Posted by Bruised at 11:48pm Jul 4 '06For Independence Day, I thought I'd spend several minutes to write my thoughts on the topic of national unity in the aftermath of September 11. It seemed it was no later than the second tower fell that the media in the United States was eager to proclaim that Americans from all walks of life had united.
ABC used "A Nation United" as its headline on the screens when reporting on the day of destruction that was September 11, 2001. TLC irritatingly announced "United we stand" in a cheery voice during its commercial breaks and showed Roots "with the nation united more than ever before". And for countless angry patriots faced with someone who questioned any aspect of the American government's policy, their self-righteous cry was "We need unity!" But how could such a false perception of a united nation possibly circulate, especially even before people had observed any reactions from their fellow Americans?
We all know that there is a sizeable portion of America who are gay or lesbian, and that about half the nation believes that homosexuality is morally wrong. Right after the tragedy, the Americans who were against recognizing the rights of gays and lesbians did not budge. Unity indeed. Apparently we were supposed to believe that gays would be on the same side with Americans who wanted to preserve sodomy laws, prevent same-sex partners from visiting each other in the hospital and make it legal to discriminate against gay households in housing. Homophobes would now accept gays as their brothers and sisters. And while the government was persecuting them with its sodomy laws (which were on the books in over a dozen states until 2003, when the nation showed its divided colors), we were supposed to believe that these gay people loved America and was siding with their government and anti-gay president. How can you possibly unite with someone when that person wants you locked up in jail?
Speaking of locked up in jail, the media would have us believe that people who used illegal drugs were "on our side now", in other words, on the side of the U.S. government. Can you imagine pot smokers being united with people who believe the pot smokers should all be in prisons? Those people still wanted marijuana to be illegal after September 11, so how could they possibly be working alongside rather than against people who smoked it?
And then there were the families of the countless Texans who were executed by George W. Bush. When Bush was governor of Texas, he executed more than 150 people, including many people who were innocent. In fact, in many cases the real killer would call up the governor's office and confess minutes before the execution was scheduled, and Bush would still proceed with killing them! Many people mourned over a relative or loved one who had died at King George's hands. And yet, in the ultimate insult to the families and friends of these Bush victims, some people announced that we were all together now, all united behind angel of death George W. Bush! We were also to believe that other people who were to be executed for things they didn't do, such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, were united with the people who were scheduled to execute them, and united with the concept of America itself.
And anyone who was under 21 on September 11, 2001 would have his or her grievances against the United States too. The country was oppressing them with curfews, insubordination laws, increasing restrictions on young drivers and laws that attempted to prevent anyone under 18 from getting pierced. Someone could be drafted (that old sexist anachronism) and forced to die for his country without ever being allowed a chance to legally taste alcohol (which meant that if you obeyed the laws of the United States, you would never get to try it if you died in war). In high schools, students were being sent to the principal's office for wearing certain clothes, receiving criminal citations for any behavior the faculty whimsically wished to label "disruptive", having their free speech on campus restricted and being forbidden to so much as cry at school or sneeze the wrong way. Faculty defended these by claiming that the Constitution of the United States (the same nation these teens were supposed to love) did not apply to them, even though there is not one mention in the Constitution of the Bill of Rights being restricted on the basis of age. And a former president, Bill Clinton, had dreamt of a uniform in every public high school. There were kids whose parents were tearing their souls apart every day who weren't allowed to be emancipated. And yet in this wretched sea of disillusionment and teen angst, talking heads would tell us that these youth were united with those who did their best to keep all these restrictions in place, and, to further stretch credibility, that ephebiphobic Americans who said all kids were violent psychopaths, idiots, or Dylan Klebold clones were proclaiming themselves united with all the youth they feared and hated.
Youth were often the victims of youth profiling, and African-Americans have often been the victims of racial profiling by the police. And yet the media wisdom after September 11 went that everyone was united with the police. Here isn't the place to argue with me about how we need police and we should all treat them as heroes, etc.; for this topic I recommend reading [private]'s classic post "Fuck cops". We were being fed the propaganda that Americans who had been racially profiled, had had drugs planted on their person or house, or had been arrested for trespassing because they were protesting were united with the same officers who had marred their record forever with an arrest. And then when a herd of swine came in and arrested 425 innocent kids on trespassing charges when they were standing around the K-mart in Houston the next summer, we were supposed to believe that teens and police were standing united because a terrorist attack had happened back in September. When I saw the news commentary in the aftermath of the attack about how the police were heroes, I wanted to vomit.
