Sunday, September 11, 2011

Mixed feelings re: 9/11

The entire mediascape is brimming with messages about remembrances of the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001.

I have a variety of feelings and opinions about all this, and I kind of don't know how to sort through them.

On the actual day, I was a mess with the tears and fear.  Unlike so many of my friends, I didn't know a single person who died, so I wasn't personally affected, but I, like the rest of the country, was bereft.

Today, I keep crying thinking of all the people who died -- and all the people who love the people who died who have to make it through every single day without them. 

And I'm balancing that with feeling really disappointed in our leaders and how our country has changed in the last 10 years. 

I was really uncomfortable with the blind jingoism that directly followed the attack.  The people who waved the flag around all the goddamned time -- and couldn't follow the rules for displaying it -- burned my ass in a big way (and they still do, especially the flags that tucked into the car doors that waved as you drove and got filthy and tattered in short order).  And the erosion of civil liberties -- especially for people who aren't white -- enrages me (Dave Eggers' Zeitoun contains but one example of what I'm talking about).  And the part where my tax dollars are funding multiple wars that are killing thousands of our soldiers and untold thousands of innocent victims in theater makes me so sad that I have to pretend it's not happening so I can keep going on (we were attacked by exactly 0 Iraqis and 0 Afghanis, but we just can't seem to disengage in wars with "insurgents" in those countries).

This is a hard situation.  I have to hand it to Hilary Price, who totally nailed it today.  So many mixed emotions.  What can we do but howl?

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