After groaning through the Saints loss to the Cowboys (come on, the Cowboys?!), D and I took the depression-fest one step further and watched 102 Minutes That Changed America. Without a word or a blink, we took in raw chunks of video footage of the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001. Eight years later, the same raw feelings, the same nausea, the same urge to dive into the television and save everyone, especially the jumpers. We’ll catch you. No, we won’t.
But, what do those of us who weren’t there know? What right do we have to what the dead and survivors went through? Sure, I remember turning on the television at 8:03AM to watch the second airplane crash into the south tower, sinking to the floor and thinking, recognizing, knowing, “This evil. It has followed me here.” I recall a hundred different permutations of misery, fear, anger, helplessness, yet this was not for any of us who weren’t there. How could we possibly know?
I will follow up on this thought in an upcoming post on art and writing based on others’ tragedies and getting it right. Back to the documentary. It reminded me that my crystal ball of 2001 predicted a very different 2009 than the one we’re in. America would have reassessed its alliances with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and Osama Bin Laden would have been nuked from space on September 12th, 2001. Today, we are still in Iraq (WTF) and just sent 30,000 more men and women to die in Afghanistan, every brown person is considered a threat to national security and Bin Laden’s beard grows longer. Did those 102 minutes really change America?
