Paul Krugman on 9/11
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/the-years-of-shame/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto
Money quote:
I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.
Um…because you are a gutless coward unable to defend your pontification?
September 11th, 2001
It was such a beautiful morning.
New York in early fall is just a beautiful place. The heat of summer has broken, and it’s not quite cold and rainy yet. The days start cool, but by midday warm up as a reminder of the summer that is ebbing away. The air is different, too. The muggy summer humidity is gone, replaced with a dry, crisp smell that is simply wonderful. It reminded me of new beginnings. An odd thing to associate with the season of harvest, I know, but that’s what fall in New York reminded me of. New beginnings and endless possibilities.
I’d had a great few days. My wife and I had just gotten back from a wonderful vacation, and spent the weekend visiting with good friends. It was a wonderful time.
I’ve written before about what happened that day, and I’m not going to rehash it here. I’d specifically planned to not write a 9/11 post, because I kind of felt that everything that I had needed to say had been said. But Micheal Bane ripped the scab off of that wound and I felt like I needed to say some things.
No description that I can give you can really capture the horror of that day and the days that followed. I could tell you of the stench of the fires that lingered for days after the towers fell. I could talk about the flyers that hung from seemingly every surface in the city with pictures of the missing that eventually became pictures of the dead. But describing that event is like trying to describe the Grand Canyon to a blind man…at a fundamental level, you lack a common frame of reference.
I can’t think of a single person in New York at that time who didn’t loose someone that they knew that day. I can think of at least a half a dozen people I knew who were killed. Not anyone that I was very close to…acquaintances, mostly, but good people who didn’t deserve to die that way.
I did loose a friend on 9/11, a very good friend whom I’d known since grammar school. He wasn’t killed, not at all. But he and I talked in the aftermath of 9/11, and he placed the blame squarely on America’s shoulders, and told me how we needed to understand how we had caused this. I knew that we didn’t see the world the same way, not at all. He was a goomsman at my wedding. We’ve not spoken in 10 years.
It was a good year in the war on terror. The SEALs got Osama bin Laden and tossed his bullet riddled corpse out of a helicopter. On balance, the world is probably a little better place without him in it. It’s a strangely anti-climactic end. When the bombast of the moment fades, you realize that he was just one in a long line of people willing to try to hurt and kill us for no reason other than that they hate us. And you realize that at the end of the day, all we did was kill some ineffectual loon living among his own filth in some pit in Pakistan.
The home front has changed, and not for the better. We’ve lost simple joys, like being able to greet an out of town visitor at the gate of their airplane. When traveling, we have the choice of having nude pictures of ourselves taken, or having our genitalia fondled by strangers. We’re barked at, put into chutes like cattle, and ordered to remove our clothes. We search our children in the name of fairness. We’re raising a generations of Americans who will see this as the new normal.
It’s not all bad, of course. Support for gun rights has never been higher in my lifetime. When I was a new gunnie, and people found out that I carried a gun, they would ask, “Why would you want to do that?” Now they are more apt to ask “How hard was it to get your permit?” or “Do you think I should, too?” or more and more often “I carry X. What do you carry?” But there is a sadness there, too, in that this new awareness has come a such a great cost.
This year, for the first time, I’m going to have to tell my daughter why Daddy cries on this day. She’s old enough, I think, to understand what happened. But it kills me that this will be the beginning of lost innocence for her. Because that is what this time reminds me of now. Lost innocence. It marks the day that America, and being an American, changed forever. And nothing can put that Genie back into the bottle.
Downrange Radio 9/11 episode
Micheal Bane has recorded a special, commemorative 9/11 anniversary episode of Downrange Radio.
I’m seldom at a loss for words, but I’m in a weird place right now. I’ll just say that it took me back to that day, and that I think it’s worth your time.
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Do your part!
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