a good op-ed<\/a> on that this week. I remember that happening in real time, remember feeling very angry about it.<\/p>\nThe Department of Homeland Security \u2013 an Orwellian name if there ever was one \u2013 dates from that time. You have only to read today\u2019s news to see how that turned out.<\/p>\n
A month after the attacks I flew to Texas to visit family, traveling through a Baltimore airport that was crawling with armed members of the National Guard and being subjected to an absurdly long line for security. On that trip, I re-read two books: Sinclair Lewis\u2019s It Can\u2019t Happen Here<\/i> (also very relevant right now, though I find I can\u2019t face it at this point) and Joseph Heller\u2019s Catch-22<\/i>.<\/p>\n
I wrote a major paper on Catch-22<\/i> in college. I\u2019ve always thought that the major theme of the book was that Yossarian and his comrades were in more danger from what the powerful in our country were doing to get \u201cvalue\u201d from the war than from the war itself. That\u2019s what I saw happen after September 11.<\/p>\n
What I took from the attacks was that we needed groups on the neighborhood level ready to deal with problems in the community when disaster happens, whether that disaster is a terrorist attack, mass shooting, a \u201cnatural\u201d disaster, or something else. I kept looking for government support for organizing such things \u2013 a way to get supplies, tools, training \u2013 but found nothing.<\/p>\n
My desire to do something intensified with the Anthrax attacks that killed postal workers in Washington, but again, there was nothing in the way of support.<\/p>\n
A lot of young people enlisted in the military only to get sacrificed in the unnecessary wars instead of defending the country. But there was nothing for civilians to do except \u201cgo shopping\u201d (Junior Bush was such a fool). <\/p>\n
I saw someone observe that September 11 was the last time the country was united. But even then the country didn\u2019t feel all that united to me.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s no surprise that when it came to the pandemic \u2013 another time when we should have been united \u2013 that things fell apart even more. Yes of course the government in power when Covid hit was even worse than that on September 11 \u2013 something I wouldn\u2019t have though possible 25 years ago \u2013 but that was compounded by the fact that we have so few ways to unite.<\/p>\n
Mutual aid and informal communities and nonprofit groups all come together to help in these situations, but we do not have in place the kind of systems that could make those things more effective. Go Fund Mes are not a replacement for community-focused public health workers.<\/p>\n
I remain horrified by the September 11 attacks on our country. I remain awed by the firefighters in particular as well as the people on the scene who did their best to respond despite bad leadership. And I think we as a country did have to respond to such terrorism.<\/p>\n
But I also remain horrified by school and other mass shootings, about which we\u2019ve done nothing. I\u2019m appalled by our response to so-called natural disasters that are only intensifying with climate change. And frankly I am gutted by the fact that we have done so little in the wake of the pandemic.<\/p>\n
Everything is all on each of us individually to protect ourselves despite the fact that attacks, disasters, and pandemics are all things that require a community response.<\/p>\n
For me personally, September 11 was a disaster way too close to home, one that made me more aware of both the dangers of the world and the failings of my government. Both of those things seem to have become worse over the past 25 years.<\/p>\n
I hope we\u2019ll do better in the next 25. I\u2019m using hope as Rebecca Solnit does, not as Pollyannaish dreams, but as a guidepost. There are good things happening even in this dark times. If we stay the course, we might make it possible for them to prevail.<\/p>\n
It\u2019ll be shaky, of course. It\u2019s always going to be shaky. But I\u2019m going to keep hoping all the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So it\u2019s been 25 years since September 11, and we\u2019re awash in retrospectives, some of them even useful. As someone then living in Washington, DC, with relatives in New York City who lived a few blocks from the World Trade Center, I was stunned and horrified, but I also had what turned out to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[327],"class_list":["post-4827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","tag-september-11"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4827"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4828,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4827\/revisions\/4828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}