If it's so bloody important, why can't anyone write a new speech for the memorializing? Why can't we find a new language to refer to it? How about a name for it besides the date?
References to the past are a time-honored tradition - they cause the listener to associate the speaker's story with something Important that happened A Long Time Ago. So 9/11 is a Date Which Will Live In Infamy, like 12/6. Or was it 12/7.
Usually, though, the reference is included in a larger framework.
On the morning of September 11, 2002, people in New York City will be mourning, and marching, and singing, and lighting candles, and doing all that other commemorative stuff. They will converge on the site of the fallen towers for a memorial service. There will be a moment of silence, a eulogy, a reading of the names of everyone who died at WTC that day, a rendition of taps, and an excerpt of the Declaration of Independance.
That's it. Because all these people have retroactively become patriots, they get Taps, which is usually for military deaths. They get the Declaration of Independance, or part of it - from the 18th century. And they get a eulogy. The eulogy is a reading of the Gettysburg Address from the 19th century.
Over 3,000 people die and we can't find something better to read for them? The president will speak later, and the entire world will be convulsed in memorial services (yes, world - there's a 24-hour performance of Mozart's Requem, starting at 8:46AM in each time zone beginning with New Zealand) and vigils and prayers and angels and puppies and who knows what else. Elvis will come back from the grave to salute the dead of the day.
But the big one, the official gesture of remembrance, doesn't include any new words.
I'm kind of fond of the declaration of independence and the gettysburg address. They were important words in their day, and they are important historically and mythologically. But have you read them lately?
The declaration of independence was just that. Some rebels in some colonies were telling the King of England to take his crown and shove it. It's a revolutionary document about how everywhere everyone should be able to be governed according to the will of the people, without outside interference. If you think we live up to those principles, you're deeply confused.
The next document is the gettysburg address. This was a speech by a wartime president at the site of a viciously bloody battle in the middle of a civil war. A large chunk of the union formed out of the principles of the declaration of independence decided they didn't want to be in the union anymore. The south said, I'm taking my ball and going home - I want to govern myself, thank you very much. Lincoln disagreed, and spoke the gettysburg address at the site of the symbolic victory of Union over self-government. Speaking them together is thus kind of, well, funny.
But both documents have made it into american mythology. Parts of them are memorized by rote in american schools. The meaning is leached out by repetition without understanding.
Presumably, the part of the declaration that will be read will be the part that goes "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." We might hear something about the course of human events. We might also hear something about just powers rising from the consent of the governed. What does any of that have to do with the tragedy of 9/11?
Nothing. Not a damn thing. But because these dead are hailed as patriots, and the declaration was written by those we call patriots, it feels all warm and fuzzy to tie them together using famous words emptied of their meaning. The declaration will be read because it's always read whenever we want to feel connected to our great american nationalism.
What about the gettysburg address? That is being included as the great national eulogy. It was delivered after a bitterly-fought battle, where soldiers died for heartfelt cause. Say it with me, four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth etc etc... "from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain..."
What does this have to do with 9/11? Well, a bunch of people died and we hailed them as patriots. But they weren't soldiers. They were normal folk who died. Not the normal folk of the media exaltations, though. They were your normal run of the mill bitches, assholes and motherfuckers, just like you and me. They weren't saints. They weren't even fighting for a cause, which might elevate them. They went to work early on a bad day, and that's it. Some of them were perfectly nice people, and some of them were wifebeaters. Out of 3000, how many of them do you think molested children? How many would have liked to beat up a nigger or a raghead?
These people did not give up their lives so that the nation might live. They just died in a bad way.
But what about the "heroes", you say? What about the firemen and the cops and all the people who helped other people down the stairs and relayed "I love you" to people's loved ones? Well, what about them?
Good for them, I say. They did good. They did the right thing. I'm proud of them. People should be nicer to cops and firefighters, who have hard jobs. They did the right thing under pressure.
Has the world gotten so bad that a person doing the right thing under pressure should be canonized?
People often do the right thing under pressure. The people who are impressive are the people who do the right thing without the pressure of imminent death and destruction, when they imagine looking God in the eye, when adrenalin drives them. People often do the wrong thing under pressure, too. Like running into a burning building without checking in with command and without proper communications or support.
Here's the thing. I'd not be so harsh on this topic if the rest of the world took a mediated approach. If the media wasn't full of angels rising from the dust and hero worship and whitewashing.
I don't seek to minimize the attack, or people's genuine grief and anger. But it should be grounded in reality. It should not be the case that anyone who criticizes american foreign policy be damned as a left-wing ninny who hates America. It should not be the case that anyone who is unsurprised that parts of the world is pissed at the US is assumed to believe that the US somehow deserved to be attacked. It should not be the case that anyone who doesn't fly a flag, or worship the Heroes or pity the Families or revile the Enemy as evil is UnAmerican.
I'm as american as any of the 9/11 dead, and I guarantee you, no one's going to be reading the Gettysburg Address at my memorial service on national television because I'm a hero for dying at my desk.
And a good thing too. Hopefully, the eulogy read for me will be rather more personalized and timely. If it quotes anyone, it should place the quote in context. Any speaker for me had damn well care enough to add their own words to the mix.
Me, I'm not going to commemorate the day. Commemoration is too much like buying a plate from the Franklin Mint. I'm not going to go out of my way to honor the dead - I didn't know them. I'm not going to go out of my way to dishonor them, either. I'm also not going to hijack the 9/11 affair to forward my political agenda by tugging on the heartstrings of a grieving and angry nation, assuming the nation is actually grieving as much as the media suggests.
But if I did, I'd hire a damn good speechwriter to make up some good words that move hearts and minds of their own accord, and not because of decades of association with cataclysmic national events.
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Courtney Shiley, cshiley@mit.edu. you can send me mail