House of Eratosthenes

Out of respect to the memories of the fallen and their friends & families, I’ve been biting my tongue on this. Now that it’s September 12, I have to say: I’m at the point where I dread 9/11 commemoration ceremonies.

My beef is not that we’re remembering. Quite the opposite. I want this to be remembered across the generations, just like Pearl Harbor. Pearl was, after all, a slaughter of thousands of innocents; so was this. But as I see one September 11 after another passing us by, like boxcars on a moving train heading into our past, I’m noticing a trend in the ceremonies and it seems to be a trend in motion. Perhaps it’s just my imagination, or my perspective as I become more sensitized to it. But there is an appearance that with each year, there is greater and greater weight placed on the tragedy of these three thousand lives, with so much potential for living ahead of them, prematurely snuffed out — and less & less emphasis placed on how unnatural this was. That this was a man-made act, not a bridge collapsing or a storm wiping out a crowded metropolitan area or a giant lizard crushing it underfoot. To borrow some words from our current President, “someone else made that happen.” That part is losing emphasis. Oh yes, the ceremonies are somber by their very nature and there are reasons why we don’t dwell on this. I get all that. But erosion is erosion, and when it’s erosion of something so important, I have to question whether the mission of propriety is being achieved.

I have no idea what I can recommend as a solution to the problem I’m calling out. Memorial services are occasions on which we try to achieve some healing, and we need to heal our divisions as well as our spiritual wounds. We should be trying to come together, and we don’t do that when we swear blood feuds on other countries, or terror organizations, or individuals. But the problem is there, for sure. Our divisions are not being healed when all’s said & done. After the crowds disperse and the ornaments are put away and all the other take-down chores are completed, people go from September 12 to September 10 of the next year solidly ensconced into their respective sides alongside the deep and wide fissure. Which is demarcated by the question: Just how precious is human life, anyway? It’s nice that we all agree we should be sad when it’s snuffed out. But is it worth defending? Vigorously? Swiftly?

Terribly?

And if it cannot be defended, is it worth avenging?

Taking Care o' Business I completely understand the concerns of people who respond in the negative, for sake of something called “peace.” Well here’s another question: When you sacrifice something for peace, but swear you’ll always honor the memory of whatever you’ve sacrificed for it, and then the period of peace eventually ends as so many eras of peace in human history have; hasn’t this immortal memory then been effectively obliterated? Robbed of its supposed immortality? And if that be the case, would this not be a betrayal? Aren’t these all things that should find consideration within us, as we ponder the price of the latest peace?

The culture within our country, in fact the one that spans several countries throughout the civilized world, is being deluged lately by a kind of “death worship.” However distasteful it may be to ponder that death worshipers are invading memorial ceremonies, and I suppose that may mean it’s distasteful to suggest it as well — it’s hard to dismiss it as a possibility. There is a sickening surfeit, in every sound clip of these solemn occasions, of passive-voice statements like “his/her life was so tragically taken away” or “cut short.” To get the real story, you have to sit down in isolation, and read. One article I saw yesterday beautifully described the everyday life of the pilot of Flight 77, and then dropped the bomb that is the best intelligence we’ve gathered to date: Mohammed Atta killed him by slashing his throat.

That’s clearly not fitting for a large, general, assembled audience, and not at all comforting to the man’s family. You can’t read that aloud at a memorial service. I said earlier I don’t have a solution in mind for the problem, I only know the problem is real. Because the fact that someone conspired and then acted to make all this happen — is important. It matters. It’s part of the memory because it’s part of the event.

In the first few years after the attacks, I heard the phrase “never again” quite a few times. Didn’t have to wait long for yet another utterance of it, in fact. It would be nice to hear something like that again, from someone in a position of authority, whose decisions matter.

With that not happening, I am gleaning from the tributes a terrible unspoken overtone, more unsettling than any outburst about throat-cutting: That we’re all just — here. We’re teeming with life and that’s wonderful, if the life gets cut short that makes a lot of other people really sad. But it’s not like there’s any actual point to it all. We’re just kinda like grubs in a log, hoping we don’t get scooped out by a predator. But whatever happens, happens.

We know we have peers, colleagues, neighbors and fellow countrymen who have always thought exactly this. We argue with them, and they argue with us, about all sorts of tangential issues — military action, social spending, judicial activism, union work rules, abortion, euthanasia, prayer in public schools, the Obama family vacations — when in reality, we’re arguing about that underlying question. What is life? Is there a point to it? Are we sentient beings with dignity and purpose, or are we just grubs in a rotting log?

Recordings of broadcasts from years ago, strongly suggest to me I’m not getting more sensitized. There is a real movement I’m seeing, a movement toward the passive-voice memorial service. And that, in turn, suggests the nihilists are coming out on top in this schism…without even directly addressing the question. Winning the war without firing a shot. And using a most distasteful battleground to do it, each eleventh day of every ninth month.

It has been suggested that the reason we were attacked in the first place, far from having anything to do with occupation of some far-off land, or our Hollywood sluts promoting degeneracy, or our support for Israel, is nothing more or less than our respect for the power and autonomy of the individual. Every baby born, no matter how or where, may grow up to be President. Or to do something wonderful, like cure cancer. Americans believe the potential is there, and it exists at the level of the individual. I don’t know how you go about proving or refuting the idea that this was the primary motivation of the terrorists. Individualism is a concept that exists universally, in all societies, in some form whether the mad mullahs wish to acknowledge it or not — each jihadi can figure out for himself why he wants to choke the life out of the serpent that is the Great Satan. But if that’s the case, then it logically follows that there’s something to this concern I have, for it would be another piece of evidence that the attacks are still in the process of reaching success, years and years later, in their goal at inception: To derogate the individual. That’s one thing the statists, over there, have in common with our statists over here. At both sides of the globe the statist nurtures a fondness for passive-voice statements over active-voice statements, and a preference for the rights, privileges, dignity and concerns of the collective, over that of the individuals within it.

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The Passive-Voice 9-11 AnniversariesThursday, September 12th, 2013

The Passive-Voice 9-11 Anniversaries
Thursday, September 12th, 2013