This may be a tough day to publish a diary with the national security team announcements and all, but I'm going to pay my dollar and take my chance. I feel too strongly about this to wait for a slower news day...
RenaRF recently published one of the most thought provoking diaries I have ever read. It was titled Surviving, and one of the themes to emerge in that diary and its comments thread was "has 9-11 changed your life?"
I engagedwith this theme by responding to a comment. It got a little heated. The comment was:
What did it really change in people's daily lives?
...It is very hard to come up with any real change in US day to day life due to 911. Mainly because there just is not much anyone can do about the threat of terrorism.
My project in this diary is to expand on this theme.
Therefore, I ask you:
How has your daily life changed as a result of terrorism?
For my own answer, and an explanation of my frame, please join me, well, you know where...
I disagree(d) with this author. I believe 9-11 was a life-changing event, on a daily basis, for many people. So too are the Walmart (economic terrorism) and Mumbai (political terrorism) events of the past weekend.
In framing terrorism, I include both economic (Walmart stampedes 1 and 2, and corporate bailouts) and politically motivated events (9-11, Oklahoma City, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois University, Mumbai).
Before I give my own answer, I think it appropriate to explain why I've included Walmart and bailouts in my definition of terrorism. I'm bundling together a lot of baggage in one boxcar, and I may be taking a risk in doing so, but I have a reason.
Each has happened because of fear.
The bailout was sold to us as "let us do this right now, or you and your family will be defending what you have left in your cupboards against your starving neighbors in 36 hours." Ok, that may be a little extreme, but here is how one HuffPo author put it:
It occurs to me that this sudden bailout demand -- on a Friday -- that the Congress hand over $1 trillion dollars next week...is based entirely on a fear story -- if we don't do this, then terrible things will happen.
It occurs to me that political terrorists operate under the same paradigm: If you don't do what we want, terrible things will happen.
Of course, there are some differences. Some terrorists create terrible things where none existed before their actions. This would be Al Qaeda, school, post office, and church shooters, and Ted Kaczynski. Other terrorists take advantage of the fear of terrible things that may happen, for which they are not personally responsible, to persuade us into directed action. This category includes George Bush and company, and Walmart mobs.
The fear motivating many to start camping out in freezing weather at 9pm? The fear of scarcity. The fear of not getting a 'great deal.' The fear of disappointing a loved one with not providing something at a great price for Christmas. The fear of not being able to afford what we really want.
You may argue that Paulson and Bush Co. did directly and personally create the economic disaster. Yet, Clinton signed the Gramm bill. (Yes, it passed with a veto-proof majority, but I would have liked to have seen him make them take that vote over his veto to get it done-its a legacy thing for me.) He rolled over. Regulators rolled over. Credit raters played monkey-see-monkey-do when it came to blowing whistles and threatening their own billing cycles (until the reality could no longer be denied). My point is that this is a systemic failure, and the people who use our fear of its consequences to shepherd us in one direction without critical and reflective evaluation of that movement are operating very similarly to those who have used violence to effect change. Fiscal policy or box cutters? They can both be wielded as tools of terror, and recently they have been.
All of this serves to call to my attention the changes that have entered my daily life because of these events. Some of these changes have been forced upon me. Some I have chosen to enact. Some have been spontaneous, neither imposed nor chosen, some changes just happen. But, I have had cause to reflect upon my life this weekend (thank you again, RenaRF, and posters to her original diary) and in the process came up with this incomplete list.
So, for the person who wrote the (for me, oddly inspiring) comment that there has been...
no real change in people's day to day lives due to 911 for the simple reason there is really nothing we can change in our day to day lives in response to 911.
...this list of real changes is dedicated to you.
My list:
- Changing my operational definitions of 'need' and 'want.' I already have what I need. What do I really want? More time with my wife and my daughter. More time with my extended family and my friends, both near and far. Do I want a bigger HDTV? Yes. I do. A faster, newer, shinier Apple iwhatever? Yes. I do. But I have redefined that want to the new category of "What I have works fine. So, do I really need it?" I have justified a new pair of good sunglasses this way, as my old ones are scratched so badly I can't see through them. Until the old HDTV or phone or pod reaches that state though, it's a want, not a need.
