I’ve decided that since I spent last year telling people to shut up, it wouldn’t really be appropriate for me to offer my own perspectives on a year ago and how things have changed since then. Besides, the rest of this week is really about that and the things I’ve found ironic about it, so I figure I should really give voice to those who might not otherwise be noticed on this day. Besides, this Patriot Day is about respect and observance, so why not observe the thoughtful respect of a broad spectrum of voices, from across the internet?

And when it comes to a broad spectrum of voices, I can’t think of anywhere more suitable than LiveJournal or DiaryLand, both of which allowed the voices of the millions to express their grief and outrage lo these many months ago. Let’s look now to their heartfelt words of sympathy and compassion, on this first Patriot Day, the anniversary of September 11, 2001.

Says Tom,

“Ok,
More stuff on 9/11, I’m sick of hearing it. Moments of silence, bleh, 4 of them, i shall repeat, first one: First plane hits the world trade center, Second one: the second plane hits the world trade center, third one: the first tower collapses, fourth one: the second tower collapses. What about the Pentagon? What about the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania? but in the long run, who cares?

I’m sure that in a short time, that this will become a national holiday, and the meaning of it will totally goto waste as with all the national holidays that we celebrate. It will be just another 3 day weekend. Why don’t we have a moment of silence for the people that are murdered for no reason. Just because they were mostly middle to upper class persons.

I don’t Fucking care. I don’t. I don’t like how the media is blowing this whole thing up and causing more fear than there actually should be. The government is causing more fear in this country than that of the actual attack.

A year has passed. Have we learned anything from this? Nope. Still the same old United States bullying other nations, where we have no right to be doing it. Everyone is still living under the terror.

If frightens me how this whole event has shown just how much we are sheep. Take away our rights for safety? ok. Go fight a war that doesn’t matter? ok. How is this really going to benifit us? Lets just go and step on everyone’s toes in the world. and when i say us and we, i really mean the United States government. Who is in control of a nation that doesn’t care what they do. And those of us who do care what they are doing are considered “un-patriotic” and evil.

So everyone, lets go into the night as lemmings. The cliff is near, will you follow suit?

Days like this make me want to hold a flag burning.

P.S. if i hear one more blah poor us on the 11th.. GRRRRR SMITE SMITE SMITE”

God bless Tom’s compassion. Indeed, why don’t we have a moment of silence for all the people who are murdered for no reason? I’m not altogether sure who those people are, and whether we should have a moment of silence “just because they were mostly middle to upper class persons,” but surely people being senselessly killed should be afforded the respect of a moment of silence, right?

The ambiguity introduced by his argument — that the people senselessly murdered on September 11th, 2001, shouldn’t be remembered unless all murders are, but since all murders aren’t, then no murders should — clearly cuts through any kind of self-insulating middle-class “respect” that one might have formed for the dead. Suck on that, oppressors. If you want to have a moment of silence, have it for all mankind, man.

But four? No way — that’s, like, totally stupid.

A briefer excerpt from Diaryland’s Chasing A Star:

“What can I say that hasn’t already been said.

But yeah. I can’t look at CNN’s website. It’s utter media hype bullshit. I swear Bush is instigating this entire orange alert crap just to get more popularity votes. The media is purposefully aggravating the public’s fears. I bet they’ve been waiting for this day all year.

I for one will be keeping my television and my computer off today. I invite you to do the same. If I hear anything about 9/11 today, I’ll hear it through word of mouth or eavesdropping only. Screw you media hawks. I’m not buying into your plan.”

Thank God that, before she instituted her self-imposed media blackout, Chasing was able to issue her own bold statement against participating in or consuming the media — a statement that originates from a camp including such countercultural powerhouses as Laura Bush herself — before receding into the darkness.

Note too the compassion in this entry, as Chasing so respects the memory of everyone who died that she doesn’t actually bother to mention them, lest she herself become part of the “media hype bullshit” that aids George Bush in gaining his all-important “popularity votes,” without which he is utterly powerless.

Heartwarming stuff.

icantread offers his own take on the media:

“Alright, at lunch I got the paper. I think there was one story in the whole thing about not 9-11-01. Guess the election system in SOFLA is still fucked up.

Well as annoying as all the Yeah America or Boo Capitalism letters to the editor was it was annoying that every section had to have their own remembrance articles.

Then to top it off the fucking Family Circus had a cartoon about it. Jesus. Well, not about Jesus, but.

I hate that cartoon. How fucking many times to we have to see the little dash trail of kids roaming the neighborhood. Ok, the first time it was intriguing, a little original and whatever. BUT EVERYTIME I LOOK AT THAT SORRY ASS STRIP IT’S THE SAME THING.

