Sunday, September 12, 2004

Yesterday

My recent lack of posting is mostly due to some computer difficulties and me smashing my right index finger with a hammer while trying to assemble a floor lamp that now refuses to be either straight or illuminated. It has nothing to do with any observations of any solemn moments. But if I may make an observation...

Way back in the first season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, there was an episode where Sisko, the station commander, met a group of alien beings who existed without linear time and had no concept of "now" or "then." They kept taking Sisko back into his past to the moment when he was commanding a ship during a space battle while his wife and son were on the ship with him. Mrs. Sisko was killed in the battle, and the commander was unable to rescue her or retrieve her body. When Sisko asked the aliens why they kept making him relive his most painful memory, the aliens replied something to the effect of "we are simply taking you back the moment you are living in." Though time continued to pass, because that is the nature of time and our relationship to it, Sisko had remained stuck in that moment, and the aliens thought that he must have wanted to be there.

I think a lot of people have that relationship with the morning of September 11, 2001. A lot of people are stuck in the moment when they lost loved ones, and that is a matter of personal mourning, but others simply refuse to move beyond that day, choosing for whatever reason to let that moment rule their existence. I'll venture that one of the biggest reasons, other than overwhelming desire for revenge, is that people are afraid in this political climate to come out and say that their lives are pretty much the same today as they were on September 10, 2001 (barring changes that came about from other people's reactions to the events, e.g. airport screenings and the PATRIOT act). It's not PC to admit that the events themselves didn't affect you personally all that much in Bat Guano, Ohio, and that life goes on.

Dick Cheney has taken some heat (rightly) by suggesting that electing Kerry would risk the nation lapsing into a "pre-9/11" mindset. Given the amount of time this administration seems to take in reminding us of September 11, they seem to have a vested interest in keeping the nation in a "during-9/11" mindset in which we are all freaked out for our safety. I'd venture that when Cheney said we risk lapsing into a pre-9/11 mindset, what he really feared was us moving from "during-9/11" to "post-9/11."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I must agree that the current leadership in our country seem to be hung up on "remembering 9-11." Not that I am going to forget the eerie silence of no plane flying around the airport of the shock of an attack on our homeland. Perhaps they want us to think they "saved" the country in the days after and are hoping to get votes on that feeling of "security." While I am sorry so many people lost their lives that day, there are many other instances in recent history that have not directly affected me that our "fearless" leaders do not make great efforts to constantly remind me of. Ann Onymous