I woke up to the bleeping alarm after hitting the snooze button for the third time. I slathered on deodorant to mask not taking a shower. I dressed, snatched a package of Pop-Tarts and was out the door with my usual haste. Tuesday and Thursday morning lectures were hard to get to and I was already a bit late. It was only the second week of class, so my truancy was still at a minimum. The walk was only three blocks, but it always felt like more before ten.
So early in the semester, the building was usually teaming with students and professors headed in all directions. This morning was different. I ignored it. I came up the stairs to enter the lecture hall through the side doors, expecting the professor to be in the first moments of her tedious monologue about design history. Instead, the seats were almost completely empty. A few students were quietly inking their crosswords. A couple others were half-asleep, lounging over multiple rows of seats. I stepped down and sat next to one of the girls I had met already.
She set down her magazine and we recounted our weekends for a few moments. There was a small group of students off to our right that were talking somewhat excitedly. I ignored it. Megan and I fell into silence, waiting for the lecture to begin. A full fifteen minutes late, a man walked in with an odd look on his face. He approached the front and solemnly made an announcement of class being canceled because of the events in New York. Megan looked at me with an inquiring expression, but when I shrugged back she turned and listened intently. He went on to say that we were encouraged to go back to our dorms or apartments and that we’d be emailed in the afternoon about the University’s arrangements for the rest of the week.
He walked out. I picked up my bag and asked Megan if she was up for breakfast at the dining hall. She agreed with a shrug and a look that said, “what else do I have to do?” She followed me through the student center, up the stairs and down the hallway to the glass paned walls of dining services. I was surprised how empty the hall was, because there was still an hour and a half before breakfast ended at ten. I ignored it.
The cooks were mumbling about something while we got our food. They were looking off at television in the back room. We filled our trays and wandered to a table almost to the wall. There were only three other people eating. From behind me, the television, muffled by distance, was explaining some horrific event. A bombing or explosion or something had happened in New York. Megan leaned over, looked around me and a strange look—something like horror—flashed across her face. She asked if I wanted to move to the other room and hear what was going on.
It was the first time I saw the video, now etched into the memories of everyone. The smoke was billowing from the towers. People were running through littered streets with cloth over their faces and ashes in their hair. The news team was trying to piece together what was going on. I didn’t know what to feel, say, or do. We both barely glanced at our plates, finishing our meals almost silently. I ate my waffle without tasting it.
We packed to leave, dropped our dishes at the door and walked sullenly to the bus stop. She made a humorous, off-hand comment and boarded the connector. I turned to walk up the hill to my dorm just as my cell began to ring in my pocket. It was my father, calling to see if I had seen or heard the news, knew anyone from New York, or if anyone was discussing the attack in class. I reassured him that I was informed, said there was no one from New York, or even the east coast, in my immediate circle and that classes were canceled for the day or longer. We talked briefly about possible implications, but he was at work, so we cut things short. I walked up the hill, tossed my bag onto my bed and turned on the television.
I sat there, half in a daze, watching the news a few hours. A few friends stopped by, on their way back from classes or after waking up, to see what I was up to. Really, we just sat there, watching the events unfold. Watching as the towers collapsed under their own precarious weight. The University emailed all of the students, informing us that classes were to go on as scheduled tomorrow. There was grief counseling in designated areas all over campus.
I, personally, felt awkwardly unaffected. I didn’t feel the agitation. I didn’t feel the remorse and dismay that filled the faces of everyone on the news that day. I was sympathetic to those that were directly effected and impressed with the handling of the aftermath, but felt no awakened patriotism. I felt that I should feel differently. I saw all the sorrow and thought I was supposed to feel it, too. I ignored it.
Since that day, there has been a dramatic shift. Soon after, I stopped talking with Megan, though I still remember as the only one that shared those events with me. The mayor of New York made a desperate attempt toward the nation’s highest office on a platform exploiting that day’s events, failing miserably in the eyes of anyone informed of his disastrous missteps that day. Seven thousand people were injured that day and three thousand perished, but more than that have died in the undeclared, illegal war that used that day as its justification. Hundreds of patriotic rescue workers died that day and more than a hundred patriotic soldiers have taken their own lives since. To this day there is still a massive hole where those iconic towers once stood.
The media, driven by fear and a thirst for advertising dollars, breezes past prevalent issues in favor of hot-topic celebrity gossip or the latest scandal. The government, with vague terrorism and isolated unsubstantiated threats, has systematically removed freedoms. Corporations have exploited a post-9/11 patriotic ideal in order to increase consumption and profits while shipping more production jobs overseas and crippling—or destroying—our middle class. Oil companies, now raking in record profits, use middle-eastern turmoil to introduce “green” programs that increase carbon emissions or spike the exponentially increase the price of grains and corn to build an infrastructure of fuel consumption that, instead of providing sustainable, renewable energy, shift their profits from oil to ethanol or liquid coal.
In the wake of that morning, when I ate silently as our nation felt the weight of the first foreign attack in the continental United States since the War of 1812, things have only gotten worse. My calls and internet use is now monitored by corporations giving information to, and being protected by, the government. My government is sending mercenary warriors with no direct accountability into a land I, and they, don’t understand and can’t keep hold of. The middle-class, once cherished within the “American Dream” and where my parents try desperately to remain, is dissolving into the poor and working poor.
The government, media and influential elite use wordplay and positioning tactics to keep us in fear. That fear has kept us in a dull state of cultural shock. That fear has kept us from searching for the real reasons behind the attack. That fear has helped them destroy what this country stood for. That fear has us paranoid and weak. That fear makes other powerful nations of the world look down on us. We ignore it.
Our soldiers don’t enter Iraq, but a well-guarded, town-sized, Americanized zone therein. They listen to the same music, play the same games, eat the same food and isolate themselves from the culture they are oppressing. Our consumerism infects the world at an alarming rate. The imperialist fingers that grip the globe, unilaterally invading sovereign nations, are being bent back. This, as far as our perspective, is labeled terrorism.
This country was born out of terrorism. We used it to define our independence and institute our own governance, based upon freedom of expression and ideas. Current tactics of abuse, fear and suffocation of freedom are obvious. Our country is faltering. We are being led, not by ideals and a greater good, but by corporate financing and men or women with a stranglehold on this nation’s power. Our country has been hijacked with terrorism used as an excuse. Too many people are ignoring it.