9-11-10th-anniversary

This malignant persistence since September 11th is the biggest surprise of all. In previous decades, sneak attacks, stock-market crashes, and other great crises became hinges on which American history swung in dramatically new directions. But events on the same scale, or nearly so, no longer seem to have that power; moneyed interests may have become too entrenched, elites too self-seeking, institutions too feeble, and the public too polarized and passive for the country to be shocked into fundamental change.

[T]he enduring problem for liberals, as for everyone else, is not whether history will judge them wise or foolish regarding the war on terrorism; it is, rather, the way that the past decade has splintered them away from other Americans. This fracture comes with a steep price: in today's toxic atmosphere, liberals are no less cynical, shortsighted, and parochial than anyone else, and they understand their fellow-Americans just as badly as they themselves are understood. When liberals look at red-state voters, they see either a mob of pious know-nothings or the insensible victims of militarism and class warfare. Yet.... [such people] defy fixed categories, which means that they have to be figured out the hard way--on their own terms.

The attacks of 9/11 were the biggest surprise in American history, and for the past ten years we haven't stopped being surprised. The war on terror has had no discernible trajectory, and, unlike other military conflicts, it's almost impossible to define victory. You can't document the war's progress on a world map or chart it on a historical timetable in a way that makes any sense. A country used to a feeling of being in command and control has been whipsawed into a state of perpetual reaction, swinging wildly between passive fear and fevered, often thoughtless, activity, at a high cost to its self-confidence.

This isn't to deny that there were fierce arguments, at the time and ever since, about the causes and goals of both the Civil War and the Second World War. But 1861 and 1941 each created a common national narrative (which happened to be the victors' narrative): both wars were about the country's survival and the expansion of the freedoms on which it was founded. Nothing like this consensus has formed around September 11th.... Indeed, the decade since the attacks has destroyed the very possibility of a common national narrative in this country.

The last two days I__e been on long bus rides, driven through the countryside on the back of a motorbike, and crossed rivers on wooden boats, traversing currents into a different century. It__ late and dark, but I__ so close now. My uncle died five kilometers from here.

Honestly, I had no idea how to respond. My senior year of college I__ taken a seminar titled Public Education: Situations and Strategies. I thought about emailing my professor, maybe suggest some new topics and help him get current. Maybe he__ invite me back as a guest lecturer. He__ probably expect some strategies along with the situations though, so I guess that wouldn__ work, but whatever.

On the TV and in the newspapers all we hear and read is 'live your life or the terrorists win' and it sounds great, I__ all for that, except my kids won__ ask for a bathroom pass because the faculty facilities are on the first floor of the building and the MPs patrolling the second floor won__ go downstairs on their shift__o I__e got middle school kids afraid to take a piss because there might be a soldier in the stall next to them carrying a loaded M- 16__ut hell yes, I__ all for 'live your life' and screw the terrorists, and screw all the countries who harbor and support them. I__ on board with that, except I__e got these kids who stay home now, because they__e scared riding a bus with soldiers carrying guns, knowing that one soldier isn__ enough, so there__ a military truck full of soldiers with even bigger guns following the bus 'just in case.

I__ in my classroom and I__ looking at this girl, but all I can see is my dad on the ground, in front of The Wall, telling the truth, finally__is knees drawn and his chest heaving__nd when people pass by they look the other way, except for this one lady who stops to give my dad a hug. She gets down on her knees to reach him, and now she__ crying with a stranger, and without asking I know it__ because she__ lost something, too, and I wonder if in comforting my dad she thinks she can find it again. Probably not. It doesn__ work that way.

In total this journey will take five flights and fifty-five hours, but in reality it began four decades and two generations ago when my uncle died in Vietnam.

There are more good people than bad people, and overall there__ more that__ good in the world than there is that__ bad. We just need to hear about it, we just need to see it.

Military life is hard, even cruel__specially for the kids.

It__ be easy to blame everything on 9/11 or the wars that came after. It__ really about the choices we made. By necessity we adapt to the realities of the world we live in, but if we forget that how we live shapes and influences the world around us, then we__e already lost.