Political analysis
9.11 Resurrected
- By Chronically Pissed
- September 09, 2006
Chapter 1
My cell phone robs my alarm clock of its existential purpose by ringing eight minutes before the ordained hour. Probably another bill collector calling to insinuate that he has powers which extend beyond his pathetic little cubicle in Teaneck, New Jersey. I reach for it anyway – could be Luisa calling to say that she’s decided to quit the cruise ship gig, dump the home-owning chef in Manhattan and come split rent with me in Philadelphia,
No such luck. It’s my other co-dependent, Patrick. Recently divorced, newly corrupt: he’s recently put notch number two in his born-again bedpost, which constitutes an even larger step than having discovered the joys of alcohol with reckless abandon. I still haven’t figured out whether he was trying to save me or escape when we became friends and roommates.
“Hey man,” the standard conversation starter. “Are you up?” He knows that if I were, I’d already be getting my morning dose of MSNBC.
“Not quite.”
“Turn on the news, man.” This is not uncommon. I’m a news junkie, he’s an enabler. A celebrity probably died. At worst, there’s been another school shooting.
“What’s up? Where are you?”
“I’m in the car.” I begin to detect more than the usual passive curiosity in his voice. “They’re saying a plane just hit the World Trade Center.”
I wander down the hall, more pleased that I can do so in the buff than worried about anything that might be happening in the news. Patrick fills me in on the scant information being provided by WXPN. I scratch my balls, which prompts me to consider having a quickie with myself before I get sucked into the news vacuum.
“I’ll call you when I find out what’s up,” hanging up nanoseconds after I’ve started to piss, but before I’ve subjected him to the indignity of hearing my stream hit the water. I take a moment to engage my imagination, wondering what this scenario will look like and which rich idiot with a Lear jet and 20 hours of flying time has gone and gotten himself splattered all over New York. But the cerebral exertion is too much once I’m no longer hydrously tethered to the toilet. I throw on some clothes (to avoid giving the neighbors a superiority complex) and head to the living room.
I grab the remote and turn on the tube as I head back toward the fridge. The tone of the coverage – sparse, raw, theme music-less – immediately conveys that something out of the ordinary is happening, something that induces the talking heads to worry less about exposing the teeth that got them their jobs. They shuffle paper around and wait for Tom Brokaw to show up.
Eggs on the stove as I learn little more than what Patrick told me. The smoke billowing from the tower is definitely odd. Odder perhaps than the fact that I’ve only recently learned to crack an egg properly, just shy of my 25th birthday. I call Patrick back with nothing interesting to say.
“Yeah man, this is weird,” I gurgle through a swig of orange juice.
“I’m out of the car. What’s happening?”
“I’m not sure, but it definitely wasn’t some little prop jet. You should see the fucking cloud of smoke coming out of that thing.”
“Wow, dude.” (We’re not surfers, I swear.) “How the hell do you fly into the World Trade Center?”
“I don’t know man, but he definitely took a bunch of people with him. There are easily three or four floors on fire by the looks of it.”
“Gotta run. I’ll call you on a break.”
I’m still thinking about which errands I’ll have time to run before my two o’clock rehearsal when the south tower takes a hit.
Fuck errands. Fuck rehearsal, for that matter. This just got interesting. I settle into the recliner, start into my egg sandwich and wait for Tom Brokaw to show up.
It’s been ten minutes since the second plane hit. The news breaks that the President will address the nation from an undisclosed location in St. Louis, where he’d been in the middle of a speech promoting his plan to re-industrialize the rust belt by creating incentives to develop and build new environmental technology in its urban centers. The Republicans are humoring him, knowing that a “yes” vote will look good to their constituents, while they quietly strip away the funds that would make it viable. If they’re lucky, they’ll get him to veto his own pet project on principle.
“We go live now, to President Gore in St. Louis,” the anchor says with palpably frayed nerves.
