures people make, and then stunningly, a year later when I started taking cello lessons in part inspired by that experience, my teacher turned out to have been one of them. (No cello for me anymore, no money or space.)
But mostly, it was something I saw on the news, and I felt really baffled by people who said their world view had changed. I was like, dudes, our isolation from horrific violence could easily be construed as the aberration, not the other way around.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:31 PM
I was, unnvervingly enough, on my way to a job interview when I heard the news on NPR. I spent the remainder of the drive trying to get in touch with my NYC relatives.
As you can imagine, the interview itself was distinctly odd.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:37 PM
33: Exactly. Having your world view changed significantly by this says much more about you than the events of the day.
Posted by soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:37 PM
Oh, and since I wasn't working at the time, I had the next two weeks to pretty much lie on the couch and watch the news. I think that contributed to my (relative) political radicalization.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:38 PM
34 -- did you get the job?
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:38 PM
Nah, not in New York. Not sure how it would have affected me if I was. But there were (sometimes) fighter jets flying where I was.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:40 PM
Survivor Guilt? Just Wiki, and not that long or useful.
The lady had outpatient surgery Friday, removing an encysted piece of plastic from her forehead. The auto accident, she was rear-ended into the windshield, that put it there happened thirty years ago. She is always on me about seatbelts.
There is more plastic, undetectable or not worth detecting. She had plastic surgery to improve major scarring twenty years ago, for a decade she had a noticable square up there. I think the feelings of a near death experience came back a little, and the unfairness that it can't be over and past.
The above is for 9/11 survivors, in my way.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:41 PM
37: Actually, yeah, they offered me the job, but I turned it down.
I suppose it's not too surprising that I didn't come away with a great impression of the company.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:44 PM
Re. planes overhead: I'm reminded that we lived in the flight path for the local airport, and that it was really strangely quiet for a couple of days. And feeling quite moved, actually, when I saw a jet again.
Re. changing world view: I think it is fair to say that my world view changed. Not intellectually, but emotionally. I think there is a genuine difference between the empathetic *knowledge* of what it's like to have your country attacked, and the actual experience of living through it. I'm sure that my world view would change yet again if, say, the city or state I live in were attacked, or if someone I knew personally were killed in a war or attack.
But selfishly, I pray to god that I never find out.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:46 PM
31: The personal reactions of administrations folks didn't matter so much to me, really. I don't disdain anyone (particularly those in positions of authority) who takes advantage of their official protection; it's irresponsible not to, even (imagine if Rumsfeld had been killed or incapacitated by a secondary attack because he stuck around, e.g.)
It was the actions in their official capacity that were particularly misguided and harmful, I thought.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:51 PM
I have more or less the same feelings as LB, but I will say that one of the coldest chills I've felt in a long time was around 9:30 that morning when a bunch of us had gathered in my boss' office (she was the only one who had a tv) and while we were all watching in stunned silence, the college intern suddenly yelled, "Let's nuke the fuckers!" Of course, I have nightmares about nuclear war to begin with, but this seemed so entirely possible at the moment, it scared the living bejeezus out of me.
Oh, and we worked at the top of the tallest building downtown, near an airport, and seeing planes and helicopters at eye level did make me nervous for awhile. Then I remembered I was in Ohio, and the feeling would pass.
Posted by Heather | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:51 PM
41: about changing world views: I guess that is what I would think of as a less significant change, compared to those who apparantly `just didn't believe anything like that could happen here'. And just couldn't understand `why those nasty muslims hate our freedom so much, especially after we've been so nice to them ...' Etc. etc. ad nauseaum.
I think there is always a disconnect between intellectually grasping something and actually experiencing it; but usually it's more a reinforcement and/or adjustment.
I certainly think that if your life was completely changed by the WTC attacks and you were not directly involved... then that is about you, not the magnitude of the WTC attacks. Conversely, if you lost a loved one or whatever, and it has fundamentally changed your life --- it could just have easily been a less far reaching disaster would leave you in the same place, roughly. No?
Posted by soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:57 PM
I spent a lot of that day sitting quietly in Riverside Park, watching armored military vehicles roll off the Westside Highway. I think that day did change my perspective because from the very first I knew that it meant war, somewhere.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 12:59 PM
I don't disdain anyone (particularly those in positions of authority) who takes advantage of their official protection; it's irresponsible not to,
Disagree entirely. Part of the President's job is ceremonial, and that was a moment we needed him to show up in DC and say, "Everything's OK." Lots of people were actually worried, and the risk to him (let's be honest, here) was trivial. Worst case scenario: he gets killed. Who cares? We have a designated spare.
I think I'm probably a bit of a coward, but I like to think that, at least at the far margins, I have a sense of shame. Bush didn't.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 1:06 PM
My thoughts were pretty much: "Where is everyone I know who might have been in NYC?" [email email email] "Let's smack the person that did this." "Let's make sure we smack the right person and not just anyone."
About two months after the attack I took my then-12-year-old sister to see the Harry Potter movie, and the theatre was on the flight path to the airport. Planes always fly low there, so I was somewhat startled when I suddenly had a little sister wrapped around me, terrified, because a plane flew quite low overhead.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 1:09 PM
Disagree with SCMTim. Had Bush been killed, the anger & damage would have been much greater, and while we have a spare designed for such an occasion, on 9/11 no one really knew what was going on and I think this included the top levels of government. Ceremony's fine but the damage to our sense of security would have been worse. I can't imagine what we would have nuked had 9/11 killed a president.
One of the more interesting stories to my mind is the 'My Pet Goat' saga. At the time -- look it up -- Bush was hailed for remaining calm after the report of the first attack. Two years later it was the poster for 'Bush is an idiot' moment for not rushing out of the room (and then, presumably, waiting in the hallway while figuring out where the Secret Service was going to take him.)
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 1:14 PM
if you lost a loved one or whatever, and it has fundamentally changed your life --- it could just have easily been a less far reaching disaster would leave you in the same place, roughly. No?
