Today's Date
September 11th.
Worthy of it's own paragraph and place in American history. On par with Pearl Harbor, Gettysburgh and the Constitutional Convention...perhaps in time...above them all.
A day which we paid verbal attention but never adequately addressed. Having traveled much of the world I find that we Americans are a unique subgroup of the human race. We have experienced so many blessings and been served with so many gifts that we and we alone are compelled to go to extraordinary lengths to suppress our own losses and tragedies. Not surprisingly it has taken a year short of decade for much of that anger and frustration to pour out.
No worries, this won't be another Mosque related diatribe. This topic is not about vengeance or the seeking of some sort of ultimately non-empirical justice. This is about us as a nation. The white, the black, the straight, the gay, the Christian, the Jew and the Muslim walking into a bar with Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin.
This post is one man's moment in time to stop and do what he never properly did...9 years ago.
Cue your flashback button...
Walking into the student cafeteria to grab my morning coffee before class, I was stunned by the sounds of silence. The ipod was yet a twinkle in Steve Jobs' eye and I was never a big Simon and Garfunkel fan. The place was empty. The time was around 9:00 am EST 9/11/2001.
As I later sat by the TV I felt the obligatory shock, but confess that the bluster of youth and one too many keg stands the night before numbed out the feeling. Surrounded by media coverage in those moments as we were, I never could find a way to come to grips with what had just happened.
Being a New Yorker made it harder, yet oddly...easier, to forget. Pain goes away faster when it is not explored. Today, as America struggles with issues she has long ignored in her social, political and economic realms 9/11 stands out as macrocosm of all her issues.
Today, I want to thank the men and women who died senselessly so that some of us eternal children could finally grow up and face the beautiful struggle and poetic harshness of the world around us. God Bless you and your suffering families.
Today is not a day to argue points and discuss theories. Today is a day to take of your hat, bow your head and for one minute (at least) empty your mind and give a good a good thought for the victims, their families and the country we live in.
All propaganda aside, it is the best place to be and we are lucky to have it.
For those of you hitting The Street for the first time in the oncoming weeks and months, keep that and those folks in mind when passing by Ground Zero.
United we once stood...
Excellent post Midas.
America reacted like a kid who receives a giant spanking he wasn't expecting: no big deal (3000 people, vs. how many civilians in Iraq again?), but instead of trying to understand why it was attacked, it found more fitting to postpone the necessary analysis by waging war here and there against all sanity.
Two lost wars and a major economic crisis later, America still dreams of "grandeur" but has not improved its standing in the rest of the world. It is too easy to invoke the memory of the deceased to avoid introspection. There is no indecency in remembering Sept 11 as the day America, a great nation, started turning its back on the world. A gay Churchill and straight Roosevelt meeting in a bar just sounds like a bad romantic comedy.
Don't get me wrong, I was at school not far from NYC on that day, and a relative was at the Pentagon. The event is a tragedy. But to me, September 11, its warmongering, bigoted rethoric and the ugly nationalistic response that ensued, represents just about every reason why I moved to a more sensible Europe.
Stay there.
Please stay in Europe. Visit the wonderful places I can think of real quick, Kosovo, Auschwitz, Chechnya, Georgia..... add to the list as you see fit.
killself.
Maxc, this is not the time. God bless America.
I wish more unappreciative people such as Maxc would leave. It would make this nation a better place.
9-11 is not about foreign policy its about the people who died. I suggest you check out the memorial page of Euro Brokers which is an interdealer bond broker that was located on the 84th floor of the South Tower. Something like 80% of the firm was killed on 9/11. Going through a few of the profiles on the below site is a much better use of one's time on this day then debating US foreign policy.
http://wtc.technologyshoppe.com/index.asp
Hey maxc, you're a fucking piece of shit. Have some fucking respect for the people who died. Go stay in Europe because we all know how tolerant they are. They also have never gone to war or done anything wrong. Douche bag.
Come on now guys, let's not be ridiculous. Bashing maxc senselessly (see hosacanseco's post above) just makes you look like an idiot. Innocent people are killed around the world every single day and we should grieve for them all.
U.S. foreign policy inadequecies should not be taken out on the innocent people who died that fateful day. Likewise, do not blame people for having a well informed perspective - not everyone is satisfied with just following whatever they hear on Fox News blindly.
(disclaimer: I am not saying I agree with maxc's argument)
I can only hope that most of us used that day as a day of reflection of two things:
1) thinking about all the people that matter to us and ask if we have been spending enough time with them lately
2) That US is still one of the best if not the best places to live in the world. After all Maxc, it allowed you to get an education and create enough wealth/skill to make a choice to move to Europe. There are plenty of places in the world where you would never get that choice.
This here is a gem, and manages to combine a critique with the reverence that the dead deserve.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/09/911-reflections/
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