Before you read this, I am going to ask something of you. Bear with me through this article – perhaps suspend your judgment for just one moment and come with me as I figure out my own thoughts and feelings. This is a very delicate topic, and I’m still working out what I am trying to say as I write this.
Alright, here goes.
Every year September 11th rolls by, and with it the heartfelt posts about what happened on this day in 2001 – of the lives that were lost and the heroism that was displayed by our nation’s first responders. While I respect these entirely, for some reason on this day I am also frequently met with a feeling of unease.
Why is this?
Perhaps it’s because this is a fundamentally uneasy topic; there’s nothing easy-breezy about remembering a tragedy of this scale. This may be augmented by the fact that I don’t actually remember 9/11 – though I was alive when it happened, I have no recollection of the events. My mother told me that after the first plane hit, she rushed me and my twin brother upstairs to watch a movie while she watched the news downstairs. In the moments between when she turned the TV on and put in the VHS tape, we saw flashes of the news coverage. One of us (she forgets who) asked, “Is that real?” to which the other responded, “No, that’s a movie!” She didn’t feel the need to correct us. We had no way of understanding.
I don’t fully understand now, either. Though I will “never forget,” I will also never remember. I will never know what it’s like to watch something so heartbreaking unfold before my very eyes. This tragic moment in our history hasn’t scarred my individual psyche the way it has for people who are old enough to remember. I’m squeamish, and avoided seeing actual photos of the plane crashes for years – my first encounter with the actual footage came when I turned on the television as a tween only to encounter reruns of the original news coverage. “Mom…what is this?” I said, thinking I knew what I was watching, but also fearful that I was wrong and that this was today’s news. She looked at me with sad eyes. “That’s 9/11.” When I now see photos of the most brutal moments, there is a part of me that wants to look away and remain blissfully naïve. And then there’s the part of me that knows I must face the truth.
So maybe that explains my discomfort when I sometimes see or hear people commemorate these awful events: confusion and sadness, mingled with a sense of both guilt and duty.
But no, that’s not it. At least, not all of it.
I think, if I am completely honest with myself, that the main root of my unease is the patriotism that is infused with so many of the dedications I see. Photos of the American flag, headlines and captions about how we are tougher than the enemy, proclamations of unity and pride. These make me feel…weird.
Now stay with me. I care about my country deeply. However, my “patriotism,” or love of country, is not completely conventional. For most of my life I attended a progressive school that didn’t force us to recite the pledge of allegiance. We didn’t get off of school for Columbus Day, partially in recognition of the fact that Columbus did not “discover” America; rather, he committed mass genocide against the people who already lived here. I’ve always identified with something James Baldwin said: “I love America more than any other country in the world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” In fact, one of the things that makes me proudest to be an American is the fact that I have the freedom to do so. My patriotism has never really had much to do with the American flag, the national anthem, or the pledge of the allegiance; rather, it has had everything to do with pride in our (at least supposed) core values of freedom and equality, the (at least supposed) democratic process, and – perhaps especially – our melting pot diversity.
And yet, oftentimes the people who I see wear our flag with the most bravado are the same people who seem to value these things the least. People use the memory of the fallen to tell Kaepernick that he is obligated to stand for the national anthem, as if the right to choose whether or not to revere of our government isn’t precisely what separates us from dictatorships and monarchies. They shout at immigrants to “go back where they came from,” as if this isn’t a nation built on immigration. Everything becomes “us vs. them.” And when they memorialize 9/11, they share what to me seems to be an incomplete narrative.
Here is the full scope of the tragedy: on September 11, 2001, close to 3,000 Americans were killed by terrorists who flew planes into the twin towers. Hundreds of men and women braved the wreckage in attempt to save their brothers and sisters, either sacrificing their lives that very day, or slowly and unknowingly exposing themselves to chemicals that would later cause health complications that their government would fail to compensate. Americans turned on each other, blaming Muslims and those of Middle-Eastern descent for the atrocity. A president used a nation’s collective grief as a guise for wars that killed over 26,000 Afghan civilians and approximately 500,000 Iraqis, along with over 6,000 American soldiers – mainly in the hidden pursuit of oil.
This, this – this ginormous bundle of death and manipulation and fear and hate – this is what I mourn for. This – all of this – is what I find atrocious, tragic, incomprehensible.
And yet I rarely hear 9/11 spoken of in this full context.
As someone who has grown up in the after aftermath of these events, there are two main contexts for how I have heard 9/11 referenced: 1) as a rightful example of grief, love and resilience, and 2) as a buzzword to justify hate and violence.
Politicians and supporters who flat-out ignore the needs of first responders tell us we should direct our hate towards Muslims. They inflate military budgets to police the middle east and extract foreign oil, and then when people bring these motives into question they shout, “9/11!” as a conversation ender. They seek to divide the country between true patriots and traitors – often basing these distinctions off of ethnicity, religion, and political affiliation.
And so when I see these same people post about 9/11 with a caption that speaks of unity, I am genuinely confused. What does unity look like to them? Does unity not include our Muslim siblings? Does it not include those who are at times critical of our country, or who have varying political opinions?
To me, unity would be our nation rallying together regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, or political party, and thinking of everyone who was hurt as a result of that terrible day, including innocent Iraqis and Afghans overseas. Unity would be engaging in important dialogues and improving our nation in the name of those who are no longer here to do so.
But it doesn’t seem to me that this is the unity many people are referring to. It seems that some are using buzzwords like “tough” and “pride” and “unity” to rally a nation that won’t question who our “enemy” is, or how we behave overseas. And to me, quite honestly, this feels exploitive.
I don’t think this of everyone who makes dedications every year – 9/11 is a tragedy important to grieve and honor. But at what point do we stop honoring the lives of those we’ve lost, and start using their deaths as propaganda? Where is the line?
These are not completely rhetorical questions. For once in my life, I don’t feel like I know everything on a topic. I can only say what I feel instinctually.
So here is what I feel: we say we’ll never forget, and yet there seems to be so much we fail to remember, perhaps simply because it doesn’t fit the most convenient political narrative. And to me, personally, we will never truly be honoring the lives of those who were lost until we acknowledge the full scope of the tragedy, and mourn them all as humans first, and Americans second.
Does anyone else feel this way? Or am I just a crazy good-for-nothing traitor?
