-Mike Ferraro
And of course this week the posts come pouring in. You people make me sick with your pep talk tributes and jingoistic profile pictures commemorating those twin dildos of American enterprise that once blighted the New York City sky.
And forget about your tear-jerking ‘morning of’ anecdotes, full of empty slogans and Hallmark sentimentality. Is there not an ounce of imagination among you? How about a braincell? Rest assured, what you lack in imagination you make up tenfold in slavish compliance and obsequity.
But perhaps I am being too harsh. It is after all a sensitive subject. And besides, conformity’s the only game in town, right?
Yet I stand firm in my pronouncements.
Let’s get one thing clear, panegyrists: Unless you were one of the chosen stuck in an incinerator of shattering steel and exploding flesh, who the fuck cares where you were the morning of 9/11? And even then, who gives a shit anyway, really?
And since we’re sharing ourselves so completely this abominable season, you want to know where I was that fateful morning? In bed, dead asleep. That’s right, our great national crisis and I slept right through it. Until the phone rang that is. My mother, calling to report that the Pentagon was on fire. (Her exact words, I remember. How could I forget them?) Then: How was I? Was I OK, was I safe?
And how did I respond to this news? I told her not to worry, that I was fine, and put the receiver down. Then I laughed my ass off, rolled over, and went back to bed.
It’s OK, I can say such things. See, my father worked on the 88th floor of both towers during their construction, when they were just scaffolding swaying in the wind. He’s a plumber, and a good one too, but quit the job after a few weeks because of the height. Since then he’s always felt a connection to those buildings. Nearly thirty years later, as a plumbing supervisor for the Newark Board of Education, my father watched his beloved towers burn and eventually collapse on his way to work.
Does this sketch lend my voice a more sympathetic note, does it somehow authenticate my perspective? Is the acerbity of my earlier remarks tempered by this knowledge that my father saw the towers go up and watched them come down, an entire landscape--both emotional and physical--displaced along the way, the measure of a man and his life hijacked in the span of a few hours?
Yet none of this changes the fundamental reality of our situation. Let’s not mince words: Don’t cry to me about the great tragedy of 9/11, how we'll never forget the events and inestimable loss of that terrible day. Don't tell me that everything’s changed. Get the shit outta your ears: Nothing’s changed, suckers. Unless, of course, you count the endless war profiteering, unparalleled national deficit and expenditures, and erosion of civil liberties racked up since that day, all of which were on the table long before the time of great tragedy struck. 9/11 was no catalyst--it was merely the excuse proffered to implement the dirty deeds of the corporate technocrats and militarists. It was, as they say in Washington, bizness as usual.
Such long term plans for global hegemony go back at least as far as World War II. That said, as cursorily reported by the least cowed members of the lapdog press, what we have in the latest US invasion of Iraq is something more primordial, and therefore more relatable: namely, a good old-fashioned blood feud. According to this theory, W’s ousting of our old ally Saddam was payback for Saddam’s bungled hit on pappy, itself an act of retribution for Gulf War I. Seen in this light, as flagrantly irresponsible and wrong-headed as it is, at least this war policy connects on a visceral level, which is more than can be said for the rest of W’s presidency.
If such tantrums seem like the pathological behavior of a spoiled, petulant child, that’s because they are. An unmitigated disaster politically and policy-wise--expanding with a vengeance Reagan’s abysmal borrow and spend legacy--W was, as far as zeitgeist barometers go, the best president around; the one we, as a nation, unequivocally deserved. The figure this president cut required no metaphoric gloss or interpretation outside the obvious--the caricatures themselves more than sufficed. Embodying in thought and action the US’s interests and stature in the world, here was a walking, talking, dick swinging horror show, a most unholy mix come terrifyingly to life: part cowboy gone off the range, part superhuman bully, rolled into one inarticulate, bumbling, coke-snortin-til-he-became-
Myself, I remember waking up the morning after the 2004 presidential election feeling violated. Not that I needed further corroboration on this front, I understood clearly, and not for the first time, that the system was hopelessly and irredeemably fucked, and that baring a full blown miracle we were all doomed. I mean, it’s not like Kerry was even warm shit in comparison to W’s cold. But what could you do?--those were the choices, little more than simple, indistinct variations on a theme. This then was the measure of our America: Elections were meaningless charades, our democracy a fraud and piss poor decoy for the thing it purported to be. Were things ever any different? If so, it’s virtually impossible to imagine that time now.
