Exorcism Part B

After getting very depressed over the state of politics one day I embarked on a binge of Daily Show youtube clips. This, as it turns out, was a mistake. I stumbled across Jon Stewart's 9/11 speech. I know that many people spoke equally impassioned words, and since we were numb at the time, the impression did not really stick. What made viewing this speech different, what tore my heart out on this particular evening was that I was looking back at that moment from 5 years in the future. It brought home the realization of how far off course we've gone. I'd let the intervening years occlude what 9/11 meant to me.

What happened at the time was tragic in a way I am incompetent to express. I have never seen so many people die at once in real time. I didn't need to see their faces or their bodies to be fully hit with the fact that when those towers fell, over a thousand lives were snuffed out like so many candles.

What happened immediately after was nothing short of miraculous. I had never participated in grieving on a worldwide scale. I had something in common with everyone I met- on the street, in the grocery store, at work. People who were not my countrymen had something in common with me. That shared experience, that pride and empathy was never felt by me before. A Gen-Xer like me who has never given shit one about this country. I never gave it much thought. I didn't get it. But maybe that's what it was like during the World Wars- a shared experience that has the capacity to unite across borders, below many flags. Generations before me were passionately patriotic. Events like the Kennedy assassination were burned into their collective consciousness. I just thought it was trite that everyone could remember where they were at the time of such an event. But not now. Now, I get it.

How amazing it was for me to wake up and realize I really want to be a patriot and be proud of belonging to the group known as America. I remember for the first time in my life wanting to wear and display the American flag. I wanted to express my solidarity with those whose losses were more personal than my own. Watching Mr. Stewart trying not to completely break down from raw emotion on TV brought back that moment in time like it happened 5 minutes ago. Five years later, the hope and sense of possibility that came along with the solidarity of nations, the renewed patriotism of the American people has been stolen from us. Repetition ad nauseum by power-hungry devils has taken all the meaning away from 9/11, or so I'd thought. I'd suppressed it, pretended I was no longer affected by it. At least that way I couldn't be convinced to hate a people because of it. But it's wrong to take that feeling away from me. It is mine- completely personal and unique because I felt it. And yet, billions of other people can claim ownership of the same thing. It is wrong, reprehensible, base and amoral to exploit it.

Now, the feeling I am trying to convey is not about anger against an entire people, the disproportionate reaction brought on by grief. Anger against a small few directly responsible was appropriate. What I mean is, wasn't there also the realization of, "gosh something must be really wrong for this to be happening"? The wrongness is colonial powers and American policy meddling in Middle Eastern affairs and governmental structures; toward the end of financial or political gain. The victims of 9/11 were completely innocent, but America itself is not wholly innocent. The world was brought together by 9/11. That was a miracle. But how can we not be jaded about the end product of the way this administration manipulated our generation-defining event?