September 11, 2011
There are numerous advantages to not owning a television. First, you're spared the cultural wasteland that is American TV, complete with its Jersey Shores and Fox News and other aggressive forms of brain damage. But second, you can choose to opt out of national rituals like the 9/11 anniversary veneration.
I mean no disrespect to the families of the victims of that terrible day. I don't deny them their right to mourn- nobody would. But turning the 10th anniversary of 9/11 into a mass media spectacle was overwrought and inappropriate, and did a disservice to the victims- all of the victims.
9/11 didn't kill just 3,000 people. Many of the dead of Afghanistan were victims of 9/11, too. Not to mention those killed in Iraq, a country which had nothing whatsoever to do with the event. The American-led invasion of both countries were justified as responses to the 9/11 attacks, after all. Any reckoning of the death toll would have to include the innocent victims of these wars- as well as the soldiers who fought in them.
Much else besides human life was lost, as well. The past ten years have brought us color-coded terror alerts, yahoos raging against Sharia law, "don't touch my junk", "you're either with us or against us", "they hate us because of our freedom", decent people having their patriotism questioned, television hosts silenced, enhanced interrogation techniques, and secret prisons. These are the sorry cultural byproducts of the 9/11 attacks, or more precisely our reaction to them.
I was hoping that part of our 9/11 anniversary ritual would include a reckoning of how much has gone wrong in these past ten years, and how we might begin to regain our national footing. But I'm not holding my breath.
