Post the 9/11 anniversary,

Americans are indulging

in a false rhetoric

Leonard Quart

Like the media, politicos of all ideological persuasions, and a portion of the general public, I have not been immune these last weeks from reflecting on the meaning of 9/11. That apocalyptic event took place not far from my Village Manhattan apartment, and my immediate reaction was a sense of shock followed by terror.
     After taking time to absorb what happened, and struggling to achieve some equanimity, I felt the urgency to convey what I felt about what occurred by writing a number of essays on that day and the days that followed. One of my  first assertions was that the attack was 'an assault on civilisation, and an act of war, and that I can only feel despair and rage at how tribalism and zealotry can destroy our lives'.That day I also began to feel, as evening arrived, that 'if any grace note exists in the midst of this apocalyptic act, it's the sense of community and concern that ordinary New Yorkers showed for each other in the middle of the devastation'.
     The next day I wrote: 'Every time I look up and see the dust and smoke billowing over those ravaged blocks of building rubble where the World Trade Towers once stood I begin to shiver and burst into silent tears'. And three weeks later I wrote: 'I wander through Union Square where shrines to the dead and missing have been created, filled with flowers, candles, poems, personal statements, and posters of men and women whose friends and relatives are still looking for them despite the search's essential hopelessness. The visit, as well as one to a neighbourhood firehouse, where 14 firemen who died are listed on a piece of paper, and a fireman takes our check for their fund with utterly professional stoicism, is deeply moving. It's clear that there's no normality around the corner, no complacency that I won't, even if I so desired, get so lost in my own needs that I'll ever forget what happened'.
     I also began to indulge in paranoid fantasies while walking the streets. I pass a group of Bangladeshi cab drivers who are on a break, and an image suddenly pops into my mind of some lunatic, self-appointed patriot driving by at that moment and shooting us all down. In addition, I imagine myself in extreme, violent situations, like being in a skyscraper hit by a plane, because they feel within the realm of possibility, and have become an integral piece of my consciousness.
    But normality did ultimately return, as it did to a defeated, atom-bombed Japan and a totally battered Europe after WW2. And the nightmare images that I couldn't shake for a time, like seeing people wailing in fear and their bodies raining down from the roof and top floors of the World Trade Centre, began to disappear. After a while whenever I passed the generally desolate site, which could now almost pass for any ordinary downtown office-building location, I was more interested in the eternally stalled progress of the redevelopment of what was destroyed, than in the destruction that had occurred.

 

      This year, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, innumerable speeches were delivered at memorial services invoking our unity as a nation. In one, President Obama stated: 'They wanted to deprive us of the unity that defines us as a people, but we will not succumb to division or suspicion'. Yes, that's true when we are dealing with an external threat or a natural disaster, but there is little sense of unity in our country when it comes to dealing with matters of domestic policy or cultural issues. Yes, people work together harmoniously when their communities face flooding or brush fires, but our national legislators are unbendingly divisive when responding to dire unemployment numbers, and other economic problems.
     The 2010 census makes clear how unity is more rhetorical than real by finding US income inequality at its highest level since the Census Bureau began tracking household income in 1967. The US also exhibits the greatest income disparity among western industrialised nations. We may indulge in the rhetoric of unity, but the standards of living and possibilities for opportunity in this country are utterly unequal.
     Still, the 9/11 speeches and the services resurrecting that time of horror and solidarity were moving. To make it all more tangible, I found myself on the weekend of the memorial services walking past an East Side bar. A host of raucous white firemen (some wearing kilts), the heroes of 9/11, who had lost 343 men, and received intense exposure to carcinogens after the attacks, were out drinking with their wives and girlfriends. They had just returned from one of the many services held in their honour. Watching them, I felt oddly that some of these brave men, these people capable of great heroism, could also be abusive, sexist, and racist. In fact, a few weeks later, I read about two New York City firemen in court – one for allegedly serving as muscle for the Mob, the other for a violent domestic crime. These statistics are also pertinent – the NYC fire department turns out to consist of only 3.4% black firefighters and 6.7% Latino.
    I suppose I have little tolerance for simple hero worship. Still, though the firemen may be flawed, like all of us, their professional behaviour genuinely merits the homage it receives. Nevertheless, it took a long time for the federal government to pass the first responders' bill, which set aside $1.5 billion in federal and New York City funds to cover all costs for treating certain 9/11-related illnesses, and $2.7 billion in compensation for victims who suffered economic hardship as a result of the attacks. But the law does nothing for those who suffer from cancer, since it was one of the medical conditions left uncovered. No point railing again about the Republicans' reflexive opposition to government spending, except, of course, for banks and oil companies.
     Yes, let's celebrate the luminous behaviour and sense of national unity of 9/11. But also remember that we live now in a polarised country, dominated by corporations and the politicians who serve them – people who, more often than not, are callously detached from what happens to the rest of us.

 

Leonard Quart is a professor emeritus of American studies