September 11, 2012, 9-11 -- plus 11.0
And so we come to "that day"-- like "that day" eleven years ago here in The City [TM], a Tuesday, with weather almost as crystal clear.
I don't know what to say any more. Like that day, this morning, I will make my way to work, more or less 100 meters or so from the World Trade Center site. But unlike that day, my assumptions about the nature of the nation I live in are wholly different. Then, there were expectations of Constitutional limits to what our government could do to us. We had expectations of a more or less benevolent (if not utopian) future.
Those assumptions are gone, now. OBL and minions have gotten us to destroy ourselves, in the purported interests of "safety" and "security." In the sham election coming up in seven or eight weeks, neither of the "major party" (for now) candidates want to talk about these things-- the fact that "growth" is probably over, that the national security state is now permanent, that we have achieved "bipartisan consensus" on these things, and indeed, even "bipartisan consensus" to make sure that unimportant issues (in the sense of a President actually doing something about any of them, like abortion, gay marriage and/or "gun control") continue to be "areas of difference."
And so, later today, for the eleventh time, I suppose there will be a public reading of the names of those killed eleven years ago-- in a gesture torn between private grief and public catharsis-- just a symptom of a society where private selfishness equals public virtue (see Ryan, Paul and Rand, Ayn.) and our "national grief" justifies the slaughter of God knows how many of "the Other."
I was there that day, as you'all know. I'm tired of this day. As far as I'm concerned, the sooner we put it behind us in our national consciousness, the better.
Just saying.