Friday, September 11, 2009

Eight Years Ago. How you and I really remember 9/11

I was painting houses on the other side of Utah Lake in what is now a nauseating blur of urban sprawl.

Hearing about the towers was at first scary, but then it got exciting. Secretly, I wanted more buildings to come down. I wanted more deaths and more destruction. Secretly, we all wanted more buildings to come down. We all wanted more deaths and destruction. It's not that we actually wanted the suffering and death, or hated America. Rather, we're just trained by our films and news to find destruction entertaining.

Thanks to destruction-porn film makers such as Roland Emmerich and Michael Bay, 9/11 wasn't as terrifying as it could have been. Instead it was the best damn reality-tv ever. It was free entertainment. We could safely enjoy the show from within the comfort of our couches on our big screen televisions and radio broadcasts.

And of course to top it off, we had a dessert-filled follow-up with devastating floods and tsunamis--enough to pump blood into the erections of any destructophile.

9 comments:

  1. I feel this way about hurricanes, being from a coastal area. I know that there is a good chance that they will cause death and massive property destruction should they hit land, but its so exciting to see them get big and powerful.

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  2. There's a small part of me which read that and felt ill over it, but unfortunately I think you're right. Why else did we spend the day rushing from television set to television set, why was the video of the towers falling played over and over again. We're a sick civilization!

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  3. Why did we spend the day rushing from television set to television set? Because people were afraid. I lived in a town where many people commuted to the city each day for work. Kids at my high school were glued to the TV because they were terrified that their parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends were hurt. And for the rest of us who weren't related to commuters, we were glued to the TV because we were afraid for those who were. And as for the rest of the country, I'd like to hope that their TV-viewing was out of a similar sympathy.

    So I get your point--and I do agree that people have a nauseating thirst for violent action, that the entertainment industry only encourages up that thirst, and news media too often exploits that thirst to beef up their ratings--however, I don't think being insensitive about the events of that day contributes anything constructive to the problem. ...Didn't like this post however tongue-in-cheek it was (or wasn't).

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  4. Ditto. I definitely didn't have any of those feelings during 9/11. Being glued to the TV had nothing to do with the typical violence portrayed in media. It had to do with a personal attack on our nation, etc. Maybe others viewed 9/11 as an epic scene from an action movie, but I certainly didn't...

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  5. ...but can Bryant & I still hang out with you and Angela tomorrow even if you think I'm in massive denial? :)

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  6. I thought about your previous 9/11 posts when I turned on the TV this morning and saw that MSNBC was rebroadcasting the original September 11, 2001 news broadcast, uninterrupted and in real time. CNN has done the same thing in previous years. These rebroadcasts aren't about remembering the victims of 9/11--they're about reliving the drama of that day. I think there is an excitement factor. It's no surprise that within only a few years of 9/11, we already had two major motion pictures based on it (World Trade Center and United 93).

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  7. No "we all" most certainly did NOT secretly hope for more death and destruction.

    Wow. I'm stunned to my foundation. Yet that unspeakably vile admission is not the even the worst of it.

    You confess that human misery on a grand scale gives you an ERECTION, but reserve "nauseating" as a word for other people's...homes.

    Please show the world a decency your parents couldn't. Don't reproduce.

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  8. We remember 9/11 ONLY because it was dramatic.

    More destruction/death/cruelty occured this past week in murders/drunk driving accidents/domestic violence, but we're numb to that boring stuff.

    9/11 was fresh, new, and exciting.

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  9. Crustybastard,

    Methinks you missed the point.

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