Everything came in twos on that day: the Twin Towers, NYC’s two front teeth, got knocked out. At the same time, the perpetrators had planned another one-two punch in D.C. but their plan was thwarted by Beamer and fellow passengers on UA-93.
We might think 9/11 was just one day. But 9/11 has taken a life of its own, an eternality that lasts …until today with an x-Marine mass-shooting in FL and exiled musicians from Kabul. Don’t you hate it when some regime tries to silent, not just their political dissent, but music itself (my preference is for children’s laughter and loud clapping. In short, life).
Stocks brokers in Brooks Brothers draped in dust. Then from Ground Zero, the proverbial phoenix rose again, in Times Square countdowns, with Dick Clark and Beyonce. Do it gain, Steely Dan.
Then we hear “You can’t always get, what you want” by the Rolling Stones during the Q1 pandemic of 2020.
Billboards without eyes-balls.
Public transit without the public. Ghost town. Like Las Vegas downtown (partially abandoned – if not for Zappos – as slot players moved on to their next fix on the Strip, where slots they were told are loosed).
Nothing is loosed in America since. Except for our memories of pre-9/11 good times (tax refund as Cold War peace dividend). Things then went South (Laura Bush had thought her husband’s administration would be focusing on education, evident in where he was found and how low he sat that 9/11 AM).
Take the fight to them. And when deflated, take the interpreters’ asses back here.
Re-group and re-trench. Re-shore. Re-treat.
One-two punch. In the gut, where it hurt like hell. The way Peter Jennings must have felt, ad-libbing for hours on end on that fateful day. “May I have a cigarette?” (I can’t image a Network anchor bumping for a smoke in the back alley. Of course, on that day, everyone was helpful and humane; fellow sufferers and smokers, under siege).
The degrees to which we identified with the horrific event of that day equal the degrees we personally feel those one-two punches. So far, it’s not just 7000 troops who gave their lives, or 3000 who died that day. It’s part of us who felt numb, under siege and terrorised in more ways than one (after all, we have contributed to the forever war one way or another – longer lines at TSA checkpoints etc…).
I admire people who can fake it till they make it i.e. re-invent and refurbish their internal ROM (like nothing had happened). Until the anniversary, until the troops come home. Then they would pontificate and politicise. At least the Pope did his job by calling nations to help out Afghan refugees. I saw a headline that said Europe is tired of fighting America’s war.
The retort should be, “America is tired of pitching in for NATO and the security of Europe”. How is that for solidarity across the pond. Paris my behind. When New York was burning, did Parisiennes offer Peter a smoke? ( Despite plenty of Lucky Strikes rained down from those tanks in Paris led by de Gaulle with his Gauloises). At least, those Texans offered round-the-clock barbecues to search and rescue teams 24/7 at Ground Zero.
Live coverage. Into our living room. The towers came down, imploded, like Las Vegas’ Sands on New Year’s Eve. Dust come to dust. Back then, by pre-monition I sensed that things would get worse.
Knowing events did not occur out of the blue. There would be implications and repercussions.
Twenty years later, we see the remnants and relics of 9/11: not tickertape parades but flag-draped coffins. The Chaplain who performed almost 7000 funerals since said on PBS that it was spiritual, the words that came out of his mouth to comfort the families. I knew what I saw that day on Television, live. I knew it was not just the Towers crashing down. But also my very own life, ours too, changed, affected just as those stolen planes that attacked Tan Son Nhut Airport on the night of April 28, 1975 – rendering those runways inoperable. I have seen subsequent lives destroyed and futures crashed.
Part of being together in our human family is to feel and share the pain. That one-two punch I couldn’t articulate back then was a gut feel. An empathic chill in the spine, lump in the throat. OBL and the 19 hit me as much as they hit the towers. The US of A, my adopted country, from then on out, started to react the best way we know how. In solidarity and swiftness of strength. Like the 3000 more deaths to avenge the 3000 killed.
Then the cycle of violence and destruction starts spinning, like Vegas Strip loosed slots, with millions of combination and permutation. You can’t always get what you want. That’s why I read Monte Cristo. That’s why I read it again, to learn lessons, to cry with the Count (who hid behind a shadowed curtain for fear of showing his tears upon re-encountering with his stolen love).
We’ve got nothing to gain. Everything is lose-lose, only on our side of the equation, we double-downed on the one-two punch, only to sink further down due to a perpetual mis-match of force and motive. Feel like having a smoke just trying to recall the event of that day. Now I can relate partly to what Peter Jennings must have felt.
Thang Nguyen 555 