The Nightmare Century (A 9/11 Reflection)

No Future for You

Every September 11th, I take time to reflect. I remember the feeling of confusion and sheer horror of that day, something our society has tried to paper over with mountains of 9/11 kitsch. I remember the attacks on American Muslims and Sikhs, another horrible thing swept into the memory hole. Living in the time of quarantine, however, the horror of 9/11 and its bloody aftermath almost seems quaint. We are approaching 200,000 deaths. The president still refuses to have a national response. 

I still remember on 9/11 when I realized the enormity of the loss of life. I cried not just for the dead, but for the future. I knew that this horror would lead to many others that would take even more lives, and less than two years later the United States invaded Iraq.

After that came George W Bush's reelection, then Katrina. The nation's capacity for self-harm seemed limitless. 

When Barack Obama was election in 2008, there was a reason that his "hope" message was so resonant. The last eight years looked pretty hopeless to a lot of people my age. His election signaled that perhaps the rest of my life would not be a litany of disasters and self-inflicted crises. That turned out to be false hope. 

During the Iraq War the BBC put out an amazing documentary series called The Power of Nightmares. It told the stories of neo-conservatives and al-Qaeda in parallel. The thesis was that post-Cold War the West had failed to live up to its promises or provide the future people wanted. Instead of offering dreams, leaders maintained their power by calling on the people's worst nightmares. The leaders could not promise you a better life, but they could stop those evil people who were out to get you. 

Obama's hope narrative offered an antidote, but he ended up being replaced by Donald Trump, the avatar of the power of nightmares. He offers no future at all, only an idealized past that never happened. His voters know he is a lying asshole, and that's why they love him. He drives the people they hate crazy, and smites them in the process. 

Masha Gessen's trenchant book on contemporary Russia is called The Future is History, and I think that phrase really sums it up. Putin was a pioneer in getting consent from the people while not offering them anything better to look forward to. Leaders today have followed his lead and mostly abandoned any idea of the future. They revel in an eternal present, Trump's constant Twitter wars and need to dominate the daily news cycle are the most obvious evidence. 

9/11 was the moment when nightmare politics swept away the last shreds of optimism in the post-Cold War world. On this day, 19 years later, I mourn the dead, but I also mourn the death of the future.