9/12 and Failed Tests

In the days after 9/11 I would put this song on and have a good cry

This year the 9/11 anniversary hit me harder than usual. It might be because at my school in NYC there are maybe a handful of students who were alive when in it happened. As fewer people have a living memory, the official memory of the event has now been hijacked by militarism and nationalism. It's become a time for empty patriotic gestures and stupid platitudes. The shock, horror, and human loss are gone.

That event was a test of this nation, and this nation failed. Muslim and Sikh men were targeted by random acts of violence, but they were not even discussed in the public discourse. Muslim students I TAed spoke of the terrible things strangers said to them in the weeks following 9/11, but few seemed to be sticking up for them. The United States immediately moved to a war footing, starting an invasion of Afghanistan that still hasn't ended. Bin Laden wasn't liquidated until ten years later.

The public was distracted by the Bush administration's adventure in Iraq, which a majority erroneously thought was somehow connected to 9/11. The propaganda offensive worked. That war too is an ongoing disaster. The public support for war also ended up giving the Bush administration the validation it needed to engage in systemic torture.

At the end of the Bush administration the last tatters of America's moral authority were gone, and its power in the world fast ebbing out. It was one of the biggest self-owns in the history of the great powers. 9/11 was a test of this country, and it failed that test horrendously.

Donald Trump is another test this country has failed. He came to office without a majority or even a plurality, has behaved like a wannabe despot and the political opposition has done little to reign him in. Children are being put in prison camps but there's hardly a word about it. Sure Democrats won the House back, but Trump's using the Senate to remake the judiciary. That's likely going to prevent any positive political reform for another generation.

The country has managed to survive its failed test eighteen years ago, but this new failure may very well represent a point of no return. Dying empires are not pretty things. I just never thought I'd be living in one. Such is life.