Other than the usual fulminations of the tinfoil-hat Right, I note that this year's annual beatification of the Dead of 9/11 seems to have been relatively low-key.Have we finally begun to see beyond the events of 2001? Does this mean that we can finally put it in the Forgotten Days file along with Pearl Harbor Day, VJ-Day and Arbor Day?
Or is this just an off-year for Islamic Terra drumbeating?Or could it be because I was on the woods west of Chehalis - Twin Peaks country, folks - and was off the net and missed the ritual parading of the bloody shirt?
Lemme know what you think.
6 comments:
I think the country is beginning to move beyond 9/11 and its power to unify our increasingly dissolute masses has waned to the point that we'll be able to list it among the "forgotten holidays" in a couple of years.
Pluto: I wonder if this day won't become a sort of "Confederate Independence Day" sort of thing, with the blue part of the country way past thinking and obsessing about it but the red part continuing to revere and revisit it as the Pearl Harbor of their War on Islam? So it will live on to the extent that that faction will force it to, and only within that faction.
IMO in an intelligent world we'd all have a similar take on it as it recedes, letting it go to the point where it serves as a momento mori but not a bloody shirt, much like the USS Arizona memorial is today. But right now I don't see the "clash of civilization" faction letting that happen.
9-11-01 was an event, like the Challenger explosion or any other natural or man-made tragedy. It deserves to be remembered only in that way, as an historical artifact. Unfortunately, one that spawned a misbegotten war, or two.
The U.S. citizen has been turned to greater personal menaces, such as the economy and every other thing that might threaten one's well-being. I think he views the events of 9-11-01 as some vague harbinger of an inevitable downturn in which I believe he is slowly coming to own his own roles/greed/profligacy/...
The solutions are unknowns.
I think he views the events of 9-11-01 as some vague harbinger of an inevitable downturn in which I believe he is slowly coming to own his own roles/greed/profligacy/...
I think that this, too, is a divider rather than a uniter, Lisa. I think for a lot of s folks on one side of the issue 9/11 has become the poster child for the blowback of 53 years of pig-stupid Middle East policy, bone-deep ignorance of the effects of that policy, and the general applicability of the "nuke 'em, bribe 'em, or leave 'em alone" school of foreign policy pragmatism.
But for a committed 25-30% to question the status of 9/11 as the Shot Heard Round the (Clash of Culture) World is treason. For them it has hardened into Us versus Them and if you attribute reason - not even sympathy but a sensible rationale other than Hating Our Freedoms - you are the traitor. I suspect that this segment will never admit that our actions had any role in the events and will fight to prevent the anniversary from becoming the Challenger or Mt. St. Helens of foreign policy...
Hell, in a sane world the obvious dysfunction of the Middle East would have prompted some serious questioning of our "energy policy", such as it is, without the events of 9/11, but as you can see...
Talking of festivals, what's about the one I hear is going on in Portland?
bb
Do you mean our Pirate Festival?
http://www.portlandpiratefestival.com/
Naaaarrrr!
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