(no subject)

True story – so last fall I was teaching civics at the local high school and we had an assignment on the anniversary of September 11th. The students were supposed to write what they remembered about it. The guy teaching it along with me pointed out that this was probably the last time he could give the assignment since most of the students were in the 2nd grade when it happened. They had hazy uncertain memories and couldn't really talk about what it meant to them.

Obviously it's sort of topical and I was looking at what I had to say about it all when it happened back when.
Yeah and where were you on 9-11 ?

Just hopping into the shower. Tried to do some work - store to store, at every one it's employees and customers staring at television. In between it's NPR. NPR...NPR - only NPR thinks to interview the poet laureate (no - not Nipsey Russel - the real one) At one or so I figure I'm not going to get anything done. I have to stop at every shop though - reassure them, yes we're open. Braver than the city? Maybe.

Dad tells me his brothers all decided to stay home, Except for Sa'ad in Texas - working at his store today. Threatened he says. We ask - but he forgot his gun at home. Shit.

The old man laughs- He's been reading Mohammad again. Left it by his toilet. He says: 'any Muslim would flog me for this' I rejoin - 'any American would deport you for this'.

Tired of thinking about it I go to Kent = hearing they have zero school. Just frustrating though - not a habitable place to go and no-one to find. three hours of looking and I'm driving just aimlessly. The telephone works sporadically - I'm incommunicado and I cannot stand it.

So home to paint some more. Resigned I guess to hanging out alone on the bleak day. I told you - fiercer times to come...

So they caught some people. I hope everyone knows that Saudis and Egyptians and Afghanis and Palestinians are all different folks. Nah - we're all just sandniggers no? What should I expect from filthy Europeans... they're all the same.

To me this says – kind of scared. The whole point of it, ten years ago, the whole point of it was terrorism right? To scare people. Now. Americans are cowards by our nature. I know there are myths and legends about how we're not, but it's just not so. Nowadays, and especially over the course of the last ten years there were recurrent images of the Cowboy, let's say – but you know, when the cowboy and the wild west were all happening – at that time the understood hero of American culture was the businessman. Horatio Alger and all that – the rags to riches success story. It's fun to notice the breakdown of that – you know the Democrats tried to induct Ford to run against Hoover in the '28 election – and in the thirties Ford became one of the most hated men in America. The change. Now, you and I, we remember and maybe to us the 11th of September in 2001 is like the collapse of the American economy back in the thirties – maybe it is, the signal event that alters our social consciousness. Maybe it is. I don't know – I think a bit about the last ten years and what's become of the place. There's a military caste now, that's kind of new – a generation of soldiers that have come of age abroad – in war. That's something. Then there's the weird problems of our global hegemony – the post cold-war mission of the new world order. Somehow this antagonizes people on the right and the left – this idea of the US taking up the mission of reordering the world in its image – the center still prevails in this. Remember the democratic primaries back when? Obama and Clinton arguing at CSU and he was then in opposition to NAFTA – but free trade is the order of the day – reordering the world to resemble us and to draw everyone everywhere closer to us through the bonds of finance, trade and economic cooperation. What have we won through war and strategy that we couldn't have won through finance?

We couldn't win the ideological battle. This is something that's come to interest me lately. I was having a smoke with my professor and I was trying to compare the craziness of the Cultural Revolution to the strange youth uprisings in the US and Europe and Japan that happened at about the same time. My thesis was basically this: “The cold war creates a need for more ideological training, and that training makes a more politically opinionated youth, who in turn rebel against what they see as betrayals of the ideological core of their country.” He kind of agreed with me! And suggested a few books which I'll read this summer. But I like thinking about it – the disillusionment that motivates the true believers to think that their country is betraying them, not that they've been tricked, but that the older generation has lost its way – they've forsaken the true values.

Now students get a semester of political and ideological training in school, then they're citizens, ready to vote. True fact, that's all they need – it was decided, by people who had more ideological training in their own time and who were subsequently left feeling betrayed. It's interesting – ideology isn't something people are meant to have anymore – and when they do – then they can't be bought, they can't be reasoned with – we have to kill them.

So a decade ago Bin Laden, who was a true believer and had expectations that were not met, went into action against the military industrial complex of the US. World Trade and the Pentagon – he went after those. Those same targets that quite a lot of domestic ideologues wouldn't have minded seeing destroyed. And the net effect? Well, there was the spreading of fear, the titular occupation of all terrorists – and in that he was very successful. The mobilization of the military engine of the US, the economic unleashing of our productive capacity. There was the fearful embracing of political expedients that ran counter (and I suppose still do) to fundamental ideals that we've been taught that we have. There was the reversal of highly held social merits in favor of the reckless pursuit of safety at all costs – of plenty at any expense.

The ideologically motivated actor hasn't any sense of preserving himself, rather, it's more important to persuade others and to expand his ideological base. So scaring people into acting worse than usual for ten straight years. So driving the country more or less crazy for a decade. Until now, he's dead and obscure to many, his role in our polity dimming before his death – and is the US recognizable? Are we what we were? I don't think so. I think that by 2004 we were done. Well, done pretending that the things we teach in civics class are true, or important. I think that we were done alienating the high minded, the forthright and the good within our culture. I think we've done all that and what's left is a place where it's a pretty good place to do business and mind your own and to have a vague interest in politics and absolutely no ambition to change anything. Ever. So what I'm saying is, I guess, I guess it's fine that Osama Bin Laden is gone and is no more, but I think he won. I think he accomplished a lot and none of it good and I think it's because, out of fear, we let him.

I used to remember, because I was trained in American ideology, that this is the land of the free and the home of the brave – but anymore I think that that designation, it's hopelessly out of date, it's patently denied by our actions. Land of Opportunity – that's the title we're sticking with now – but even that's in question, if you ask me. So what kind of a country are we? I propose – just a country. Like any other.