9/11: A Decade Later

(Photo found here.)

So yeah. It's been 10 years since 9/11. I mean, yeah, I could just post my story here and call it good, since that seems to be what everyone else is doing. And I mean, that's pretty big. I was in class when we first heard of the towers being hit, specifically.... somethings like printing? Anyway, the teacher for that was a hard ass on the best of days, and told us to just continue working throughout. That was that. The next class was band with Reynolds, and he took us to the library to watch the TVs for the hour. The rest of the day was pretty dour.

At the time, I know I commented as such that this was the beginning of World War III. Personally, I'm glad that hasn't happened! Yet, anyway.

So with that out of the way, I figured that a better way to spend today would be reflecting on exactly where we are after 10 years. I mean, it's tragic, yeah, and the fact that it happened should never be forgotten, nor should the people who risked their life to help as many people as they possibly could.

That said, in my reflection, it's a little depressing just how applicable the picture at the top of this post is.

Now, that photo (if you're too lazy to click the link to the article) was taken not terribly long after the incident, as you notice from the smoldering pile of the then-fresh wreckage. But unlike every other photo from the time, people aren't rushing in. They aren't standing around in awe. They aren't praying to flags or saluting or anything. They're sitting around, shooting the shit. It's like the disaster is the furthest thing from their mind. They're complacent to it already.

The article I cited said that this picture serves as "...an allegory of America's failure to learn any deep lessons from that tragic day, to change or reform as a nation: "The young people in Mr Hoepker's photo aren't necessarily callous. They're just American."" Honestly, I can't disagree.

I mean, just look at 9/11. There are a lot of potential lessons we could have taken away from that most fateful day. Instead of contemplating, perhaps changing, we rushed into Afghanistan after the terrorists who did it. Which is great, but it's also one of the reasons we were hit. Then, to compound matters, we went into Iraq based on faulty evidence that should have been triple checked, and we made things even worse by forcing democracy on a nation completely unprepared for it. We continue to support Israel, which isn't the best nation in the Middle East, but it's also far from innocent in it's own matters.

Socially, the last decade saw the rise of a cancerous McCarthy-esque Libertarian-lite group of the Republican party more coloquially known as the "Tea Party". Corporations are seen as people, and they've ensured that enough of their money is flowing through congress that everyone is either corrupt or powerless. As a nation, we picked up more than a little bit of xenophobia and Islamophobia from the attacks, which has been used by the aforementioned tea party along with dangerously violent rhetoric to foment a political scene that seems more to me like Congress pre-Civil War than anything that should exist now.

No one trusts: Scientists, Professors, Teachers, Experts, Reporters, Analysts, Common Knowledge
Everyone listens to: Pundits: Liberal, Conservative, Hate-mongering far-right

People are more willing to return to the gilded age than reform an institution that's been broken (Unions).

Honestly, the terrorists haven't killed us. But they put us into a decline. We can still pull out of it, but man. It's really, really hard to say they haven't won when the past decade is taken into account.

America: We've got a lot of problems, we can fix them, but a lot of people just don't give a fuck.

Guess that photo's more accurate than I really did want to consider, huh.