9/11 didn’t change the character of the United States, it revealed it.
“Obedience being a necessary food of the soul, whoever is definitely deprived of it is ill. Thus, any body politic governed by a sovereign ruler accountable to nobody is in the hands of a sick man.” Simon Weil, “The Needs Of The Soul”
Back from a short trip to San Francisco to visit our son who turned thirty on September 4th. Three hundred and fifty miles on Highway 101, through the oil patch on the outskirts of King City, horsehead pump jacks nodding, then Salinas and Gilroy and Prunedale and San Jose. In Gilroy, gasoline was $6.59 a gallon, diesel $8.40. Evidence of Trump’s illegal, unconstitutional war on Iran. As we neared San Francisco, the billboards advertised AI solutions and applications. We saw Waymo driverless cars near the airport, and once in the city saw many more. All-electric Jaguars, the rolling embodiment of a capitalist’s wettest nocturnal dream, a large initial investment offset by minimal labor costs, no fractious employees to deal with, sick days, overtime, vacations, payroll taxes or unions. The Waymo armada rolled in juxtaposition with Doordash drivers on scooters zipping this way and that. Gig economy servants to those who can afford the city’s high rents. We saw a few Fentanyl victims, trapped in rigor mortis though not yet dead. Canine shit smears on the sidewalk, can and bottle prospectors, homeless sidewalk sleepers. Contrary to news reports, San Francisco isn’t dead or in the throes of apocalypse — bars, restaurants and coffee joints were busy and tourists were evident, trailing snippets of language — German, Chinese, Korean. Hole-in-the-wall diners, pancakes with bacon on the side, coffee served in thick white mugs. On Sunday we saw cyclists and dozens of people sunning themselves in a grassy park. The famous cable cars clanged past. My son and I visited bookstores and hiked up Jones Street for a view of Alcatraz. Clear skies, temperatures in the mid-70s, a welcome respite from the heat in Santa Barbara. Impressive architecture stands as testament to the time when San Francisco was a working-class city, a union city, a city that built things.
The 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks came and went. I saw headlines but didn’t read them. My daughter was eight days old on that fateful day, and I remember the question I asked my wife as we sat glued to the television: do you think this attack will prompt our political leaders to contemplate American behavior in the world? The answer arrived soon enough, with George W. Bush, an illegitimate president declaring that the terrorists attacked us because they hated our freedoms. Bullshit then, bullshit now, and it took no great intelligence or powers of perception to know what would follow. What should have been handled as a crime was instead used as the pretext for a global war on a tactic, terrorism, typically employed by weaker actors on stronger ones. Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers hailed from our close Middle East ally, Saudi Arabia, but the US attacked Afghanistan instead and the public forgot about Saudi involvement. In true imperial fashion, thousands of civilian deaths and billions of dollars in destruction wouldn’t be allowed to upset our unholy relationship with a major supplier of oil.
I despised George W. Bush. His father, George Herbert Walker Bush, should have gone to prison for his role in the Iran-Contra scheme, but Yale men routinely receive second and third chances; Skull & Bones and all that white, male Protestant protective cover. That’s when any illusions about “elites” shattered for me. W’s shit-eating faux cowboy smirk made my blood boil. I was against the invasion of Afghanistan, against Shock & Awe in Iraq, against the creepy Patriot Act, though I felt like I was in a tiny minority. I remember how Susan Sontag was excoriated, and how the New York Times acted like a cheerleader; I remember the stadium flyovers and the absurd “Thank you for your service” tributes. I saw the corner America had turned long before Abu Ghraib confirmed it. This country sunk $8 trillion into failed wars and didn’t learn a damn thing. Look at us today: ardent supporters of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, and once again trapped in a war that can’t be won with “smart” bombs and cruise missiles. Stupid is as stupid does. For me the rotten cherry on top of the ill-fated War on Terror was the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the most wanted man in the world, who evaded seventeen American intelligence agencies for a full decade. The day bin Laden was killed wasn’t a victory, it just brought a chapter in a reign of failure to a close.
9/11 didn’t change the character of the United States, it revealed it. And by electing a con man with no redeeming human qualities not once, but twice, the United States now stands naked before the world, a world that would like nothing better than to throw a hood over our head and attach electrodes to our genitals.
