It seems that every year, the annual ratings grab of 9/11 coverage starts earlier. Before we can turn around, it'll be a whole season. Maybe it'll start at the Summer Solstice, but more likely, as with this year, it'll start around Labor Day, which is the unofficial start of fall. Maybe eventually it'll be a shopping season. Who knows?
A year is really just an arbitrary designation of time passing, though it seems that the "fives" and "zeroes" have special meaning. As I sit here on the sixth of September, 2021, which this year doubles as Labor Day, I've already noted that CNN has rebroadcast the excellent Naudet brothers documentary that was supposed to be about a probationary fireman in New York, but turned out to be a gripping and horrifying documentation of that terrible day. It's also run a discussion with the now-adult school children to whom George W. Bush was reading "My Pet Goat." One of the premium channels is running Paul Greenglass' film United 93, a movie I could never bring myself to watch. Spike Lee's HBO docuseries NYC Epicenters 9/11 —> 2021½ is in heavy rotation.
Lee is no stranger to controversy, and much has been made of his excision of most, but not all, of the "9/11 Truther" content n the series. My own relationship with 9/11 Trutherism is complicated, especially in the context of the direct line from that particular movement down into the QAnon/deep state/2020 election was rigged/etc. lunacy that has received far too much oxygen and still thrives.
Let me explain: I have freely admitted to my belief in what was then known as LIHOP ("let it happen on purpose"). My belief was constructed from the following facts: 1) that a Newsweek article had just hit newsstands and mailboxes detailing the events leading up to the Supreme Court decision that made George W. Bush president; 2) Bush's already-dropping poll numbers; and 3) his aides' clearly known desire for a war with Iraq.
Bush, another president with an interesting psychological family dynamic in which he'd been the Designated Family Shithead(TM), had inherited the Iraq Liberation Act from Bill Clinton, had surrounded himself with neoconservative warmongers like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, and a war with Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein would both impress his father and at the same time outdo him.
So when the infamous August 6 Presidential Daily Briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" was ignored, and 9/11 happened, it served Bush's interest in all three of the above. The information that was coming out about the 2000 election no longer mattered. A war president ALWAYS has improved approval ratings. And his aides got what they wanted. It was all just too convenient.
Do I believe 9/11 was an inside job? No. And I don't believe ANYONE banked on the magnitude of what happened. But I do believe that that something along the lines of the 1993 bombing was expected -- something that would serve the purpose, but with a manageable body count. In a case like that, the cost/benefit ratio may have been deemed to be acceptable (when you're talking about cynical people like the Axis of Cheney). But then it all went to hell, and at least in the short run, served their purpose perfectly.
I can't help but feel that over the last twenty years, Muslims in the US have felt like Jews at Eastertime -- in a cringe position, waiting for that day every September when everyone Brings All That Up Again. Where I live now, there are many groups doing great work to pave the path for about 1000 Afghan refugees -- long-term indirect casualties of the Bush Bungle in Afghanistan -- to resettle here. Yes, there is some bleating from white supremacists like Tucker Carlson, and of course the Jesus of Mar-a-Lago, about these people coming here, but the virulent anti-Muslim sentiment in the mainstream seems to have calmed down, at least somewhat.
After all, it's kind of hard for American Angry White men to have any kind of moral authority about religion-based terrorism when your own political agenda consists of setting up a Dominionist theocracy -- an evangelical Christian state implementing their interpretation of Old Testament law combined with enforced belief in Yeshua of Nazareth as the literal son of the Old Testament deity -- by force if necessary. So in the wake of the January 6 attack by white Americans, mostly male worshippers of Jesus of Mar-a-Lago, Americans contemplating the 20th anniversary of 9/11 need to consider the broader context. Because now, the word "terrorism" no longer has the cold face of a well-trained religious zealot ready to face his own annihilation in the name of his delusion. The face of American terrorism is now the face of the very same people who went nuts in the flyover states after 9/11, convinced that Muslim terrorists were going to fly planes into the local Dollar General. It's now a face that's pasty-white except for the pink gin blossoms on the nose and cheeks, twisted with unfocused rage and hate, hiding the soul of a two-year-old who didn't get what he wanted for Christmas.