These were not completely demoralizing and unsatisfactory realizations however. They were, in fact, deeply liberating. For example, that morning I knew I’d never vote again. And I haven’t. Like a newly baptized AA member, I'm proud to say the urge to take another hit of the old Jesus juice never once returned--black president be damned.
Yet such sentiments are commonplace, and the knowledge of the transgressions of government power passe, to the point of both seeming hopelessly irrelevant. What is clear, however, is that in an age where the public dwells in a ‘post-ironic’ fugue--where the incontestable assumption that the emperor has no clothes is a foregone conclusion, as the lack of surprise or even outrage over the Wiki-leaks scandal illustrates--this deep cynicism serves to further re-inscribe the values and practices of our broke and downward spiraling system. And in turn such blind acceptance and complete desensitized tolerance of the status quo work to condone these routine and egregious abuses of power and the overall functioning of a toxic and perennially mismanaged system. In this way, then, and in a manner unlike any before thanks to the over-saturation of information through digital media platforms, we are all unanimously complicit in the principal objective and operation of everyday life, namely the sanctification of power through capital.
In this respect no one is off the hook. Ten years ago today, for the first time in recent memory, the bully got punched back. To ignore this obvious reality embraces a total ignorance of historical fact.
Doesn't matter if it was ten years ago or ten minutes--as long as people are fighting for basic survival under the iron-fisted rule of capital, the real tragedy is happening the same place it always has: out in the streets.
Yes, it’s all happening right outside your window, whether you choose to admit it or not. Take a good look sometime if you don't believe me. Or better yet, go to the mirror. Open your fucking eyes and look carefully. Think about what the fuck it is that is making you so fucking miserable. Can you still see that view outside your window? Good. Look back and forth between mirror and street as needed to make the necessary connections, till it registers what the fuck the problem really is. Stare in the face, if just this once, the things that are making you so miserable and alienated and be done with it. Be honest with yourself. For once in your miserable fucking life.
And today instead of crying over the dead in sanctimonious and false eulogy, why don’t you go out and live a little while you still can? It’s the only honorable thing to do, the only decent commemoration of the dead to be made on this solemn day or any other.
Take heed: For once I know what the fuck I’m talking about. Do you?
And of course this week the posts come pouring in. You people make me sick with your pep talk tributes and jingoistic profile pictures commemorating those twin dildos of American enterprise that once blighted the New York City sky.
And forget about your tear-jerking ‘morning of’ anecdotes, full of empty slogans and Hallmark sentimentality. Is there not an ounce of imagination among you? How about a braincell? Rest assured, what you lack in imagination you make up tenfold in slavish compliance and obsequity.
But perhaps I am being too harsh. It is after all a sensitive subject. And besides, conformity’s the only game in town, right?
Yet I stand firm in my pronouncements.
Let’s get one thing clear, panegyrists: Unless you were one of the chosen stuck in an incinerator of shattering steel and exploding flesh, who the fuck cares where you were the morning of 9/11? And even then, who gives a shit anyway, really?
And since we’re sharing ourselves so completely this abominable season, you want to know where I was that fateful morning? In bed, dead asleep. That’s right, our great national crisis and I slept right through it. Until the phone rang that is. My mother, calling to report that the Pentagon was on fire. (Her exact words, I remember. How could I forget them?) Then: How was I? Was I OK, was I safe?
And how did I respond to this news? I told her not to worry, that I was fine, and put the receiver down. Then I laughed my ass off, rolled over, and went back to bed.
It’s OK, I can say such things. See, my father worked on the 88th floor of both towers during their construction, when they were just scaffolding swaying in the wind. He’s a plumber, and a good one too, but quit the job after a few weeks because of the height. Since then he’s always felt a connection to those buildings. Nearly thirty years later, as a plumbing supervisor for the Newark Board of Education, my father watched his beloved towers burn and eventually collapse on his way to work.
Does this sketch lend my voice a more sympathetic note, does it somehow authenticate my perspective? Is the acerbity of my earlier remarks tempered by this knowledge that my father saw the towers go up and watched them come down, an entire landscape--both emotional and physical--displaced along the way, the measure of a man and his life hijacked in the span of a few hours?
