Monday, May 2, 2011

America, fuck yeah!

In Fall 2001 I took the path train every day to get from NJ to college in NYC. There were two Path trains- the one I took to midtown, and the one to the World Trade Center. For months after 9/11 the Path train station had hundreds of missing persons signs, which no one would take down. I would read their descriptions while waiting for the train every morning. I can't help but think back to that time today.

It was the start of a dark decade. Being in NYC at the time was scary. People were scared. People were jackasses, and kept throwing bags of flour down the escalators at the subway stations. Other people panicked and said the flour was anthrax, and subway stations were shut down. I showed up late to my social statistics class at least 5 times that semester, since I had to walk across town to get another subway, or try to get a cab if I was really going to be late (but that cost upwards of $20, which I couldn't really afford).

I'm not normally happy to see anyone die. I hear young people were rioting on some college campuses when the news came out last night. These students were 8, 9, 10, 11 years old when 9/11 happened. They've lived half their lives under this shadow. I was 19 and it is a clear turning point to me. Before 9/11 I didn't read the news, things happened,but the 90s were a golden decade for the most part, the economy was booming, we weren't at constant war, and I was too young to remember the 80s. But since 9/11 things have not been good. People are too cynical. Conspiracy theories abound. No one trusts anyone, least of all the government.

I hope this marks another turning point in the mood of our country. When I was a kid I was proud of our country. Ronald Reagan told the Russian dude to tear down that wall, and he did. We went to war (the gulf war) and everyone hung up yellow ribbons on their trees to support the soldiers. My 3rd grade teacher took us on a walk around the neighborhood to see the ribbons. The war was over in a few months. Later that year the Soviet Union collapsed, and we all looked on in amazement as the map of the world changed.

Now people have a magnet, a picture of what support used to look like. The facade but not the ribbon itself. How symbolic. There's so much cynicism about the government, they are corrupt, they are constantly having sex scandals, they can't get anything good done, we're in two endless expensive wars, and up until now we had gone almost a decade not even able to find Osama Bin Laden. People don't have trust in the government anymore, and part of that has manifested in not wanting to give the government more money. Republicans are using this as an opportunity to cut government services to the poor and trying to cut services like family planning for women. This is incredibly shortsighted, but this generation has apparently not learned from the mistakes of the past (maybe because the quality of public education has become so dismal as the education system has also been starved of money and resources).

Anyways, I'm tired of living in this depressing country of cynics. I'm hoping this revives some of the sense of unity and sense of shared responsibility to each other that used to make this country so great. I feel better already.

5 comments:

  1. While I'm glad he's dead, it feels inappropriate that we celebrate in the streets upon the killing our enemy. Ideally, he'd have been captured and brought to trial. That obviously wasn't possible, so I'm glad he was killed, but spontaneous celebrating in the streets upon his killing seems more like something you'd see in third world countries, not in a western democracy based on the high values of rule of law.

    Not that I blame anyone for those celebrations. I certainly understand where it comes from. I still feel uncomfortable with it.

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  2. I was at the white house...pretty nice experience being surrounded by GWU/Georgetown students and a smattering of others, all manner of ethnicities, some 'out' Muslims, some flags from Muslim nations flying among US flags, state flags, armed forces flags, all in the winds of general enthusiasm and patriotic joy they may not have felt before.

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  3. And yes...much singing of the Team America World Police song...

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  4. I'm glad the bastard is dead, glad I lived long enough to see this day, unlike my uncle who was 90 in 2001 and told me that 9-11 was worse that Pearl Harbor - because I was so sad after 9-11 that I had lost all perspective and didn't know which was worse.
    His death doesn't solve all of the problems in the world, but at least that murderous piece of shit can't enjoy the simple pleasures of lives that 3,000 innocent people have not been able to enjoy for the past 10 years.
    BTW - I now remember hearing that when the missing posters decayed and fell off the telephone poles, etc. that the tape that had held them on stayed on for months thereafter.

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  5. >Republicans are using this as an opportunity to cut government services to the poor and trying to cut services like family planning for women. This is incredibly shortsighted, but this generation has apparently not learned from the mistakes of the past.

    How do you figure. Plenty of european countries known to have "cradle to grave" services are now seeing they have to cut it themselves. Yes, republicans are trying to close in on these spendings, because the argument is in general, the federal government should not have been in the business of so many of these services in the first place.

    If anything it is the shortsightedness of those that believe government SHOULD be in all those social services that fail to see what will happen years down the line when you can't pay for these services. Look at some countries in Europe and how ape shit they get when god forbid, god forbid, you tell them the age of retirement may have to go up. It is the natural consequences when civilians end up having to rely on the government. I don't think we are there yet, but that's the point...to not get there. And yes, that requires painful cuts. No different than when you have to have cuts at home to live within your means.

    Not that I believe republicans have been that innocent on spending themselves.

    >I still feel uncomfortable with it.

    IMO, I feel very comfortable with the spontaneous celebrating. High values of rule and law and what happened here are not in contradiction. In general, we do go by law and order, but then...there are those times of war where we simply have to go out and destroy a great evil. Clearly, we don't celebrate on the street when any joe shmoe criminal is convicted. But this is different. It was a man that declared a war with the west and is responsible for killings of thousands.


    >People don't have trust in the government anymore,

    This country was founded on the premise on not trusting a centralized government

    >and part of that has manifested in not wanting to give the government more money.

    Yes, because its your money. And, you trust yourself to give money to where you see fit rather than give it to the State for the latest social service of the week where it ends up either being lost or diverted to something else that needs to be paid for.


    >Anyways, I'm tired of living in this depressing country of cynics. I'm hoping this revives some of the sense of unity and sense of shared responsibility to each other that used to make this country so great. I feel better already.

    Agree

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