|
It's almost impossible to convey how completely sideways the nation went after 9/11. Seeing that happen on live TV collectively mindfucked the country in a way that no previous tragedy ever has. Only the Kennedy assassination comes close. And really, though we all immediately knew the World Trade Center attack was going to be our generation's Pear Harbor, what we were feeling was that same death of hope that all those people coming of age in the 60s must have felt after JFK got shot. The 21st Century was here and holy poo poo, strap yourselves in because we just went off the rails. I was in college at the time, and I watched the towers come down and the subsequent press conferences with my roommate. During Rumsfeld's briefing, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton stepped up to assure us that "make no mistake about it, your armed forces are ready." When my roommate turned to me and said "man, I can't wait for the war," I felt like I was going to be sick. I skipped all my classes that day but went to marching band, since we were supposed to be performing the halftime show at the Bears game that weekend and I figured it would be lovely of me to miss rehearsal (though it ended up not mattering, since the games that week got rescheduled). On my way to the practice field, I saw a pickup truck tearing up and down the main campus road with an American flag hanging off the back, and that was the first hint I got of how ugly things were about to get. In the first few days there was a huge outpouring of sympathy from other nations - even France said, "we are all Americans this day" - and a lot goodwill from random strangers you'd meet on the street, but there was always that ugly, jingoistic undercurrent. Suddenly everyone was a patriot, and if you were One Of Us then you were good people, but God help you if you were one of Them. Or if you looked like Them. Or if you just didn't look like the rest of Us. Despite all that, the War in Afghanistan was something I could get behind at first. Take out the Taliban, deny al-Qaeda a safe place to operate from, and find bin Laden? Great! Makes perfect sense. We'll do this, and then life can get back to normal. Then 2003 rolls around and the administration decides hey, good enough, NATO and the ISAF can handle this while we go invade Iraq, and life continues to not go back to normal. Now, over a decade later, I still half expect someone to come up to me and say "HAHA, we were just loving with you, that was all fake," because none of it made any goddamn sense. 9/11 broke our brains.
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2015 07:28
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 01:21 |
|