September 11 was said to put all Americans, be they native-born or immigrant, on equal standing. In the weeks of August and early September 2001, Bush was planning to naturalize all the Mexican immigrants who had come here illegally in recent years. Then, for obvious reasons, he put a sharp end to his plans after the attack. Could you imagine all those immigrants becoming united with the country's leaders now that they were doomed to remain illegals for the rest of their lives? Did you expect them to even start waving the flag?
One particular subset of immigrants (plus some native-born Americans as well) is the Arab-Americans, along with other Americans of Middle Eastern descent, such as Persians and Afghans. Because of what happened on this dreaded date of September 11, 2001, Americans were beating up Arab-Americans and hoping to have them racially profiled. And to make a bad thing worse, even Americans who weren't from the Middle East, such as Sikhs, were coming under attack in this ball of racial fury reminiscent of the Los Angeles race riots. But the media wanted us to believe that Arab and non-Arab were standing side by side. To add to the irony, the Americans who were loudly spurting "United we stand!" with their flags in their hands were the same ones who were calling for racial profiling against Arab-Americans.
But it wasn't just the Americans on the left who had reason not to unite with other Americans. There were also the members of the Timothy McVeigh right, the Americans who were members of groups like the Michigan Militia. The "What about Randy Weaver?" Americans. These people had taken part in activities that raged deeply and seethingly against the U.S. government. Frankly, did anyone expect that these people now believed the govenment could do no wrong just because some zealots drove some airplanes into some buildings?
So how is it that Americans could come to see the whole country as united during these dreary weeks in September? Using homosexuality as an example, maybe those on the right believed that after an attack on the very nature of America that got the nation into crisis mode, those Americans who were gay would get with the program and turn heterosexual. And maybe those on the left, meanwhile, believed that after witnessing an attack that showed what hate could do, one that Americans were going to have to stick together to get out of, Americans who had formerly been homophobic were now going to change and treat gays as their brothers. Meanwhile I was out there not expecting anyone to change in any direction after the attack. This is one possibility, but since I wasn't one of the people who said the country was united, I don't know for sure what was going on in these other people's minds.
Whatever the reasons for the myth of the united America, the division in America has now become almost a cliché. We had the War in Iraq, we had Lawrence v. Texas, we had Janet Jackson's mammary exposure. With a nation perhaps divided more than at any time since the Civil War, the mystery as to how such a patently implausible myth could be repeated so many times may never be solved.
ABC used "A Nation United" as its headline on the screens when reporting on the day of destruction that was September 11, 2001. TLC irritatingly announced "United we stand" in a cheery voice during its commercial breaks and showed Roots "with the nation united more than ever before". And for countless angry patriots faced with someone who questioned any aspect of the American government's policy, their self-righteous cry was "We need unity!" But how could such a false perception of a united nation possibly circulate, especially even before people had observed any reactions from their fellow Americans?
We all know that there is a sizeable portion of America who are gay or lesbian, and that about half the nation believes that homosexuality is morally wrong. Right after the tragedy, the Americans who were against recognizing the rights of gays and lesbians did not budge. Unity indeed. Apparently we were supposed to believe that gays would be on the same side with Americans who wanted to preserve sodomy laws, prevent same-sex partners from visiting each other in the hospital and make it legal to discriminate against gay households in housing. Homophobes would now accept gays as their brothers and sisters. And while the government was persecuting them with its sodomy laws (which were on the books in over a dozen states until 2003, when the nation showed its divided colors), we were supposed to believe that these gay people loved America and was siding with their government and anti-gay president. How can you possibly unite with someone when that person wants you locked up in jail?
Speaking of locked up in jail, the media would have us believe that people who used illegal drugs were "on our side now", in other words, on the side of the U.S. government. Can you imagine pot smokers being united with people who believe the pot smokers should all be in prisons? Those people still wanted marijuana to be illegal after September 11, so how could they possibly be working alongside rather than against people who smoked it?
And then there were the families of the countless Texans who were executed by George W. Bush. When Bush was governor of Texas, he executed more than 150 people, including many people who were innocent. In fact, in many cases the real killer would call up the governor's office and confess minutes before the execution was scheduled, and Bush would still proceed with killing them! Many people mourned over a relative or loved one who had died at King George's hands. And yet, in the ultimate insult to the families and friends of these Bush victims, some people announced that we were all together now, all united behind angel of death George W. Bush! We were also to believe that other people who were to be executed for things they didn't do, such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, were united with the people who were scheduled to execute them, and united with the concept of America itself.