I've been writing about 9/11 on and around the anniversary for a decade and a half, in 2005. 2006, 2007, 2009, and 2010, and that's just what I wrote around the anniversary. I've been pondering the long-term implications and yes, some truthing, for as long. Most years, I'm of the "Enough already" school of thought. Not that the day should be forgotten, but there comes a time when it's about death porn, not about any kind of solemn remembrance. Too many cynical politicians have made too much political hay over the last twenty years by using 9/11 as a cudgel with which to beat people they don't agree with for it to be solemn, at this point.
And yet...
Last night I watched part of the Naudets' film. I'd seen it when it first came out in 2015, but I'd avoided any 9/11 coverage over the last few years, except for my annual reflections on whether it's time to stop the big observance. There's something to be said, though, for watching it now, after Joe Biden has finally, belatedly said "Enough" to the money-gobbling meatgrinder known as Afghanistan (and been pilloried by the press for it. ,
There's something to be said about watching it happen after years of avoiding it. It reminded me of just how utterly sickening that day was and how a sure way of life no longer seemed sure -- and the guy in charge was a dimwit. There's something to be said for revisiting it after four years of Donald Trump's Muslim-baiting. It's worth revisiting the fear and unsettling sense of the world being tilted off its axis that we felt in those days as we look at the GOP having morphed from a party of just greed and war into one of outright lunatic fascism. If we'd been paying attention after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995; if the press hadn't pilloried Barack Obama's Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano for a report detailing the growing threat of white nationalism; if we hadn't been 100% focused on what people who pray differently and wear clothing unfamiliar to white Christians were doing; if the press hadn't joined the pile-on and bought into the idea that the guys cosplaying as soldiers with huge caches of weaponry were somehow "patriots" while people who wanted universal health care and a better life for all were just dirty fucking hippies; if we'd been honest about these angry white men, perhaps January 6 might not have happened.
The days surrounding 9/11 are fraught for me, for different reasons. Eight years ago on 9/11, Mr. Brilliant was just ten days away from the stroke that would end up taking his life. I know what those early days of widowhood are like, so I've always had empathy for those who lost loved ones that day. But as I am finally BEGINNING to emerge from the hideous tape loop that's been repeating itself in my head endlessly for eight years that consists of nothing but the last three weeks of Mr. B's life, I can't even imagine what it must be like after twenty years for the widows, those now elderly who lost their children, the now-grown children who hardly or don't remember their fathers or mothers, to have their loss replayed on national television year after year after year. I can shut out my tape loop after eight years with some effort of will. They have to pretty much just close the blinds and unplug for two weeks if they don't want the reminder.
Max Giaccone, whose father died that day, was 10 years old at the time. He says:
“I don’t watch video of the buildings from that day. I’ve seen it all
enough for it to be engrained in my psyche. Sometimes people just
putting those things in articles makes me mad. I appreciate the argument
that by showing history we are helping not repeat it, but I don’t know
besides sensationalism what value it brings. I also try and stay away
from are images of people jumping from the building. It has always been
one of my biggest fears, and probably plays into my fear of heights....”
The Oklahoma City bombing survivors don't have to endure the replays. The Sandy Hook Elementary School parents and relatives don't have to endure the replays. The Survivors of the Pulse shooting, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivors don't have to deal with this. Their losses are no less profound, and are no less a symbol of Things That Changed Us just because the body count is lower and it didn't play out on national television.
Thanks to Joe Biden, the 9/11 era in foreign policy is over. The lives of those left behind -- the 9/11 families, the families of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- will never be the same. So what do we owe them? We owe them the gift of having learned something about terrorism and about who we are as a nation. But it appears we have learned the wrong lesson, for once the dust was cleared, we showed that we have learned nothing.