No. Again, thank god I have not experienced this personally, but I imagine that the emotional complexity of losing a loved one in a terrorist attack is not something I can imagine. I'm not saying it has unique status in that respect--I can't really imagine losing a loved one in, say, a massive epidemic, either. I can imagine losing someone in a far-away war, or a car crash, or to a heart attack, though those things haven't happened to me, because they're within the realm of the kind of thing I've grown up thinking of as "normal." Although I'm quite willing to acknowledge that being able to *imagine* those things and actually experiencing them is not the same thing, I think there's an additional degree of magnitude involved in a personal loss that comes from a source that, while intellectually conceivable, isn't really something a person in my circumstances is emotionally prepared for.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 1:14 PM
"...or if someone I knew personally were killed in a war or attack."
Growing up in the 50s and 60s, most everyone older I knew had been affected by war. Most of the WWII vets died prematurely young. That was also the Cold War, I can't say how constant fear of nuclear war felt. I feel pretty safe from military attack these days.
I don't want to offend survivors and grievers today.
But in my recent memory Oklahoma was ripped in half by tornados, and Katrina ate New Orleans. Death tolls and casualties were not magnitudes different from 9/11. But 9/11 "changed everything."
John's 28: We build the narratives around tragedy, and make the counter-narratives available. Part of my pessimism is that this desire that the human part of nature be comprehensible and just is precisely what creates the 9/11s and over-reactions to it. I don't disapprove, I participate, but it makes me sad sometimes. And I could be wrong. Maybe someday it will be comprehensible and just.
Insert St Francis payer here.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 1:15 PM
It never occured to me before any of you said it, but, being that I live next to a large (largest?) military base, planes -- especially low-flying planes -- made me nervous for a long time after.
Posted by sam k | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 1:17 PM
49: I think that makes sense to me. For whatever reasons, I guess things like a terrorist attack do lie within my realm of `normal'. At least in the sense we are talking about. Reflecting a bit, there are things I can't really imagine happening; I suspect you are right that there would be an additional layer of complexity.
I wonder how much of this difference has to do with our personalities, and how much with upbringing --- which I'm guessing was largely similar with possibly important differences in detail.
Posted by soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 1:23 PM
I lost any temporary approval I had of Bush a week or so later when it started becoming clear that it wouldn't be a nonpartisan response.
I have distinct, vivid memories of being as cynical about this as I would ever be (something like "now Bush will surely be reelected"), driving home on the afternoon of the 11th. Nothing has surprised me since then.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 1:26 PM
But in my recent memory Oklahoma was ripped in half by tornados, and Katrina ate New Orleans. Death tolls and casualties were not magnitudes different from 9/11. But 9/11 "changed everything."
Bogus analogy. My sense is that the actual body count was more or less immaterial to the broader impact of 9/11. If the bad weather had been sent over from Iran, maybe.
Besides, isn't it a fact that 9/11 changed everything, and we should be discussing whether it ought to have changed everything?
Posted by sam k | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 1:31 PM
i remember when someone told me what happened, i thought, "so? they tried to do that a few years ago, its not surprising they finally succeeded. people die, thats how life is."
and then when classes were cancelled in favour of campus [hwatever the secular equivalent of prayer meeting], i skipped and played video games with my friends and joked about how people were overreacting.
Posted by yoyo | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 1:32 PM
Oh yes, planes. I worked at that time very close to a little municipal airport in a pretty rich part of California, which translates to 'lots of hobbyist flights all day.'
I remember being startled one day.. was it December, was it February?.. when I saw the first Cessna I'd seen in months.
Then there was the one from the same day that we started bombing Afghanistan. What I didn't remember is that it was the same night that the city I lived in held an annual fireworks display, at the boardwalk 2 blocks from my house.
I damn near jumped out of my skin when I heard the concussion from the first blast. I'm sure I wasn't the only one.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 1:32 PM
God (as metaphor) bless the people who cry for tsunami victims, and strangers in Sudan and Kashmir. I cry for Riverbend and Zayad. I cried for Nancy Olsen, cause I knew her from TV. I cried for a lot of faces I knew from the financial channels.
My first reaction:"There will be war."
Second, soon after:"There goes Social Security." I may have been wrong, but it ain't over yet. Very unlucky to have a Republican President, horribly cursed to have the Washington we had at the time of the attacks.
I had the future in rough outlines within hours. Advantage would be taken, as much as conceivable. I immediately started calling for massive mobilization, hoping to dilute the power. Everyone thought I was an uberhawk. Many still do.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 1:33 PM
54: Something being repeated often doesn't make it true. I'm certainly not convinced it has `changed everything' but that is a pretty vague term, after all....
You're certainly right that it isn't the body count alone that is important. The WTC attacks have a fairly small count as disasters go, after all.
Posted by soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 1:35 PM
"My sense is that the actual body count was more or less immaterial to the broader impact of 9/11."
That is not far from my point. Oklahoma City/McVeigh didn't change everything, although for a few days it was dangerous. There a lot of reasons 9/11 generated an overreaction, a mass hysteria.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 1:38 PM
In a certain way, I don't approve of the whole 'remember where you were on 9/11' thing and seeing it done here sort of drives that home. Rarely do you see so many people say 'well, I remember thinking it wasn't much of a big deal' but then, rarely do you get so many smart cookies in one place.
The most interesting 'outsider' story I've heard is this one. My mother was at work when she first heard about the attack; the boss, though, was a business-as-usual fanatic and wouldn't allow anybody to watch TV. They had Internet, of course, so they could keep up with the facts. But it wasn't until she got home and flipped on the television, she said, that the emotional impact got to her.
There was some heavy-duty propaganda going across the air waves that day. I suspect the main effect of this propaganda was to convince YOU, the viewer, that THIS ATTACK AFFECTED YOU. Not just other people.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 1:39 PM
54: Something being repeated often doesn't make it true.
Insofar as "liberals-are-living-in-a-pre-9/11-world" arguments have been successful -- which is to say a lot, I think -- the administration has in fact created post-9/11 world in which everything has actually changed, whether 9/11 be the direct cause or merely the impetus.
Posted by sam k | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 1:41 PM
61: Perhaps. or Perhaps that's just the sort of partisan sniping that would have taken another form if they didn't have that one handy. Politicians have been telling us that their opponents don't live in the `real world' since before Rome burned, at least.....
I think you can argue just as effectively that almost nothing significant has changed. The rhetoric is all about change, but what really has? As far as I can see, the defining policies of the Bush administration would have been pretty much the same, with the possible exception that they may not have felt comfortable enough to ram through an Iraq war withough the momentum built on post 9/11 posturing. The degree to which they are running up debt might have been modulated a little. Other than that?
