How did you feel then? How do you feel now?

[Sethomas]

11.09.2001 was a very, very hard time for me. I wasn't personally touched in the most visceral sense; the closest connection I had was that an old friend of mine had a father who worked in the Pentagon (but was safe, and I wasn't even talking to her at the time) and my then-"girlfriend"'s father worked for the FAA so it was very real for her.

My initial feelings were anger at my own country. I had always had a very tortuous relationship with my own nationality, just like any pissed-off white middle-class adolescent male. I had known that something like this was bound to happen and that the Middle East would probably be to blame, but seeing the level of destruction as it was actually happen as from a vacuum was just unreal. In the summer of 2000, I spent a week in NYC, which is considered an exotic locale for a rural Hoosier. I remember the time I spent wandering around the two towers, looking at the Bronze globe in the center as a memorial to the first WTC bombing (it was the third such one I'd seen in two weeks, the others being outside the Sistine Chapel and the UN Building). I bought some trinkets for my family from some booths set up in the plaza, and I gazed at what I saw as the most artistic expression of mankind's perversion of the landscape I'd ever seen. The way the foundation just kind of melted into the ground was very, very elegant to me.

I was hurt because of the loss of life, but it was ironic to me that while in New York I was educated on the depravity of America's relationship with the rest of the world as well as the dire situation of hunger in the third world. Given that roughly 38 000 children alone died of hunger and disease on that day, adding a few thousand more adults who had the luxury of being even in America's lower class just seemed surreal.

I had hoped that maybe we would become aware of not only our own mortality, but that which is shared by all of humanity. I had hoped that we would become more aware of the world which exists beyond our borders. I had hoped that the ashes in Manhattan would birth a wonderful Phoenix.

I was solipsistic in my early adolescence, and some of those past attitudes forever molded my perceptions of reality. It's human nature to always think of one's time as being unique, superior, yadda yadda, as if the world of the now was the teleological aim of all of physical evolution. "Presentism", they call it. Yet, when something happens to re-affirm what we know to be true yet cower from recognizing, that we are just players of a greater history, it terrifies us. It's painful to confront the fact that there is no arbitrary line between "history" and "life".

I knew that we'd scapegoat and go to war. I supported retaliation so long as it was not revenge. I wanted us to do something, but I could not bring myself to support the bombings of Kabul. I had remembered from Vonnegut's Bluebeard that the first reaction to attrocity is to reciprocate attrocity. "Now it's the women's turn." Knowing that there would likely be a draft, I took the ASVAB and scored a lowly battery of 97 because I had to urinate so badly during its administration. I was thinking that maybe I could choose to join a nuclear submarine, which would unlikely be used to commit any real abomination and would grant me experience in the sciences as a nuclear technician. Or, if the national insanity was bad enough, I'd gladly expatriate.

I had to come to terms with what it meant to me to be an American. I gradually realized that for all the secret wars and foul politics and manipulations of which we are guilty, I cannot escape what I really am. I grew up in the country eating American food, loving my American relatives, and taking part in the blessings of the world's sole Super Power. I don't know that I'd trade that for any other life if I could, but I began to slowly love my countrymen for what they are--their ignorances and fears are but a part of what it means to be human, not by definition American. I had even hoped that some of those fears and ignorances would be alleviated by this terrible experience.

-------------------------
Five years later, I am still angry. My generation had responded more or less as expected, with a sharp dichotomy of my peers being suddenly more interested in the international community and others being uncharacteristically nationalistic. Patriotism is essential, nationalism is a travesty. I cannot forgive my brothers and sisters in citizenship for their support of the rape of Iraq, but I concede that they merely felt in in their conscience that the blatant lies should be believed. At the same time, I was in a major university while the anti-war protests happened and so I saw what it meant to love one's neighbor, regardless of the borders between.

I am angry at my government. I could never, ever support either political party, but I'd take the lesser evil whenever possible. In raw ideology, I see the Democrats as capricious tools and I see Republicans as hypocritical exploiters. It's worse now. Given the support for the Mondus Belli Americani, I cannot imagine any optimism without a drastic shift of paradigm. Two possibilities lie on the horizon: total dystopia or total annihilation.

I find it interesting how harshly (and to this point, accurately) my generation has been accused of laziness. We are in a Children's Crusade, and when the toys are broken it will be us who must pick up the rubble. History is not going to remember this as an easy period.