Ten years after the horror, at the hallowed site of Ground Zero in Manhattan, President Obama stood and said "America does not give in to fear." He stood behind a panel of bulletproof Popemobile glass, under the watchful eye of Secret Service snipers and paramilitary guards, while innocent American citizens on planes were arrested for looking "suspicious," while the media stoked fears of al-Qaeda attacks on small aircraft despite there being "no specific or credible terrorist threat," while unmanned drones half the world away destroyed buildings and killed civilians in their endless effort to eradicate the abhorrent terrorists who so brazenly attacked our nation, also from the air. Safely entombed by the National Security State, America reflected upon the events of 911, and vowed once again to Never Forget.
Ten years ago, the permanent Washington Establishment, still addicted to the military excesses of the Cold War, jumped on the opportunity to transform the country. The amorphous ever-present threat of Islamic terrorism perfectly fit the role of national boogeyman so recently vacated by the Soviets. The thousands of murdered Americans were instantly turned into martyrs, their memories perverted and abused to usher in a decade of neoconservative fantasy.
Endless wars, forever escalating around the globe. The Department of Homeland Security, the TSA, the NSA, the Patriot Act. An enormous, insidious surveillance bureaucracy that would give Stalin a hard-on invades citizen's privacy for their own protection. The spooks are in your iPhone, in your Facebook, and in your mind. As
consumer electronics become more advanced and pervasive, the spooks are right alongside,
building themselves into the fabric of our mediadrome. These are the legacies of 911 in America.
911 has been exploited to indulge the worst demons of the American psyche. The financial disaster of 2008 has left us cowed and submissive, just how the government wants us - still so afraid that we'll accept whatever civil liberties violations they pass off as protection, and grateful for whatever illusions of privacy we're allowed. "We were attacked!" was the required excuse for the government's abuses of power. Now it's become de rigueur. We expect it, we welcome it.
We continue to define ourselves by the crimes committed against us. Just as the terrorists wanted. On September 11, 2101, people will have to look up the names of those who were murdered a century before, but because of our enduring culture of fear, they will already know the name Osama bin Laden.
Fear, war, vengeance, and blind deference to authority are part of the selfish default mode of human thought. When we allow ourselves to succumb to this way of thinking, and let it aggregate in the halls of power, we send America backwards on the path of enlightenment. We must not give in to the basic autopilot urges of violence and authoritarianism that our founders sought to avoid, and instead champion reason, empathy, compassion, individual liberty, egalitarianism, justice, and the tireless pursuit of TRUTH.