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 1:54 PM
I believe that Iraq and the debt are designed catastrophes that Republicans, since they designed them, are much better prepared for than the opposition. How these playout is not completely predictable.
But a bankrupt internationally despised America is an outcome favorable to Republicans. Perhaps we will attack Iran. Perhaps Republicans at some poiny will say:
"Ok, libs were right and we are wrong. Let us pull all our troops back from overseas and downsize the military by 50%. We can't afford it. There are still dangers, so w devote a lot of those resources to the National Surveillance State. And losing the fiscal stimulus of the war will cause a recession without more tax cuts and entitlement reform."
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 2:04 PM
I mostly agree with Bob, though not necessarily in detail.
One question I've wanted to ask: what happens if things crash. Because there are are often people who benefit from disasters. I think that there would be advantages, for example, in controlling a larger share of a smaller economy, after the crash.
You may return to your regularly scheduled programming.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 2:08 PM
63: sure, these problems are designed. Would they have been significantly different without 9/11 ?
Posted by soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 2:09 PM
I'm not talking about "just rhetoric"; I'm talking about the extent to which Americans believe the rhetoric. The extent to which they do isn't evidence that "everything changed"; it is the very change itself.
I mean, we're seriously talking about regime change in Iran. Does anyone believe that would have been possible without 9/11??
Posted by sam k | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 2:15 PM
66: Sure, I believe that is possible. Some of the current administration wanted this long before 9/11 came along as an excuse, or they were in power. I certainly believe they would have tried other ways to construct a favourable climate for it. Would they have been successful? I don't know. So yes, in that sense, I think that nothing has really changed. Certainly a percentage of the population has been convinced that `everything changed'. On the other hand, a significant percentage of this population has been convinced that alien abductions are real, even without any help from government propoganda. Ok, that's a little bit strained, but you see the point?
On a more somber note, they've made a clusterfuck of Iraq, and I can't see Iran being anything but much worse. So the idea that 9/11 has a domino effect that ends up giving them just enough support to go in and make that mess is pretty depressing, yes.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 2:24 PM
I have a hard time imagining that Bush would have been reelected if 9/11 hadn't happened.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 2:26 PM
Who's gone incognito?
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 2:27 PM
69 -- reckon it was Idealist.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 2:31 PM
62 & 67 were me (whups. two browsers). The idea that I'm every exchangeable with Idealist is, erm, surprising.
68: is a good point. I'm not so sure, but that is a possible tipping point.
Posted by soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 2:35 PM
Remember when we were all told to "buy buy buy" show them err THEM that we will carry on, we will remain America? Seems to me, that for most people in the country, that is to say that those who escaped harm and did not have loved ones in harm's way, little really changed.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 2:35 PM
It is hard to think of regime change as being outside the possible things the US might do, considering the US has already 'regime changed' Iran once
Posted by yoyo | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 2:36 PM
73: That worked out so well, too.
Posted by soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 2:38 PM
On 9-11-01, my office was in a building between the White House and the Capitol (on E Street NW near the National Press Club), so we were very interested in where Flight 93 was going. We (stupidly) kept our office open until about 11AM --we should have dispersed everyone as soon as we heard of the Pentagon hit (we watched the Towers fall on a TV in our conference room). There was gridlock/chaos on the streets until about 11:30, rumors of a bomb going off at the State Department (false), rumors that I-395 near the Pentagon was closed (false), rumors that the Metro had shut down (false). A buddy and I walked outside our building around noon and found that several delis on F Street were giving away food from cancelled lunch meetings. I for one was starving so had two sandwiches. At 1:30 I drove my buddy home to Virginia on an empty and open I-395 past the Pentagon, which was spewing smoke and surrounded by fire engines. At 3:15, I picked my kids up from school and found that (1) a woman from our church had been killed in the Pentagon, and (2) an uncle of one of my son's youth soccer teammates (really, LB) had been killed. We flew our flag from our house but our neighbors wouldn't because they didn't want to be targets. That night, and for many more nights, we heard roaring in the sky -- fighters and helicopters, because nothing else was flying.
Posted by hillbilly | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 2:40 PM
Today's Housing Bubble
Dave Johnson of Seeing the Forest has been doing these every day. Along with a bunch of economics bloggers, but Dave, I think, understand the politics of it in ways ecobloggers, excepting Krugman, fear to tread. This has a nice graph for comparison with the 14 yr Japanese slump.
The Clinton impeachment may have been intended to distract from what Greenspan was doing. Stealing the babyboomers retirement money has in the works since the mid 80s. Real men steal trillions. And the millenials hate us, not coincidentally.
Sorry. Off topic, I am outa here.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 2:43 PM
So I Have Been Sitting On
Jane Galt, from a few threads down, worked at the WTC for a year. This is not the day or place for partisan politics, and I feel deeply ashamed.
Fuckin lability.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 3:17 PM
Lability isn't so bad, but once you become ductile you've got problems.
I just can't read Jane Galt.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 3:26 PM
I was in Prague, in a flat with no TV and no radio. So I didn't even hear about it till the 12th when I checked my email and had a 'circular' one from an American friend telling us about another friend of his -- someone I hadn't met at the time -- who had gotten out of the building OK.
The US Embassy in Prague was completely surrounded by kids drawings and paintings and flowers.
Czech TV news was extremely tacky -- Carmina Burana playing over slow-mo footage with a deep voice intoning 'Utok na Ameriku' -- so when I did see the thing on TV it was almost unreal.
The only person I knew in New York at the time was my B.Phil supervisor who was, apparently, very close to the buildings when they came down. He described running in total terror which must have been heart-stopping as he was a (lovely but) hugely obese guy.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 3:49 PM
I've never been patriotic. On 9/11, my concern was what we were going to do to other people as a result of this -- even though "proportionate revenge" is morally bankrupt, I knew it wouldn't even meet that standard.
