It's so hard to write about this without it getting washed up in rhetoric, but this is a day that requires...something to be said. In fact, above all things, I wish that talking about September 11th would not be so hard...but I feel like there are two poles between which it is pretty hard to bend. The first one interprets the events of September 11th as a call to action, an excuse for paranoia, or a justification for aggression. The second one, in turn, interprets these responses only as indicators of bad politics, greedy people, institutional idiocy...
...and I'm not comfortable with either of these. I agree that many responses to the events of September 11th have been-- simply put-wrong. But I can't get any farther than that. How could we possibly know what to do next?
For now, all I have is that. And this weird memory of my friend Hannah coming into my dorm room at the beginning of my freshmen year in college, telling me that the Twin Towers and the Pentagon had been attacked.
Please don't mistake this for comedy, but that's all I have to say about that.
...and I'm not comfortable with either of these. I agree that many responses to the events of September 11th have been-- simply put-wrong. But I can't get any farther than that. How could we possibly know what to do next?
For now, all I have is that. And this weird memory of my friend Hannah coming into my dorm room at the beginning of my freshmen year in college, telling me that the Twin Towers and the Pentagon had been attacked.
Please don't mistake this for comedy, but that's all I have to say about that.
1 Comments:
That's strange, because I actually remember laughing when I first heard the news.
Before you damn me to hell, hear me out. On Tuesdays, I didn't have class until eleven, but I usually went down to breakfast with my roommate at about half past eight. As I was eating (eggs and really bad hash browns), the most deadpan human being I've ever met--Matt Hart--walked by the table. I said something like, "Hey Matt. What's up?" He responded with the perfunctory "Not much," checked the progress on the waffle cooking in the waffle iron, then turned back and said, “Oh yeah. And a couple of planes flew into the World Trade Center.” I chuckled (oh, Matt, you and your crazy, at times strange sense of humor!) and he slid his waffle onto a plate. “Yeah. And I guess one hit the Pentagon, too. They’re saying it’s terrorists, or something. Well, I’ll see you in class.” Once I got upstairs, it became clear to me that I laughed at the news of the most atrocious terrorist attack in the history of the United States.
And I’ve felt like a jackass ever since.
-Ian
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