What We’ve Lost
I tired of the invocations of 9/11 by the 2nd anniversary, if not sooner… the 10th anniversary outpouring reminds me why. I viewed the unfolding of the attacks that morning (by chance I was rising earlier than normal to catch a flight, so I saw the coverage from the early minutes) with the same shock and feelings of being in some bizarro universe that many did who saw the fall of the towers reduced to the scale of their television sets. The deaths were a tragedy leaving, as death always does, a variety of legacies for those left behind.
But our country’s response, too often the response of spoiled children and opportunists– and the incredible American exceptionalism that characterizes it even now, 10 years on– is nauseating. Unexpected death is tragic, no matter the form it takes, and in many ways the number doesn’t really matter, or even the circumstances, to the power of the resulting feelings. But to respond to the deaths of these victims like a petulant child, lashing out at whatever he can, and to use those deaths shamelessly to pursue long-existing political agendas?
The irony is that those who espouse this kind of exceptionalism based on a grandiose idea of who and what America is in the world are, by their reactions– the constant encores of security theater, dramatic expansion in the criminalization of speech, and practically irrevocable erosion of our civil liberties and gathering of power to the few– have only served to more quickly and irreversibly destroyed those very characteristics that made our country, in those same eyes, exceptional. But destroying the village in order to save it has a long history in America…
Some see all of this for what it is an operate from a dark, cynical place in order to build power and wealth. But I’m slowly starting to believe that others are just blind to it, their vision impeded by a haze of patriotic fantasy and nostalgia.
David Foster Wallace spoke to the question of the American idea concisely and incisively (and it’s only gotten worse):
The Future of the American Idea
by David Foster Wallace
Just Asking
Are some things still worth dying for? Is the American idea1 one such thing? Are you up for a thought experiment? What if we chose to regard the 2,973 innocents killed in the atrocities of 9/11 not as victims but as democratic martyrs, “sacrifices on the altar of freedom?”2 In other words, what if we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability to terrorism is part of the price of the American idea? And, thus, that ours is a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices in order to preserve our democratic way of life—sacrifices not just of our soldiers and money but of our personal safety and comfort?
In still other words, what if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?
Is this thought experiment monstrous? Would it be monstrous to refer to the 40,000-plus domestic highway deaths we accept each year because the mobility and autonomy of the car are evidently worth that high price? Is monstrousness why no serious public figure now will speak of the delusory trade-off of liberty for safety that Ben Franklin warned about more than 200 years ago? What exactly has changed between Franklin’s time and ours? Why now can we not have a serious national conversation about sacrifice, the inevitability of sacrifice– either of (a) some portion of safety or (b) some portion of the rights and protections that make the American idea so incalculably precious?
In the absence of such a conversation, can we trust our elected leaders to value and protect the American idea as they act to secure the homeland? What are the effects on the American idea of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Patriot Acts I and II, warrantless surveillance, Executive Order 13233, corporate contractors performing military functions, the Military Commissions Act, NSPD 51, etc., etc.? Assume for a moment that some of these measures really have helped make our persons and property safer–are they worth it? Where and when was the public debate on whether they’re worth it? Was there no such debate because we’re not capable of having or demanding one? Why not? Have we actually become so selfish and scared that we don’t even want to consider whether some things trump safety? What kind of future does that augur?
- Given the strict Gramm-Rudmanesque space limit here, let’s just please all agree that we generally know what this term connotes—an open society, consent of the governed, enumerated powers, Federalist 10, pluralism, due process, transparency…the whole democratic roil. [↩]
- This phrase is Lincoln’s, more or less [↩]
Themocracy
I always liked this DFW piece. He asks rhetorically “What exactly has changed between Franklin’s time and ours?” and of course a tremendous amount has, and there are multiple factors that have rendered us seemingly unable to have any sober conversations about these grave yet inevitable choices. My vote though for the single greatest one is industrialized societies’ undermining & dismantling (most often inadvertently, sometimes intentionally) of the rituals, customs & conventions around death, whether this be around our own mortality or our killing of others beings, for food or material advancement. The breakdown of these means that your word choice, “adolescent” (I’d even say “childish”) is exactly right for our reaction to these traumatic events, but even to the mundane realities of aging, of personal safety, etc. This is not saying anything that new; read Becker’s _Denial of Death_ or so many other works to see this dynamic explained. But to accept this also means I think that addressing it isn’t really the job of rational argument so much as emotional healing, spiritual maturing and, well, art (dammit #forlife). Peace out, thanks for this post.