What is the real significance of 9/11 for this country? Running on 5 years out, I feel like it's time to put this event in some perspective, and the quicker we can do this and start to rebuild reality the faster we can put an end to this alarming acceptance of the endless WAR ON TERROR.
Digby says:
I have thought about what it is that 9/11 really evokes in people. It is assumed that it is fear, and I think that most people probably interpret it that way...but this country does not feature the psychological traits of a country that is really at war... It features the psychological traits of a country watching a horror movie, which is not the same thing at all. [T]he endless evocations of pre-9/11 and post 9/11 thinking reminds me of nothing so much as people who are hooked on a stimulating drug.
I think the drug analogy is a better one than the horror movie. One watches a horror movie as a non-participant, but the real power of 9/11 that Bush and his crowd have tapped lies in people's need to be a part of the drama, not to watch it from the sidelines. Stay with me here...
I was working as a waiter at a sort of shitty restaurant in a shopping mall on 9/11. I worked with this 35 year old loser, part time criminal, faux tough guy, the kind of guy who would steal your tips off your table and then blame it on the new 19 year old waitress, and then as an apology he'd probably take
her out after work and get her drunk and try to get her into bed. Just a garden variety prick in the American mold.
Well on 9/12 he came in with an american flag hat on telling everyone about how he was going to go back and re-enlist with the marines and whup some arab ass, and I swear for half the people I worked with he had acquired some sort of stature and honor that they never knew existed. "Jeez Jay, you were in the marines?" "It's amazing what times of crisis can do to people." says the manager. The middle aged women at his tables who used to sneer at his cheesy lines, they ate it right up. "Thank God for men like you."
He milked it for all it was worth, as did all the other "veterans" who served six months on a base in Germany in the 80's, and the rest of the men in uniform in townships in Indiana who suddenly could give their oddly pointless little lives some meaning by pretending that Osama had Wuskeegee Wisconsin in his sights.
This is the lure of 9/11 for most people I think. It's partly horror film excitement, but more than that I think it fulfills the drama queen desires of a people so cut off from the real excitement of human existence, the drama of life outside rural South Dakota or the suburbs of Salt Lake City. Suddenly every overweight mother of two was a soldier in Bush's army, armed with duct tape and staying alert for threats, every boy scout was a special ops in training, and every small town cop was on the frontlines in the WAR ON TERR'R.
This is the kernal of the Republican's whole strategy that allows them to get Tweety to declare that mexican immigrants are natural Republicans because they have to work hard for their money. Ffrom the awarding of these goofy titles like "Pioneer" to his top fund raisers all the way down to their creation of this myth that you too are one of the "in" crowd, a "player" who will benefit from the Bush tax cuts. They have succeeded in enlisting the support of the individual because they pander to the need of the individual to be important, to be a hero. And nobody needs that like the repressed, boring mass of red state heartland America...
How to beat that without resorting to the same sickening, pandering dishonesty? I don't know the answer to that one.