Experiencing the whole aftermath at a Christian college was not fun. There was a group of peaceniks, of course, but they were not very politically conscious -- still, I'll take knee-jerk peace-mongering over knee-jerk war-mongering any day.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 4:03 PM
I was in a hotel in Hobart, looking after our son while my wife attended a medical conference. Friends came to visit - one got bored with the news and footage which she couldn't make relevant to her life on the outskirts of a tiny city on the outskirts of a tiny country, but her partner and I couldn't turn away from the television. He said semi-seriously, gesturing at the 10 storey-max Hobart skyline, 'it could be here next'.
The next week in Melbourne I was out walking one evening when a plane flew low overhead. I said to a neighbour 'That one's heading for the Rialto' (being the shiniest and tallest building), and she was horrified, but later admitted that she was thinking it too but would never say it.
Posted by Nakku | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 4:15 PM
"I wonder how well the intensity of reaction correlates with support for the Iraq war."
Not well.
I was not in great shape. Insomnia, anxiety, trouble concentrating at work, had to follow every plane with my eyes to make sure it didn't hit a building. There'd been a family crisis not long before that was very hard, so that was probably part of the problem, as was the fact that I worked at a trauma psychiatry program (not with patients though; boring clerical stuff but it involved a lot of entering data about PTSD symptoms into a computer)
I was more scared and sad than angry though. I am, frankly, kind of a wuss. I was more ambivalent about Afghanistan than I should have been, partly because I was afraid of it leading to extremists getting a nuke in Pakistan. Angry seemed inadequate to murder on that scale. I didn't have a real clean "oh fuck you Osama" moment until much later, when he released that video that mentioned "My Pet Goat."
I opposed the Iraq war, and the pictures of the first day of bombing brought back memories of 9/11 very strongly. It looked and felt completely different than the Gulf War, because you could imagine it happening to your city (I actually haven't lived in NYC since I was 2, except for one summer, but I grew up in the suburbs and my in laws are in Brooklyn and I go there all the time).
That's been the biggest lasting change in my worldview: It's been easier imagine horrible things happening to people I know, so I take them more personally. Not that I've become all wonderfully universalist and empathetic, or anything--the 7/7 attacks in London got to me a hell of a lot more than Darfur.
Posted by Katherine | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 4:24 PM
the big event that changed my political affiliations:
one of my good friends remarked as we all were watching bush's big speech to congress after 9/11: "wow, i'm really glad we have a republican like bush in office. Can you image what al gore might do?"
it was then i realized even though i had come over to liberal positions logically, i still had an emotional fear of 'liberals' that was totally unfounded.
Posted by yoyo | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 4:55 PM
I suppose this is before the terminology of 'blogs' was widespread, but I had one 'blog-friend' -- someone I was in semi-regular contact with on an online discussion forum -- who became completely monomaniacal after 9/11. I t was deeply sad. Every single thing she wrote, for months afterwards, was just endless repetition about 9/11 and how no-one else really knew how bad it was and the horror, the horror, the horror and 'nuke Arabs'. She lived in New York but, as far as I can tell, didn't actually know anyone who'd died.
What made it particularly sad was that some of the people she excoriated for their insufficiently robust reactions and their hostility to her obsession were people who lived in Manhattan too, and had closer, and in some cases, much more traumatic connections to those events than she did.
I haven't heard from her in a while, I hope she's over things.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 4:58 PM
I'm rather ambivalent about sharing "where were you when" stories, but nevertheless: it was the first day of classes at Brown, and while I didn't have anything to actually do, I was planning to head over to campus, say hello to people, hit the library, and get ready for when things started for me the next day. Checking the headlines online one last time while putting my shoes on, I saw the news about the first plane and went to the tv. Spent the rest the of the day drinking (surely I can't be the only one here?).
The annual department "greet the new grad students" party was that night. I was in no shape to go, of course, but found out the next day they held it anyway. K3rmit Ch4mp4, the éminence grise of our department at the time, evidently was furious the event was going on. The next day, I met the fellow who I'd be TAing with for Ch4mp4 that semester. He's now the M4nanging Editor of The N3w Crit/3ri0n; I only learned a couple of years ago that his father was part of the architectural team that designed the towers.
Posted by JL | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 4:58 PM
On 9/11: At work, in the financial industry. First thought when I had a moment to spare: "Technically sweet, but now the Palestinians are really fucked." Stayed at work all day, one of 3 people (out of about 80 on my floor) who did. [Everyone else was freaking out, but as occupants of a 13-story building in downtown Minneapolis, I kinda figured we were probably pretty safe.] After work, met a friend at a dingy Mexi-American restaurant that had bizarrely put a chain across the end of their entrance hallway (although you could still just lift it and go in.)
Most important net results personally: Getting arrested at an anti-Iraq War protest a year and a half later and deciding I could finally stomach voting if there was even an irrationally small chance that it might give people a little more breathing room. And that's why I'm an election judge today (or tomorrow).
Posted by minneapolitan | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 5:01 PM
"Spent the rest the of the day drinking (surely I can't be the only one here?"
I certianly did, and I was so upset that I spent September 10th, 9th, 8th, and 7th drinking too.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 5:06 PM
83: Neat.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 5:11 PM
I wish Rumsfeld had taken shelter. It was nice he helped out on the ground, but we didn't know what might later happen here or overseas.
Reminds me of the movie Air Force One, where the H. Ford character acts to save his family instead of his nation. Understandable but that isn't what the president signed on for. Similar for Rumsfeld.
I was shocked by the attacks but I can't say I was surprised. Years ago with friends I had talked about big planes as a potential weapon (they reminded me later). To me it was no more of a surprise than a package bomb on the subway or a car bomb. On the latter, I am not happy about the nicely labeled US armed forces (e.g., US Air Force) buses that shuttle between the Pentagon and local office comlplexes. Could they at least try not to make it easy for a bomber?
Posted by md 20/400 | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 6:51 PM
I was a freshman in high school, not really politically aware enough to immediately understand how important the attack was. Anyway, Missouri felt pretty safe. So I shared LB's attitude, but I'm surprised she was so detached -- I evacuated from New Orleans the day before Katrina hit, but even watching the news on TV from a safe distance was wrenching.
Posted by L. | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 7:15 PM
I certianly did, and I was so upset that I spent September 10th, 9th, 8th, and 7th drinking too.
Me, too. Wow. September 11th affected me a lot more than I thought.