- I, for the first time in 5 years, slept in on Black Friday morning. In the past, I was up and out at 3:30am to get "stuff." This year, nothing struck a chord, I was surprised by the dearth of good deals, so I snuggled with my wife, and played with my 2 year old daughter. After this weekend, I know that was not only a gift to them, but a damn fine gift for myself. One that no one else could give either of us, one that we will cherish and never grow tired of.
- Every day I snuggle more, and stampede less.
- I will be giving fewer traditional gifts. Despite Teacherken'sthoughtful concern about such a change on a systemic scale, I also understand that this nation is overdue for a system reset. My giving my time or homemade gifts to my loved ones may just have to be part of that reset.
- I now have to stand for hours in lines at airports that I did not have to stand in before 9-11.
- I pack my luggage differently.
- I take my shoes off before I approach the gate.
- I now have a phrase in my brain that if spoken over my high school's intercom means that I must close and lock my door, barricade it, and move my students away from that door and/or the windows.
- I chose to subscribe to the Columbia University School Alert System that sends a text message to my phone if there is a security situation anywhere on campus that requires university members to hunker down for their own safety.
- I chose to move to New York two years ago in spite of my own fear and my family's concerns for my safety in the biggest terrorist target on the planet. My wife and I are now raising our daughter here and I am pursuing an EdD in education at Teachers College. We have not let our fear deter us from our goals in life.
- I began reading DailyKos diaries because Bill O'Reilly told me not to.
- I joined The DK and even started writing my own diaries and commenting on those of others.
- I directly engage with people who I believe are misinformed or misled by their media outlets of choice, even when those people are my own relatives, friends, and/or coworkers. Actually, especially then.
14.1 I seek out and consume a variety of media outlets, including Democracy Now, O'Reilly, Daily Show and Colbert, The Economist, The WSJ, the Chicago Tribune, Drudge, Dobbs, The Week (absolutely top shelf weekly), NPR, Bill Moyers, Tavis Smiley, and several others on a weekly basis. I need to know what all the players are saying, to be informed for those conversations mentioned in #14. And, I'm a serious news junkie.
- I rededicated myself to the core values of my country, which led me to actively protest a misguided and lawbreaking administration by signing petitions, writing letters and blogs, marching, phonebanking, donating and raising donations, in support of candidates for elected office who subscribe to policy positions that represent me.
- I am far more aware of my surroundings when walking in the city. This began, for me, after surviving the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, my first personal experience with terrorism. If I see a random backpack on a subway train, or even a McDonald's bag, the changes in my emotional state are real and not to be dismissed.
- I make myself aware of all possible emergency exists and staircases in any Manhattan building I enter, before, or immediately after entering.
- I stay in much closer contact through phone calls, Skype transmissions, emails, and texts with loved ones and friends than I did before 9-11.
- I voted for "that one."
- I have written letters to Congress members and Senators protesting the violation of Constitutional rights enacted by warrantless phone tapping.
- I keep myself far more informed of my government's actions, and the actions of other governments and NGO's, than I did before 9-11.
- I support musicians' progressive projects with which I agree, like the work of Michael Franti, Bono, Dixie Chicks, and others. I used to just listen to their music.
- My wife and I use less stuff, and donate more of our gently used stuff. Instead of throwing away or recycling some things, I find a 2nd or 3rd life for them. For example, I donate my monthly Mensa and APA journals to our high school library after I've read them instead of just recycling them. Now my students know I'm a member of Mensa and some of them actually read those articles as a result. Reuse before recycle.
- I was teaching the morning of 9-11 in Alpharetta, GA (northern suburb of Atlanta). I had one of the few working televisions on the hall, and another teacher brought her class in to sit on the floor of mine as we together watched the second plane strike its tower. By the time the first tower fell, half of this group was in tears. The other half appeared to be in shock. After the first tower fell, I had to answer a student question that had never crossed my mind, in all my years of training and teaching, that I would ever have to ask: "Did all those people just die?"
Now I teach my students differently than I did before that question. I will raise my daughter differently than I would have without that question. All the millions and myriad daily things that are a part of both of those occupations, for me, are changed. I am now far more concerned with preparing my students and my daughter for their future(s) than I am with simply filling their heads with the past.
This last one is most important to me because I strongly belive that if you change a people's way of thinking, you have actually changed the people.
Those are just the few things that come to mind when answering my own question. I hope you have the time to respond after such a long diary with your own reflections and observations. In this way, I believe, we help reinforce, support, and learn from each other. And that is a small, but important, change I can really get behind.