Yet none of this changes the fundamental reality of our situation. Let’s not mince words: Don’t cry to me about the great tragedy of 9/11, how we'll never forget the events and inestimable loss of that terrible day. Don't tell me that everything’s changed. Get the shit outta your ears: Nothing’s changed, suckers. Unless, of course, you count the endless war profiteering, unparalleled national deficit and expenditures, and erosion of civil liberties racked up since that day, all of which were on the table long before the time of great tragedy struck. 9/11 was no catalyst--it was merely the excuse proffered to implement the dirty deeds of the corporate technocrats and militarists. It was, as they say in Washington, bizness as usual.
Such long term plans for global hegemony go back at least as far as World War II. That said, as cursorily reported by the least cowed members of the lapdog press, what we have in the latest US invasion of Iraq is something more primordial, and therefore more relatable: namely, a good old-fashioned blood feud. According to this theory, W’s ousting of our old ally Saddam was payback for Saddam’s bungled hit on pappy, itself an act of retribution for Gulf War I. Seen in this light, as flagrantly irresponsible and wrong-headed as it is, at least this war policy connects on a visceral level, which is more than can be said for the rest of W’s presidency.
If such tantrums seem like the pathological behavior of a spoiled, petulant child, that’s because they are. An unmitigated disaster politically and policy-wise--expanding with a vengeance Reagan’s abysmal borrow and spend legacy--W was, as far as zeitgeist barometers go, the best president around; the one we, as a nation, unequivocally deserved. The figure this president cut required no metaphoric gloss or interpretation outside the obvious--the caricatures themselves more than sufficed. Embodying in thought and action the US’s interests and stature in the world, here was a walking, talking, dick swinging horror show, a most unholy mix come terrifyingly to life: part cowboy gone off the range, part superhuman bully, rolled into one inarticulate, bumbling, coke-snortin-til-he-became-
Myself, I remember waking up the morning after the 2004 presidential election feeling violated. Not that I needed further corroboration on this front, I understood clearly, and not for the first time, that the system was hopelessly and irredeemably fucked, and that baring a full blown miracle we were all doomed. I mean, it’s not like Kerry was even warm shit in comparison to W’s cold. But what could you do?--those were the choices, little more than simple, indistinct variations on a theme. This then was the measure of our America: Elections were meaningless charades, our democracy a fraud and piss poor decoy for the thing it purported to be. Were things ever any different? If so, it’s virtually impossible to imagine that time now.
These were not completely demoralizing and unsatisfactory realizations however. They were, in fact, deeply liberating. For example, that morning I knew I’d never vote again. And I haven’t. Like a newly baptized AA member, I'm proud to say the urge to take another hit of the old Jesus juice never once returned--black president be damned.
Yet such sentiments are commonplace, and the knowledge of the transgressions of government power passe, to the point of both seeming hopelessly irrelevant. What is clear, however, is that in an age where the public dwells in a ‘post-ironic’ fugue--where the incontestable assumption that the emperor has no clothes is a foregone conclusion, as the lack of surprise or even outrage over the Wiki-leaks scandal illustrates--this deep cynicism serves to further re-inscribe the values and practices of our broke and downward spiraling system. And in turn such blind acceptance and complete desensitized tolerance of the status quo work to condone these routine and egregious abuses of power and the overall functioning of a toxic and perennially mismanaged system. In this way, then, and in a manner unlike any before thanks to the over-saturation of information through digital media platforms, we are all unanimously complicit in the principal objective and operation of everyday life, namely the sanctification of power through capital.
In this respect no one is off the hook. Ten years ago today, for the first time in recent memory, the bully got punched back. To ignore this obvious reality embraces a total ignorance of historical fact.
Doesn't matter if it was ten years ago or ten minutes--as long as people are fighting for basic survival under the iron-fisted rule of capital, the real tragedy is happening the same place it always has: out in the streets.
Yes, it’s all happening right outside your window, whether you choose to admit it or not. Take a good look sometime if you don't believe me. Or better yet, go to the mirror. Open your fucking eyes and look carefully. Think about what the fuck it is that is making you so fucking miserable. Can you still see that view outside your window? Good. Look back and forth between mirror and street as needed to make the necessary connections, till it registers what the fuck the problem really is. Stare in the face, if just this once, the things that are making you so miserable and alienated and be done with it. Be honest with yourself. For once in your miserable fucking life.
And today instead of crying over the dead in sanctimonious and false eulogy, why don’t you go out and live a little while you still can? It’s the only honorable thing to do, the only decent commemoration of the dead to be made on this solemn day or any other.
Take heed: For once I know what the fuck I’m talking about. Do you?
The year 2001 should not be repeated
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