Posted by JL | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 7:18 PM
90: New Orleans got hit harder than New York. Not in terms of the death toll, but I didn't have a personal connection to any of the casualties. But the New Orleans that was here last year is very largely gone. The New York of 2000 is still here.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 7:20 PM
I was at work, on the phone, arguing with a lawyer in Providence about a document production. He was saying he was going to go complain to the judge about the pace at which I was producing stuff, and I just happened upon it on the internet. Told him we all had bigger things to think about, but if he wanted to call the judge, he should feel free. And hung up.
I heard about the Pentagon a couple of minutes later, and went up on the roof to see -- smoke billowing up, and a guy over across the street says that he's with the Secret Service and if we don't get back inside in 2 minutes he's going to shoot us. That's when I heard a loud explosion over towards the West of us -- I figured it was at State, thinking there'd be no point in attacking the GSA. Went right back in, of course.
Back in my office, talking with a couple of friends/colleagues, the PA came on and said there was another plane coming, and we should all go to the bunker in the 4th parking level down. 'F That S,' said I, and three of us started walking home, on foot. We kept hearing conflicting rumors about whether the Metro was operating, and anyone one colleague had lived in Tokyo during the sarin thing, and she wasn't interested in subways. A couple of military ambulances trying to get through traffic obviously coming down from Walter Reed, headed across the river in traffic. A group of soldiers running along in front acting as an escort, getting cars out of the way -- miraculously it worked.
So we walked about 5 miles.
She came by today at about 6, asked if I wanted a ride home. I wasn't really done, but the look in her eye made me say 'Sure.' We talked about it a little on the way. She was glad it wasn't such nice weather today, and couldn't have stood it if it had been the same. Something we'll always share, I guess.
Posted by CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 7:25 PM
I described my memories of 9/11 on a previous thread that I can't seem to find, and I don't see much point in repeating them now.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 7:39 PM
92: Well, sure. But I didn't even live in New Orleans, I'd just been there for less than a day, and it wasn't that big a deal to just go to Minneapolis instead. My reaction to Katrina wasn't (just) horror at the number dead and the appalling response at the government; there was a dizzying element of "whoa, I've been there." Granted, this may be just because important things do not happen in Kansas City, but I think if I'd ever been to New York, let alone walked past the towers, let alone actually been a native New Yorker, 9/11 would have seemed much more serious to me.
Posted by L. | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 7:40 PM
If you'd been a native New Yorker, you'd have been every bit as heartless as LB and Ideal.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 7:52 PM
I get what L.'s saying. A few years ago I saw a news story about a bridge in Oklahoma that collapsed, killing several people in their cars, and my main thought was "holy shit, I've driven over that bridge!" That's the kind of small tragedy that happens all the time, but it stands out in my mind because of the (admittedly tangential) personal connection I felt to the place. I never went to the WTC when it was there, but I think if I had I would have felt the same way on 9/11.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 7:59 PM
Part of the difference is that you didn't have five years of people pushing differently-shaped cartoon versions of the bridge collapse at you. 9/11 has been stretched to fit so many different purposes that I don't think there's anything personal left for some people. (Not saying this is Ideal or LB.)
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 8:09 PM
I suppose, but I'm not really trying to relate this to LB and Ideal. Just musing.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 8:15 PM
L's trip from New Orleans to Minneapolis parallels Appollonia's trip in Prince's great film classic "Purple Rain".
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 8:30 PM
95, 97: Oh, I felt that way -- I talked about it in the post as having someone take my stuff. I was using the WTC, dammit!
But from day one, the authentic traumatized New Yorker reaction has been constructed in terms of the gritty ash everyplace, and the everpresent smell of smoke, and the memory of running for your life from the great cloud of dust and smoke billowing down the street as the towers fell, and the loss of friends and loved ones. None of that happened to me -- I saw it on the news instead.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-11-06 8:33 PM
Somebody in the office found a report and obviously everybody stopped what they were doing and started frantically looking for news sites that had any bandwidth left. My boss, who I'd worked with for years and got on with really well, was in a meeting, and when he came out to get some document I said, "You might tell them some bastard's hijacked a couple of airliners and flown them into the World Trade Centre", and he didn't even react.
And then later, the meeting finished and he came back and clocked the mood in the office, and he said, "What's happened?". And I said, "I fucking told you what happened." And he said, "I thought you were joking."
I got my coat and went home without saying another damn thing.
Later I said to somebody, "Well, I suppose it was predictable." And she said, "You think that was OK?" And I said, "I said predictable, not excusable." And I spent a long time wondering how many people don't actually understand their native language, and how that affects stuff.
Posted by OneFatEnglishman | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 12:47 AM
Like Ttam, I was out of the country - we were in Tuscany, in an apartment with no tv etc. The evening of the 11th, we went into town for dinner, and did notice that in one particular bar, there were an awful lot of very serious-looking Italians watching tv, but we couldn't see the tv, so assumed it was some domestic thing. The next day we went to Florence, and on the way home on the train could see some German bloke's newspaper enopugh to work out that there had been a terrorist attack, but nothing else. So when we got off the train we bought a newspaper. Very weird being away from normal life. But I'm very glad that I mostly missed all the horrendous footage - I could avoid it when we got home again, but I'm not sure I could have on the day.
Posted by asilon | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 1:46 AM
very glad that I mostly missed all the horrendous footage
I have viddied very little footage of the attack, beyond the ubiquitous still photos of the plane crashing into the tower or the tower with smoke pouring out of the side. Not sure if I actively avoided it or what -- I generally watch very little TV news.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 4:01 AM
I have managed to avoid actually seeing the video, too. I've seen stills of the smoke, but that's all.
I remember I got into minor trouble at work because the company handed out red, white and blue pins and I refused to wear mine.
Posted by winna | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 7:02 AM
The idea that I'm every exchangeable with Idealist is, erm, surprising.
One hopes you took this for the great compliment it is.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 7:11 AM
the company handed out red, white and blue pins and I refused to wear mine.
Any particular reason?
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 7:13 AM
105: In what region of the country were you living?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 7:17 AM
I live near apostropher in the Land of NASCAR.
I found it grotesque that a terrorist attack immediately became an excuse for football rivalry kinds of craziness. The 'next to of course god america i/love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh' rhetoric was very alienating to me. I was not particularly nationalistic at the time and over the years have become considerably less so.
