It is right and proper that Americans……..and indeed the rest of us commemorate 9/11….but I am just a little uncomfortable that we have gone just a little too far. There has been a certain amount of re-writing History involved.
Those of us who have noticed this will get little gratitude for pointing it out.
Americans are an emotional people especially when Patriotism is involved. Without a common History, folkelore, history etc, they seem to be trying too hard to be patriotic……for an “idea” as much as a “place”.
Its perfectly understandable that 9/11 is marked every year in USA and even understandable that as I sat down to watch a NFL game, I listened to a speech by Robert de Niro.
It is even understandable that there is a commemoration in Dublin (led by the President) and London (led by “Prince” Charles Windsor) Belfast (led by the Sinn Fein “Lord” Mayor).
And indeed at the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand, a minutes silence before the Ireland-USA match.
But minutes silences at Premiership League Football Games in England?
In anniversary terms…ten is clearly more significant than six or seventeen…….and this is primarily an American occasion. The world wide “formal” grief dilutes rather than enhances genuine American grief.
Yet what Ive seen on TV News yesterday (the Belfast commemoration) is actually a reconstructed, invented “empathy”.
Much of what I heard that day ten years ago was shameful (bad) or much more “nuanced”.
The person who told me about the two planes crashing is basically anti-American and added gratuitously that they “had it coming” because of their Middle-East policy.
Only minutes later I was standing outside a TV shop (ironically near the City Hall) when a loyalist type voice in the watching crowd said that he was glad…….the “Yanks” had after all supplied guns and bombs to the IRA. “Now they know what its like”.
Effectively……minority but significant voices in Belfast were saying that USA deserved it.
To some extent the world stopped in 2001. Any government no matter how tyrannical was suddenly a “good guy” (excepting the Axis of Evil of course) and any “terrorist” organisation….no matter how “legitimate” was demonised……(excepting those opposing the Axis of Evil).
It was Irish Republicanisms good fortune that the Clinton peace efforts pre-dated 9/11. And Unionisms ill fortune.
Of course you dont have to live in Belfast to be anti-American. Leftists in Britain see USA as a capitalist imperialist power. Conservatives see American imperialism as hypocritically usurping the British imperialism that USA dismantled after WW2.
Yet in the horror of 9/11…….it was only right……that the World should shake hands with a neighbour in grief. “sorry for your loss”. rather like a neighbour who has lost a teenage child in a road accident.
Thats enough. No need to gratuitously offend the grieving neighbour and say that the child was a boy racer who reguarly drove thru the village at well over the speed limit. Nor any need to reply negatively when the grieving neighbour replies to the handshake with an unsolicited “my Johnny was so careful”. Let it go.
The grieving period does not allow for “nuance” but I have the feeling that the grieving period is being preserved in part to prevent a nuanced discussion.
Lest we forget, just two days after 9/11 on a “live” edition of the BBCs Question Time, the American ambassador to Britain was reduced to near tears by Muslim audience members not fully on message with Americas grief. The BBC apologised for the unbalanced audience selection.
Lest we forget that 9/11 and the irony of Britain supporting USA in the war on terrorism while USA was not supportive of Britain fighting Irish terrorism is standard fare for British comedians such as Al Murrays “Pub Landlord” alter ego.
The grieving process and 9/11 “commemoration” is firmly under control.
But it would be false if the American Consul in Belfast went away from the City Hall commemoration with the notion that the unity displayed by republican/nationalist and unionist councillors was the mood of a significant number of their own constituents ten years ago.
Thats a memory that “new” Belfast can do without.
As is the notion that we could ever get together at the City Hall to jointly commemorate our own tragedies. But for any Earthquake in New Zealand, or Tsunami in Japan or Famine in Ethiopia…….we are the first to head to the City Hall.
Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia 
I am amazed, in the United States, too, by the “invented empathy.” In some ways, this is not new, but I have recently been pondering it quite a bit. People (in the United States) who thought nothing of each other on 10 September 2001 again were apathetic or even hostile toward other people… They used the “memory” and “unity” of 11 September to attack other human beings. But the idea that the date exactly ten years later has more meaning than the date exactly 3 years later (or any other number) is strange to me. In part, I guess, that’s because I’ve never abided much by tradition… but in part it’s also just strange.
Aside from the fact that dates, and the importance of “10” for that matter, are somewhat arbitrary human inventions… it’s all symbolism in other ways, too.
But I think that much of this “anniversary” meant in the United States must have been something very deeply psychological… that people feel lost and without anchor right now, and are reaching for something, anything, about which to be enthusiastic, a hat rack of ANY kind on which to hang some excess emotions and frustrations.
My fear, of course, is that this kind of thing will lead to more violence, rather than less.
Or more politicking…. I won’t mention Governor Rick Perry, here.
I think the most disturbing aspect is that the Emotion has been harnessed by……Governments. There is the strange case of Wootton Bassett, about which I will blog seperately.
Normally I wouldnt mention Governor Rick Party either……but he does ride a horse…..and that impresses me a lot :).
I think the Americans are more at ease with outlandish (by European standards) of Patriotism. I have heard for example that Americans burst into applause at airports when they see uniformed people. And of course the flag carrying at NFL Games and fighter jet fly pasts is to my mind slightly disturbing. It is not exactly North Korea but I am uncomfortable with it. I wonder is it because Americans are actually unaware of the real cost of Patriotism. No American civilian died in Vietnam and only six American civilians died on mainland American soil during World War Two…….six people on the West Coast killed by explosives carried across the Pacific.
The Patriotism in USA was always under “control”. The Bush era did not allow cameras to record coffins coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Those of us who are more familiar with the side effects of Patriotism can only shake our heads.
The British were I think “slow” to control Patriotism. But are catching up fast.