The Never-Ending 9/11

[IDemo]

Remembering those who led us into ruin

by Bill Cope
Boise Weekly

"So let us understand what we are becoming part of, exactly which circle of hell we are entering, and while we pray these next days and months, let us not forget to pray for a way out." (BW, Opinion, "That Once Again Our Tears Run Sweet," Sept. 17, 2001)

The above was written over a September weekend in 2001, but it was conceived three days earlier at 7:03 a.m. MDT. My wife woke me. "You need to see this. Something's happening," she said as she switched on the little TV on the dresser. Per usual, I threw my legs over the side and used the torque to sit up on the edge of the bed, just as 2 feet from my face, the black screen blossomed into a bright New York morning. Before I had time to put on my specs or shake the grog from my senses, Flight 175 flew in from the right and penetrated the south tower like a dagger into a throat. My first coherent thought of that day was that I had just witnessed people die. There was no way then of knowing how many, but I knew it was a lot.

The next day, a man told me that the abomination we had watched unfold would be yesterday's stale news within a week, that Americans would soon shuffle on like they always do, from one temporary hot flash to the next. Another man told me it was all an East Coast thing, a New York thing, and that it had nothing to do with us, sequestered here in Idaho. I was astounded those two men could actually have responded to a horror of this magnitude with such surreal foolishness, but I didn't bother to argue with either of them. I could only walk away and shake my head in private.

It took years--two wars, tens and tens of thousands more dead, and the absolute corruption of America's most noble ideals--before I could put what those two men said in some sort of perspective. Referring to just one of the many eruptions of irrationality and delirium that followed in the wake of 9/11, a friend said he could explain to his own satisfaction what was happening to Americans only if he understood it all as a massive and lingering nervous collapse over the great trauma our nation had suffered. That on that dreadful day, we had been wounded deeper and scarred more permanently than we could ever have imagined at the time.

http://www.boiseweekly.com/boise/the-never-ending-911/Content?oid=2511454

Cope gets the day of the attack wrong - it was a Tuesday, not Thursday. But he pretty well describes the Shock Doctrine after-effects we have all experienced.