The Last Three Days

I Want to Torture YOU!


On the anniversary of September 11th one would expect some sanctimony, a lot of political posturing, unsanctimonious press coverage, and a generally quiet public, with most taking in the day with some reflection. Barflys across the United States probably decided that Monday was a good day for an early drink, to accompany the gripes about media organs wearing this tragedy like a Mardi Gras crucifiction float, the jagged, bravery of firefighters and ER teams, their pink faces among the wreckage like wounds, the walls of paper, the daydream of falling bodies, the grain of George W. Bush's face as he made his solemn vows, the clouds, the televisions, and the televisions still staring at them in the bar, the fuzzy eye that we all stared into five years ago and wondered, for most of us, and felt huge. I was working in a bar Monday, and some of these things crossed our minds, but not much. It has after all been some time and for many of us the wounds have come a long way. But they haven't dissapeared, for me at least. Only rarely am I irretrievably compelled to binge on the imagery, watching footage of the plane crashing into the tower over and over again on Youtube, the falling bodies never hitting the ground, the towers never really falling because they would be resurected again moments later, from one angle, another, my eyes like fingers running over the length of a scar, tearing at the rise and corrugation of it, twisting the skin. This is the awful fantasy that this tragedy presents us: the innability to bury the dead, the blind belief in a leader who replays the pit-stench fear of the day like a human recorder on loop, the orderly repetition of flags like a nationwide quilt, the bleeding miraculous idol of ourselves, the belief that if somehow we can conceive of the wrong then it will somehow resurrect the mass body of the rubble.

I stayed away from the media altogether Monday, and thought mostly about what I've said. I began reading the network news and blog features on Tuesday, only to feel anger clenching my chest. What a couple of days. Pakistan has decided to stop what amounts to the criminilization of rape in their country, which is the repeal of Islamic law which says women must produce four male eyewitnesses to the rape, or be prosecuted for adultery, an offfense punishable by prison; then there is the war in Afghanistan which was won handily and now, due to military incompetence, particularly regarding the "work" of Dyncorps Corporation there in burning the poppy fields of farmers and leaving them to starve, which recalls the finale of Frankenstein, only that seems too optimistic, now is being lost in slow motion. Worst of all, the president acting like a thug in his interview with Matt Laeur, who stood tall against him, of all people to surprise me this week. I didn't realize that on the anniversary of 9-11 he is pushing for a bill, which seems crafted in the strange basement of Cheney's mind, to bypass the Geneva convention. This is how it slips away, nearly invisible shades of grey. And Bush telling Lauer "Look, I protect you and your family at night, Matt, don't forget that." I can't hate the man, but I can be frustrated and God knows I will be. When 9-11 happened, I wondered whether that flight had been the one my parents, also flying out of Boston, were on. For the several hours I waited for their call I pondered the desire for revenge I felt, the futility of it, the moral stupdity of abstract pacifism, the inhumanity of waging war. I know Bush changed that moment too, but I think mainly the bully in him, his unthinking strength, was sanctified in his mind, given purpose by God. Five years later he celebrates the intelligence failure that was 9-11 with the flatulant trumpeting of false intelligence, as does Cheney, regarding the link between Saddam and Al Queda, and tells lies of political expediency to cover his zeal for breaking down the Geneva Convention, waterboarding it in legal babble until it says whatever he wants it to say, even as he ruins Blair, his truest ally in the war on terror. This is not about me or my job at the bar, or the others bathed in TV light wherever they are in America, it is about George Bush's God and Osama Bin Laden's God, and neither God endowed with the intelligence of belief. What a stupid entry for the history books these days are passing through.