Gore’s first eight months in office have been mildly disappointing. The Republicans hate him almost as much as they hated Clinton. If they’ve tempered their belligerence at all, I think it’s because Gore is what they’d call a died-in-the-wool, “San Francisco Liberal,” with positions they can simply oppose on the merits. With Clinton, they had to look hard for positions that they were vigorously opposed to. When they couldn’t find enough of those, they started making them up and even reversing themselves just to stick it to Slick Willy.
Gore hasn’t had the balls to play rough. In one respect, I’m proud of him for that. Why stoop to their level? On the other hand, this was supposed to be our chance to make some inroads on the left. Clinton set us up beautifully, despite his second-term troubles. Now it just feels like we’re cruising along with three quarters of a dwindling tank. Lieberman isn’t helping matters, crusading to censor video games and other useless bullshit. Who the fuck cares? You’re the first Jewish vice-president in history – do something useful, for the love of Christ!
“My fellow Americans,” the president begins. He is clearly as rattled as anyone watching, but manages to look and sound composed. “Our nation is under attack. A coordinated series of attacks, using commercial airliners, began at 8:46 this morning and, at this moment, we cannot be sure that they are finished. I have ordered every plane within our airspace to land immediately and all others to turn back to their original destinations. A military escort will greet any aircraft that fails to comply with this order. I have put every level of law enforcement on the highest level of alert.
“Very little information is available right now, but rest assured that we are currently devoting every ounce of our resources to saving lives and preventing further harm. You will hear from me at regular intervals in the coming hours and days.
“God bless America,”
22 minutes later, American Airlines Flight #77 is shot down as it approaches Washington, D.C.
24 minutes after that, the south tower collapses.
Seven minutes later, United Airlines Flight #93 plummets into a field 232 miles west of me.
Twenty two minutes later, the north tower falls.
****
I don’t have flashbulb memories. Details fall out of my head as reliably as the hair from my “crop circles.” These are the quarter-sized bald spots that have come and gone, in various locations, from my scalp and beard ever since I met Luisa. To be fair, that’s just when I noticed them, upon shaving my head for the first time. For all I know, they’ve been buried beneath my otherwise thick head of dark, brown hair for years.
The specifics of this morning will be muddy within a month. I know it – and this time I lament it, because this is different. I ponder what it would be like to wake up from a coma a week or a month after these events, having missed out on the shared experience, lacking the connection that bonded those of us who watched from our living rooms, offices, schools and prison cells. I wonder if I’ll feel that way when I’m sitting in a bar with friends, five years from now, listening to intricate chronicles of this day. I wonder if my friends will be fabricating their accounts, just as I have long suspected that people do when they want (need?) to inject themselves into the storyline.
At 10:37 – one hour after AA#77 is shot down, nine minutes after the second tower collapse – the President is back on the air. He steps into the frame awkwardly, tie and jacket off, sleeves literally rolled up.
“My fellow citizens,” he addresses what I imagine is the single largest audience that has ever assembled to listen to anything. “Our world got very small today. Without even beginning to guess how much loss we’ve suffered today, it should already be clear that we’ve reached a crossroads in our journey – as a nation and as a global community.
“The people responsible for these heinous acts will be dealt with swiftly and severely. More importantly though, we must act quickly, in union with all civilized people, to understand and eradicate the roots of the terror we experienced today. We must deal unrelentingly with radicals who would harm us, and we must also be prepared to make the kinds of sacrifices that will preserve the integrity and prosperity of this great land. We must not hesitate. We must not look back. Today we are the greatest nation on earth. We did not get here without sacrifice – and without it, we will not stay.
“For now, go home to your families. Gather with your neighbors. Break bread, mend fences and search for the strength we will need, as a nation, to respond to and recover from this day.”
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Hey, I just wanted to say that I really thought this story was creative. I laughed and I practically cried hoping that it was only true that we had Gore in those shoes on that sad day. It’s still a horrible memory and always makes me angry to think about. All those things squandered….all those opportunities wasted.
762 days ago by CrazyBob