That view is not highly popular here, since of course everyone was deeply affected by what happened in spite of most of them not being able to locate NYC on a map.
Posted by winna | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 7:27 AM
There's a 9/11 picture of people in mid-air, having jumped from one of the towers. For some reason, I have a very hard time with that photo. I wonder at what they were thinking and feeling before and while jumping to certain death instead of waiting for death to find them. And the idea that some people held hands when they jumped...holding hands is a small gesture, but it can be so comforting and so intimate. Yet for some reason, I find that image so incredibly sad.
Posted by annie | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 7:36 AM
106: of course!
Posted by soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 7:39 AM
Is that the photo that was withdrawn from circulation soon after it was published, immediately after the events? I have never seen it. But Frank Rich mentioned it in his very good essay of this weekend, "What happened to the America of 9/12?" which is only available through the verdammte Times Select. So I can't link it.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 7:42 AM
107: I think I'd have a hard time wearing a company-issued patriotic pin. Seems a bit inappropriate for one's employer to do that, I dunno.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 7:47 AM
105: this thread seems to be trying to peel the patriotism off the back of the nationalism pin we've all been issued.
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 7:51 AM
113: I'm fairly sure that I would have been pretty angry if I'd been issued a Patriot Pin. Depending on circs., there might not have been much I could do about it. But it's unbelievably crass, and it would have made me really, really angry.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 7:58 AM
114: patriotism s/b jingoism
Posted by soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 8:01 AM
It did make me angry. Maybe not Kotsko levels of anger, but still pretty angry.
Posted by winna | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 8:06 AM
116 -- those two terms seem pretty synonymous to me.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 8:17 AM
I think the non-creepy substitute term would be "love of country".
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 8:18 AM
118, 116: I was actually trying to make a distinction between a gentle pride of one's birthplace vs. some holier-than-thou self-righteousness. Perhaps at this point, such a distinction is no longer possible. (You fucking commies.)
On preview: or what Clown said. Fuck you, Clown.
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 8:21 AM
85: Much the same here, except that I taught on the first day of classes. I'd woken up early, probably because I was a little nervous, so I decided to call my parents 'cause I hadn't talked in ages. While on the phone with my mom I turned on the TV -- nervous tic, really, I just wanted pretty pictures to look at -- but mistakenly punched in CNN's numbers on my remote instead of VH1. [I kid you not.] So I saw, completely by accident, the entire thing, or at least everything that was televised.
The kicker was: I had to leave to teach a class of predominantly East Coasters (somewhat odd out here in the Midwest), most of whom had been in classes all morning and so didn't know what was going on, while the fate of the towers was still up in the air. [Nothing like being late to your first day of classes with the line "I'm sorry, I think someone's just attacked New York."] Raced back home immediately after class, was glued to the TV for another few hours, raced back in for a seminar, raced back again and spent most of the next few weeks doing pretty much that.
As an aside, I'd been pretty resolutely apolitical for the previous five, ten years, even going so far as to stop following the news entirely. Not so much after 9/11. In fact, the one community service I was able to do was to provide near-real-time summations of all the major news stories during that month -- which necessitated continuously [and I mean continuously] tracking four cable channels, five papers and something ludicrous like 20 newsfeed websites -- for friends of mine without the time or resources to follow the stories themselves. Posted updates pretty much every hour (during the day at least) for two weeks. It was intense but gratifying at the same time, though it's hard to articulate exactly why. Nowadays, after the way the American political scene has degenerated, it's hard for me to muster enough energy to read blogs, let alone try to winnow out the truth as I did then.
Posted by Anarch | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 8:38 AM
110/112- those photos aren't around anymore? I find that so hard to believe in this digital age. I saw them several times in the days/weeks after 9/11. Truly haunting.
Re: the red/white/blue pin. I really don't quite understand the objection, maybe I am missing something. Perhaps I am envisioning a different tone. I suppose it would be offensive if The Company handed out patriotism pins that employees must wear as a pledge of nationalism, or some similarly Orwellian scenario. But I'm envisioning something more along the lines of: the WTC and Pentagon have just been attacked, thousands of Americans are dead, people are feeling scared and sad and angry and confused, and the managers of the company, as a gesture of goodwill, and solidarity, and just a general morale boost, give out complimentary red, white and blue pins to the employees. There is no Official Proclamation that all employees must swear fidelity to their president and their flag, just pins, given out voluntarily to help make everyone feel a bit better (in a very small, but not entirely insignificant, way). In such a case, and given the emotional state of the country at the time, I can understand why co-workers might look askance at someone who refused to wear their pin. It's an explicit rejection of emotional solidarity, solidarity with the workers who died in the towers, with those who died or were injured trying to rescue them, indeed with all Americans who at the time were feeling vulnerable and threatened. I think *I* would have been a little wary of someone like that, not out of fear of coruse but just out of a sense of "what the hell kind of message are you trying to send, and is this really the time or way for you to try and send it?" I can certainly see something like that getting an employee "in trouble", especially if that phrase is meant relatively informally.
I guess winna will have to clarify which of the two scenarios is closer to what happened. I know I think (in the abstract -- not commenting on winna's situation) that the latter is much more likely.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 8:39 AM
re: 112
There was a lengthy documentary on British TV recently where they tried to track down the identity of guy in the most well-known of the jumper pictures, the so-called 'Falling man'. It's a very powerful image.
There's an article here about it:
http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2003/030903_mfe_falling_1.html
with a small reproduction of the image.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falling_Man
Also has some information and a larger reproduction of the image.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 8:41 AM
n such a case, and given the emotional state of the country at the time, I can understand why co-workers might look askance at someone who refused to wear their pin. It's an explicit rejection of emotional solidarity, solidarity with the workers who died in the towers, with those who died or were injured trying to rescue them, indeed with all Americans who at the time were feeling vulnerable and threatened.
