Death Of The Republic On 9/11/01

I knew it would happen.

I knew that the tenth anniversary of 9/11 would bring back some things I hadn’t seen since the months following that September day in 2001.

There were the flags posted on peoples homes, flags used as markers up people’s walkways, and flags flying from car antennas and pasted on rear view windows.

My community lost eighteen men and women in the WTC towers that day, and they certainly have a right to remember and mourn in their own ways.

I have great compassion for those of my neighbors whose lives were shattered forever, and who suffer with recurring nightmares.

An acquaintance of ours ran like hell down eighty-two floors to get out with his life. He was the only one in his company who survived, and hasn’t been able to hold down a job since.

But this incessant repetition every year at ground Zero of the reading of the dead shown on more than one network TV station, makes me believe that it isn’t so much for their memory, which ultimately is a private thing for each of the families and friends of the departed, but a public display of martyrdom for the benefit of the government, for the purpose of jingoism, the evil twin of true patriotism which in a free country tolerates dissent and minority views.

These martyred dead have no idea that their lives are being appropriated to a cause to which their survivors and most of the rest of us have no knowledge.

Once most Americans wake up from this virtual world which resembles that of The Matrix, and the truth of what is really going on finally is made manifest, it will be too late.

The NFL football season kicked off on 9/11 this year, and I anticipated some garish “patriotic” displays at the games.

I wasn’t disappointed. Aside from the fans wearing all sorts of 9/11 memorabilia, from those ball caps emblazoned with FDNY and NYPD, to the catchy T-shirts saying such things as “Freedom Isn’t Free” under a picture of a bald eagle, to “America, Love it or Leave it”; there was the color guard made up of the four branches of the armed services and as always the singing of the national anthem by some pop star or some winner of American Idol.

But there also was the unfurling at many games of a giant flag large enough to cover the entire 100 yard playing field accompanied by the usual wild drunken cheers, hoots, whistles and cat calls.

It was no accident of scheduling that THE NEW YORK Giants were playing THE WASHINGTON (DC) Redskins, lest some Americans with short memories forgot which were the two cities that were attacked on that day.

It was certainly not a coincidence that George W. Bush tossed the coin at the NY JETS game, which is at the New Meadowlands Stadium a location from which the Twin Tower smoke could be seen on 9/11/2001. But that day was a Tuesday and there were no NFL games that day.

Even the Men’s Final of the US Open between Djokovic and Nadal, on Mon. 9/12 (which was originally scheduled for 9/11, but there were numerous rain delays) among a much more polite crowd than those who go to the NFL games had its own patriotic tributes.

Djokovic, a Serbian, put on an FDNY ball cap while accepting the winner’s trophy.

Nadal, the Spaniard, the runner up, seemed very sincere in his halting English in acknowledging the losses and the sadness among people. He of all people had a true air of sincerity. And when he made his condolences, what the the fans do? THEY CHEERED! You don’t cheer the dead, unless they are no longer conceptualized as once living but as symbols of USA,USA, USA, We’re #1.

But what made me mourn, not only for the lost innocents in my community, but for the death of the Republic, was what began on Friday 9/9 and carried through to a crescendo on 9/11 and then stopped suddenly like a summer thunderstorm on Monday 9/12. 

 MORE HERE