And anyone who was under 21 on September 11, 2001 would have his or her grievances against the United States too. The country was oppressing them with curfews, insubordination laws, increasing restrictions on young drivers and laws that attempted to prevent anyone under 18 from getting pierced. Someone could be drafted (that old sexist anachronism) and forced to die for his country without ever being allowed a chance to legally taste alcohol (which meant that if you obeyed the laws of the United States, you would never get to try it if you died in war). In high schools, students were being sent to the principal's office for wearing certain clothes, receiving criminal citations for any behavior the faculty whimsically wished to label "disruptive", having their free speech on campus restricted and being forbidden to so much as cry at school or sneeze the wrong way. Faculty defended these by claiming that the Constitution of the United States (the same nation these teens were supposed to love) did not apply to them, even though there is not one mention in the Constitution of the Bill of Rights being restricted on the basis of age. And a former president, Bill Clinton, had dreamt of a uniform in every public high school. There were kids whose parents were tearing their souls apart every day who weren't allowed to be emancipated. And yet in this wretched sea of disillusionment and teen angst, talking heads would tell us that these youth were united with those who did their best to keep all these restrictions in place, and, to further stretch credibility, that ephebiphobic Americans who said all kids were violent psychopaths, idiots, or Dylan Klebold clones were proclaiming themselves united with all the youth they feared and hated.
Youth were often the victims of youth profiling, and African-Americans have often been the victims of racial profiling by the police. And yet the media wisdom after September 11 went that everyone was united with the police. Here isn't the place to argue with me about how we need police and we should all treat them as heroes, etc.; for this topic I recommend reading [private]'s classic post "Fuck cops". We were being fed the propaganda that Americans who had been racially profiled, had had drugs planted on their person or house, or had been arrested for trespassing because they were protesting were united with the same officers who had marred their record forever with an arrest. And then when a herd of swine came in and arrested 425 innocent kids on trespassing charges when they were standing around the K-mart in Houston the next summer, we were supposed to believe that teens and police were standing united because a terrorist attack had happened back in September. When I saw the news commentary in the aftermath of the attack about how the police were heroes, I wanted to vomit.
September 11 was said to put all Americans, be they native-born or immigrant, on equal standing. In the weeks of August and early September 2001, Bush was planning to naturalize all the Mexican immigrants who had come here illegally in recent years. Then, for obvious reasons, he put a sharp end to his plans after the attack. Could you imagine all those immigrants becoming united with the country's leaders now that they were doomed to remain illegals for the rest of their lives? Did you expect them to even start waving the flag?
One particular subset of immigrants (plus some native-born Americans as well) is the Arab-Americans, along with other Americans of Middle Eastern descent, such as Persians and Afghans. Because of what happened on this dreaded date of September 11, 2001, Americans were beating up Arab-Americans and hoping to have them racially profiled. And to make a bad thing worse, even Americans who weren't from the Middle East, such as Sikhs, were coming under attack in this ball of racial fury reminiscent of the Los Angeles race riots. But the media wanted us to believe that Arab and non-Arab were standing side by side. To add to the irony, the Americans who were loudly spurting "United we stand!" with their flags in their hands were the same ones who were calling for racial profiling against Arab-Americans.
But it wasn't just the Americans on the left who had reason not to unite with other Americans. There were also the members of the Timothy McVeigh right, the Americans who were members of groups like the Michigan Militia. The "What about Randy Weaver?" Americans. These people had taken part in activities that raged deeply and seethingly against the U.S. government. Frankly, did anyone expect that these people now believed the govenment could do no wrong just because some zealots drove some airplanes into some buildings?
So how is it that Americans could come to see the whole country as united during these dreary weeks in September? Using homosexuality as an example, maybe those on the right believed that after an attack on the very nature of America that got the nation into crisis mode, those Americans who were gay would get with the program and turn heterosexual. And maybe those on the left, meanwhile, believed that after witnessing an attack that showed what hate could do, one that Americans were going to have to stick together to get out of, Americans who had formerly been homophobic were now going to change and treat gays as their brothers. Meanwhile I was out there not expecting anyone to change in any direction after the attack. This is one possibility, but since I wasn't one of the people who said the country was united, I don't know for sure what was going on in these other people's minds.
Whatever the reasons for the myth of the united America, the division in America has now become almost a cliché. We had the War in Iraq, we had Lawrence v. Texas, we had Janet Jackson's mammary exposure. With a nation perhaps divided more than at any time since the Civil War, the mystery as to how such a patently implausible myth could be repeated so many times may never be solved.