Why would you think that a small pin would embody solidarity with the workers who died in the towers? Why would you think that anyone who refused to wear the pin was implicitly rejecting such solidarity? I don't understand the equivalence between the pin and the 'morale boost'.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 8:44 AM
In such a case, and given the emotional state of the country at the time, I can understand why co-workers might look askance at someone who refused to wear their pin. It's an explicit rejection of emotional solidarity, solidarity with the workers who died in the towers, with those who died or were injured trying to rescue them, indeed with all Americans who at the time were feeling vulnerable and threatened. I think *I* would have been a little wary of someone like that, not out of fear of coruse but just out of a sense of "what the hell kind of message are you trying to send, and is this really the time or way for you to try and send it?" I can certainly see something like that getting an employee "in trouble", especially if that phrase is meant relatively informally.
It depends on the pre-existing political situation. Think of a 'Support our Troops' ribbon. Every decent person wants only good things to happen to the innocent members of our armed forces who've gotten sucked into this mess. But someone with the ribbon on their bumper almost certainly means by "Support the Troops", "Support the war and the policies that got us into it." It's using an unobjectionable statement as a synedoche for all sorts of other stuff that reasonable people don't necessarily want to sign on to.
Likewise with the RW&B pin. If you're in a place that breaks down into people who think of flagwaving patriotism as equivalent to Republicanism, and to an aggressive military foreign policy, then getting handed a pin right after 9-11 might feel less like 'We're all in this together' and more like "I too, agree that an appropriate response here is to bomb someplace, doesn't much matter where, until the rubble bounces."
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 8:47 AM
1. My love of and loyalty to my country doesn't run through my company; winna's company seems unclear on that point. I'd be equally offended if someone in a supervisory role asked me to do extra work "for the troops."
2. If my co-workers are such bitches that they are discomfitted by my not wearing a pin, fuck'em. I don't want "emotional solidarity" with them. They need to get the fuck out of my country. As I am now defining the US not to include S.C., it's a comparatively easy move for winna's co-workers.
3. I don't have emotional solidarity with the people who died or lost a loved one; it's offensive to imply such solidarity. It amounts to putting on someone else's bloody clothes and claiming injury. It's also what gets us into these cartoon messes where we (or really, the Keyboarders) feel like they have been at risk because they supported others going to Iraq.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 8:59 AM
re: 125
Yeah, definitely, to all of that.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 9:03 AM
Forgot to say in 85 that I remember thinking, "Things are going to get really bad now." Haven't been disappointed on that score. I also had to break the news to my mom, who called late morning. She was at home by herself, hadn't looked at the tv or turned on the radio, and was in a very chatty mood. As she began to talk about some minor thing or another, I asked her, "Do you know what's happened?" and she said no. I told her and she turned on the tv. I then listened to my mom scream through the telephone for a while.
Posted by JL | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 9:03 AM
112, 122: I didn't know there'd been attempts to suppress any photos. The one I'm thinking of is not the falling man photo. I'm googling but not finding the picture I mean. I can't find the picture I don't want to see, but I don't want it suppressed.
In googling for the picture, I came across pictures of jumpers after they'd hit the ground. I was about to say 'horrible', but that's not enough and I just don't know what word would suffice.
Posted by annie | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 9:06 AM
125- I don't think "Support Our Troops" is as nefarious as you suggest, or at least in many circumstances in which I've encountered it. I *know* people who use, and mean, that phrase -- having adult children overseas right now, and who yet object vigorously to the mess in Iraq and would like nothing more than to see them come home. I think many people (again, in my experince) use that phrase to imply that the lives and well-being of the soldiers we have overseas ought to be and remain a preeminent concern in all major political decisionmaking. Of course no one (or, more accurately I think, relatively few people) actively wants bad things to happen to our troops, but some people are certainly willing to put other political concerns above the well-being of the military. Is voting agaist funding for more military equipment a responsible way to voice objection to the war? Is the preservation of some amorphous idea of 'national credibility' sufficient justification for keeping soldiers in harms way, with no real plans for (or realistic hope of) progress? Those sorts of concerns all come under the "Support our Troops" slogan, at least as I'm familiar with it's use. (Although sure, some people who supoprt the war also use the phrase. I'm just pointing out that their use isn't exclusive.)
Maybe I live in a different country from the rest of you?
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 9:10 AM
The pin ends up being a symbol of unity, and I can see how refusing to wear it could be construed as making a political statement at the wrong time. I can also see how wearing the pin could be construed as supporting any military action that the U.S. could have taken in response to 9/11. It seems out of line for an employer to pass out pins.
I hated it when people placed small flags on the corners of their vehicles. Especially SUVs.
I do think 9/11 changed a lot of attitudes, if not everything, and I'm sort of surprised at some of the studied nonchalance on display in a few posts here. 9/11 wasn't the worst possible thing ever ever, but it was a pretty impressive act of terror (the BUILDINGS came DOWN! GONE!) and you had to know that we were going to smack something. The sort of 'ah, no big deal, I'm off to get ice cream while the plebes go to church or hug their children, foolish dimwits' strikes me as very strange, especially given that early reports (wrong) had many planes unaccounted for, and tens of thousands of expected casualities. It's easy to say now, pah, Katrina nearly killed as many, but if you had that reaction on Sept. 11 I commend you for your ability to read the future.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 9:11 AM
126- okay, is the "supervisory" thing the trigger here? Would it have been less offensive if such pins had been given out at an unrelated charity dinner (something pre-planned for 9/12, to raise money for homelessness or education, etc.)? There would still be considerable social pressure to put on the pin, and a lot of weird -- and probably angry -- looks at anyone who refused.
I guess I'm envisioning the company giving out pins in basically a similar, supportive role, rather than in an official, supervisory role. (Though admittedly, being your company, of course, they can't relate to you in an entirely unsupervisory way.) That's basically the distinction I was getting at in 122.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 9:16 AM
re: 130
The use of phrases like 'support the troops' tends to be to shut down debate about what might actually be best for the nation and/or for the troops and to prevent that answering, one way or another, of the various questions you suggest come under that heading.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 9:16 AM
Man, I'm proud of the responses, through 125, I've just read to 122. We have to be able to say: doing this, or doing this in this way, is wrong, and we can't go along with it. There will always be people for whom such resistance is an occasion for their own self-righteousness or impulse to bully, and of course bosses are very often such people. But many other people will find themselves thinking about it, and perhaps that will have a cascading effect.
