(no subject)
Sep. 7th, 2004 10:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walbournNova and Frontline had pieces tonight on the World Trade Towers. Nova did a story on the civil engineering study, and Frontline covered the political process for the design of the new Ground Zero master plan and the "Freedom Tower".
I saw the 9/11 disaster unfolding on CNN the day it happened. I was unemployed, and there was nothing to pull me away from the days of detailed coverage. My job search basically was put on hold for a month because nobody was doing 'business as usual'. At the time, I recall it being surreal and not having a strong emotional response to the images. Yet watching the coverage now is much harder to do. Probably because we knew so little of what was really going on inside those towers at the time on 9/11/01 and now we have the gory details for 3000 shattered lives.
Also, I wasn't quite so aware of my personal connection to the place. Andrea stood on top of those towers a few weeks before when she was sent to New Jersey for training by Intel. My brother now lives in downtown Manhattan, and I visited NYC for the first time this year. Somehow the whole thing seems more real today than it did three years ago, and certainly the lives lost in such terror are more vivid for me now...
All that said, I'm irritated as hell at the political use of the 9/11 tragedy by the "powers that be" to justify their jobs, the constant media obsession with it as an event caught 'on tape' so vividly, and the ignorance of all the history that took place on the same day by shortening the event's canonical name to not even include the year. Disaster has been with us since the dawn of civilization, and as sad and important as that moment was, it does not define the nation, the people, or stand out as the worst loss of life in history. Maybe it is just that it happened recently, but it seems like we have lost all sense of perspective.
As long as Bush is in the Whitehouse, I don' think we can ever heal from that day as his Presidency has been equated with it. Personally, I hope he is gone come next year. I'm not looking forward to another four years of having the phrase "On 9/11..." fill every speech of our political leadership. Until they build something on that site, the process of debating the "right" way to use the real estate keeps picking at the wound.
I don't want the nation to just forget about it, but getting past it would a step in the right direction.
I saw the 9/11 disaster unfolding on CNN the day it happened. I was unemployed, and there was nothing to pull me away from the days of detailed coverage. My job search basically was put on hold for a month because nobody was doing 'business as usual'. At the time, I recall it being surreal and not having a strong emotional response to the images. Yet watching the coverage now is much harder to do. Probably because we knew so little of what was really going on inside those towers at the time on 9/11/01 and now we have the gory details for 3000 shattered lives.
Also, I wasn't quite so aware of my personal connection to the place. Andrea stood on top of those towers a few weeks before when she was sent to New Jersey for training by Intel. My brother now lives in downtown Manhattan, and I visited NYC for the first time this year. Somehow the whole thing seems more real today than it did three years ago, and certainly the lives lost in such terror are more vivid for me now...
All that said, I'm irritated as hell at the political use of the 9/11 tragedy by the "powers that be" to justify their jobs, the constant media obsession with it as an event caught 'on tape' so vividly, and the ignorance of all the history that took place on the same day by shortening the event's canonical name to not even include the year. Disaster has been with us since the dawn of civilization, and as sad and important as that moment was, it does not define the nation, the people, or stand out as the worst loss of life in history. Maybe it is just that it happened recently, but it seems like we have lost all sense of perspective.
As long as Bush is in the Whitehouse, I don' think we can ever heal from that day as his Presidency has been equated with it. Personally, I hope he is gone come next year. I'm not looking forward to another four years of having the phrase "On 9/11..." fill every speech of our political leadership. Until they build something on that site, the process of debating the "right" way to use the real estate keeps picking at the wound.
I don't want the nation to just forget about it, but getting past it would a step in the right direction.
