Did 9/11 change everything?

[MostlyAmused]

I want to post an exerpt of an essay I wrote a couple of days ago. While the topic is 9/11 remembrance, it also speaks to issues I think are central in this election. (By the way, I know my post count is low, but I've been reading here since the last election cycle, and sending others here for information -- so please be patient with me if I've posted in the wrong forum, etc.)

If 9/11 had changed everything, the goals of the terrorists would have been achieved. What did they want but the destruction of the ideal that America represents? The goal was the destruction of this nation by the means of financial ruin brought about by the continuing reverberations of terror.

I saw the Towers fall again, graphic footage broadcast on TV at a political event, thrust at me without warning the form of a video montage. An intentional reverberation.

And I thought, what an obscenely perfect image of the goal of the terrorists that visual was. A strike to the heart of this nation, right at the spot that would cause the internal beams we assumed were impervious to buckle, leaving this nation to collapse under the weight of its own greatness, for everything that we and those who have come before us have built floor by floor with hope and faith and honor and intellect and sweat and blood and tears and love... to bring that Great Experiment in an instant to dust, with the floor beneath our feet literally falling away. It was a horrific image to see again, and it was a horrific metaphor to follow through to conclusion.

http://www.throughthefears.blogspot.com/2008/09/rememberance-and-honor.html

[SheilaT]

1. In the aftermath of 9/11, when the mantra

"Everything has changed" was being repeated over and over again, I kept on saying, no, it hasn't. The day to day life of almost no one was changed. Yes, the day-to-day life of a number of people in NYC did change, but once the planes resumed flying, other than the idiocy of enhanced security, air travel remained the same. Gas prices hardly changed, other than some brief price-gouging, which was quickly squashed. But everyone, especially the media, kept on saying, "Everything has changed" and so with any lie repeated over and over, most people believed it. And so the Patriot Act was passed, restricting our freedoms, and further abrogations of the Constitution have occurred. Innocent people have been jailed for years, and we're told just to go shopping.

"They hate us for our freedoms" is the other lie, and is used to restrict our freedoms.

[MostlyAmused]

2. I suppose I left out the part with my own answer.

My answer to the question is both the same and different. I posted the part of the essay that asks the question, but I suppose I left out the part that offers my own answer.

For me, some things changed -- I had the same responses I've had in my own life when confronted with sudden violence, to question how to embrace reality, with the illusion of safety I'd taken for granted torn away.

Maybe I should have just pasted in the whole thing:

This morning, I woke with an instant awareness of the date (rarely happens) and the sentence in my head, "9/11 changed everything."

That sentiment has always bothered me. It's repeated over and over as a justification for the intentional erosion of the foundations that this wonder of a country was built upon: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the brilliant and evolved ideas, principles, hopes, and dreams of the founding fathers (and mothers). Their insistence that a more perfect union should at least be attempted. Their reasoned audacity to believe that this union was possible, that this ideal which had not even yet been achieved was worth dying for, worth risking everything.

If 9/11 had changed everything, the goals of the terrorists would have been achieved. What did they want but the destruction of the ideal that America represents? The goal was the destruction of this nation by the means of financial ruin brought about by the continuing reverberations of terror.

I saw the Towers fall again, graphic footage broadcast on TV at a political event, thrust at me without warning the form of a video montage. An intentional reverberation.

And I thought, what an obscenely perfect image of the goal of the terrorists that visual was. A strike to the heart of this nation, right at the spot that would cause the internal beams we assumed were impervious to buckle, leaving this nation to collapse under the weight of its own greatness, for everything that we and those who have come before us have built floor by floor with hope and faith and honor and intellect and sweat and blood and tears and love... to bring that Great Experiment in an instant to dust, with the floor beneath our feet literally falling away. It was a horrific image to see again, and it was a horrific metaphor to follow through to conclusion.

I traveled to Ground Zero after the rescue efforts were complete, but when there were still flames rising from below, when the dust of destruction and human flesh was still in the air. So many people did. Because we wanted to know. We wanted to witness the reality. We wanted to mark what had happened. We wanted to honor and remember.

I choose to honor by continuing to hold to the foundation, to have faith that it has not buckled, that the greatness of this nation is not something that can be destroyed by a physical act. By rejecting the assertion that the event of 9/11 changed everything. It did not, unless we as a nation turn away from the ideals that made us great. Unless we assist in that destruction.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, we were one nation, in a way that we have not been in my lifetime. Since then the cry of 9/11 has been used to chip away at the structure and ideals that define us, the foundation that was still standing on 9/12.

Someone I love suggested that I delete political or controversial references from my blog because it might cost me sales. This economy has hit all but a few in this country hard. I don't think speaking what I believe will cost me financially, but if it were to, the future of this nation matters more to me than holding on to the immediate tenuous financial security my little family is trying to protect. There is something greater, not out there somewhere in the ether, but beneath our very feet. The ideals the Founding Fathers wrote about so eloquently, the foundation they laid for us to build upon are not some pie-in-the-sky dream I can brush away. It is the ground my family walks on. If we lose our house, there is the possibility of building another. If we lose the ground under our feet, if we lose the essential liberties and ideals that are this nation, what will we have?

9/11 did not change everything. Not yet.

I love this country. So I speak. I remember. I honor what is best about us. And I have faith that what is solid and real and great still stands. I mourn. I remember. And I hold to what still stands. So far.