Whenever I see the yellow ribbons, now weathered to white, on cars I think how easy and uncontroversial a step that must have been for millions of decent people, because nobody they knew felt liking speaking up, even though most everybody knew somebody who did have these reservations.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 9:16 AM
It's easy to say now, pah, Katrina nearly killed as many, but if you had that reaction on Sept. 11 I commend you for your ability to read the future.
I don't think it's nonchalance on display, and I doubt it's studied. I don't think reactions are a function of the specific number of casualties, or reading the future. It's a recognition that we are, as a country, and at this moment in time, unkillable. We don't even have willing enemies who can inflict massive, crippling damage. There's little reason to fear anyone but ourselves at the moment. Though we've pissed away a good deal of our various advantages in the idiot WOT.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 9:20 AM
Brock, I think a lot of it is that it would be impossible to refuse the pin in such a charged atmosphere without looking like a supporter of terrorists, and that while the pressure may indeed exist in other forms in the community, the church group & the homeless benefit and the charity organization don't have power over my employment.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 9:22 AM
I don't think we're unkillable, but that's beside the point as what is likely to kill us isn't terrorists flying planes into skyscrapers, but our insistence that the Constitution really didn't mean that there needed to be warrants before searches.
You didn't have to think the U.S. was in immediate danger to realize that there were going to be a lot of changes, and that most of them would probably involve starting a war.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 9:31 AM
131: I don't think a choice between `holy crap everything has changed' and `no big deal, let's get ice cream'
What about the reaction that mingles sadness for the people involved and a certain resignation because you had long felt that something like this was overdue? I imaginge it's sort of like hearing about a big earthquake on the west coast would be. I remember thinking that afternoon that probably an awful lot of innocent people were going to get killed because of this, and fervently hoping that wasn't true. Hoping like that was unrealistic, and I knew it --- so found that rather depressing. I was pretty certain (in the days that followed, once it was clear we were looking at thousands, not tens of thousands) that orders of magnitude more innocents would be killed in the name of this than died that day. Being right about that hasn't made me feel any better about it. Beyond fairly minor activism/education efforts, I haven't seen much I can do about that though.
Honestly, I find the whole thing so depressing I try not to think about it too much. I find it depressing that people would feel driven to do such a thing. I find it depressing the part we played (and play) in constructing the world they live in, where such an action seems the best course to them. I find it depressing how manufactured and propagandized the reaction to this has been. I find it depressing how many people have tried callously to manipulate the events to match their pre-existing agendas, all the while trumpeting how this `changes everything'. I find it depressing how many people seem to have taken comfort in the fact that people were getting blown up `for this' without asking many critical questions about who, and why. I find depressing the idea that it is entirely possible that manipulation of these facts allowed the US to invade Iraq without justification, and made the US population complacent about it. All this and more I find very depressing --- I just don't find it surprising.
Posted by soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 9:34 AM
as an addendum to 138: I should note that one of the reasons I don't feel that this `changed everything' is that I suppose one of my internalized defining characteristics (predating 9/11/01 by many years) of the US is that given the right mix of administration and impetus, the US will go and blow something up. It will not in general, neccessarily take particularly good justification or well reasoned planning in this. Nor will it be likely that this proves particularly effective at anything except killing a bunch of poor buggers who happen to be in the wrong place.
Yes this is depressing. Perhaps I just have just developed an overly cynical view, but there it is.
Posted by soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 9:43 AM
137: but our insistence that the Constitution really didn't mean that there needed to be warrants before searches.
Ah. Well, at least for me, it was a tremendous lack of foresight that allowed me not to worry too much. I just never, ever thought something like the Padilla policy was possible, even as a proposal. Not today, and not in the face of a relatively trivial threat. Had I considered it, I would have been sure that the Congress, and even the country, would rise up and clout the President in such a situation. I really didn't think we would invade Iraq, even days prior to the invasion. I just thought we'd deal with shit and move on. I also didn't have any sense of the various conceptions of America abroad in the land. The success of Clintonism covered up a lot of sins; I assumed that everyone thought more or less like me, and was pretty happy with the way that had worked out.
Maybe ignorance is bliss.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 10:00 AM
bah. typing too fast. `nor will it be likely' should really be `nor will it necessarily be likely'.
I'm certainly not trying to suggest that every military action taken was ill conceived, badly executed, or both. I'm just saying that in my world view it is entirely plausible that this will, and has, happened. And nothing following the WTC attacks has caused me believe otherwise.
Posted by soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 10:02 AM
130: Maybe I live in a different country from the rest of you?
If "Support the Troops" doesn't connote Republican and pro-war, then maybe you do.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 10:03 AM
142: it might be interesting to estimate the correlation of support our troops `ribbons' and W'04 bumper stickers. Then break it down by state.
Posted by soubzriquet | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 10:08 AM
I just never, ever thought something like the Padilla policy was possible, even as a proposal. Not today, and not in the face of a relatively trivial threat. Had I considered it, I would have been sure that the Congress, and even the country, would rise up and clout the President in such a situation.
Also puts the 2nd amendment weenies in a new light. 'We need guns to protect our constitutional rights' ....
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 10:11 AM
I was shocked, and scared, and spent most of the afternoon of the eleventh feeling nauseous. I spent the whole week trying to tell everyone I knew who were for bombing the shit out of something that Muslims/Arabic people/foreign persons aren't some big bugaboo. Remember all the crazed anti-Muslim sentiment? It was everywhere down here. So I was not only having an emotional reaction to what had happened, I was finding out how many of my coworkers and acquaintances were scary xenophobes who wanted to turn the Middle East into a plain of glass.
I was going every lunch to the little Middle Eastern restaurant because they'd gotten things thrown through the window. I was writing the newspaper to attempt to counter the 'intern all Muslims' movement and listening to my Muslim friends talk about how scary it was to have to have police protection on their mosque. It was like everyone had went insane.
I was affected by what happened, but my reaction wasn't to go and kill people as messily as possible, in the meantime hurting a bunch of Americans whose only crime was to be Muslim or even just 'look' Muslim. And here was a group of the same people who were making me feel like a stranger in my own country because of the difference between my reaction and theirs, trying to make me part of their reaction. Hell no I wasn't putting on that pin- the flag was rapidly coming to symbolize something of which I wanted no part.
Other than that, SCMT's 126 is completely correct in all respects.
Posted by winna | Link to this comment | 09-12-06 1:52 PM