I hate family circus.”

How deviously clever is icantread’s metaphor about media coverage, that he associates the formulaic production of Family Circus cartoons with the equally-cookie-cutter dispersion of pre-packaged media pieces regarding the September 11th tragedy? And how much more elegant is it that he chooses to explore the commercialization of the victim families’ pain through a single-panel cartoon focused on the Christian family unit?

Simply brilliant.

darrylzer offers his own grief, misery and sadness, and also some words about September 11th:

“So, the one year aniversary of the terrorist attacks on America is here, and I find myself wanting to walk to the bank to deposit some money, which I will promptly spend on useless things.

I hate having to stoop to this, but, one year ago today, I had just been dropped off at my apartment in Hawthorn (now Fredricksen) Court in Ames, Iowa. April (who had dropped me off) had gone to work, and I was packing my suitcase, because the College Music Journal (CMJ) Annual Music and Filmfest was that weekend. I was excited, because my flight was scheduled to leave early the next morning, and I was pondering skipping class because I couldn’t wait to see New York City again. Then, April called me from work and told me to turn on the news.

The first entry I wrote after the attacks came the next day. I still remember the first sentence without looking at it: “Life is disturbing and short.” Reading the entry now, I sense the same kind of viciousness and sadness that colors everything I do, and I wish I could say that the events of 11/9/2001 were the impetus for such moroseness. Alas, the truth is that I was always going to be sad and angry. But after that day, I decided to get off my ass, find out why I’m so angry, and try to do something about it. In many ways, that damned me, as I’m probably never going to be completely happy without becoming one the drooling masses. But a life of vacancy and blind acceptance is no life at all.

It is a horrible, horrible thing, that so many innocent people had to die because of the monsters the U.S. Government creates in order to keep their pockets fat. Because of their needless sacrifice, I will never voluntarily wear an American flag, nor voluntarily declare my allegiance to the government which allowed them to die in order to provide an excuse to begin a needless war to cover up who knows what horrible acts are transpiring as we speak. I will never believe what so-called “patriots” blinded by their grief and/or greed tell me. I will be suspicious, and standoffish, and angry.

And vigilant, because the real enemies, the ones who create the roots of the problems, are always there, smiling on the television or the front page of newspapers.”

As if the destruction of midtown Manhattan isn’t enough, darrylzer closely ties the devastation to his own emotional death, the realization of which he can only fit between going to class and traveling around the country. Indeed, are there any of us who can truly be part of the “drooling masses” ever again? darrylzer thinks not, and knows we are all heartsick.

He also knows that we don’t want to linger in the grief of knowing or mourning those people who actually died, and would rather move forward dramatically — pledging never to breach the code of the American flag by wearing it, pledging not to pledge alliegance to the country with its now-illegal pledge of alliegance, in order to prevent the government from doing whatever it is that they’re doing that’s probably for sure horrible considering everything. He knows, as it seems indeed everyone does, that the true enemy is the media, those cruel tools of hegemony who dared to cover the story in the first place.

Certainly, each and every one of the World Trade Center and especially Pentagon victims would surely want darrylzer to continue his battle against the government that they hated so very, very much. I’m certain that they can think of no more fitting tribute than to inform darrylzer’s suspicion, anger, and his ongoing standoff against anyone who represents anything.

God bless the Internet.

As for me? You know, I didn’t quite know what to expect from today. This morning while I was driving to work, I was half-tired of hearing the disc jockeys talk about their feelings to me, as if knowing that Carla Collins and the Mix Morning Crew was sharing my pain would somehow comfort me against the Black Tide, I guess. The other half was anxious, as I worried quietly about whether there would be something else, something more, something worse than before, and I wouldn’t know what to do about it any more than I did a year ago.

If anything, I think that’s the feeling that’s remained over the last twelve months, regardless of ground troops in Afghanistan or sabre rattling over Iraq. No matter how people put the pieces back together, there’s always the smallest fragment missing, a lingering insecurity that won’t stop nagging. Even after it’s healed, a broken bone is never as strong as when it was whole, and I think the awareness of that is almost completely intolerable. There are twenty-nine hundred and ninety-nine poeple who stand in evidence of that kind of vulnerability, and really it should be no surprise that people are tired of hearing about them. They’re tired of thinking that, but for the grace of God or good fortune, it might have been them; they’re tired of fearing that it still may well be, depending on what happens next; they’re tired of seeing the families splinter or harden or wither. They’re tired of remembering everything, and why wouldn’t they be?

Twelve months ago I urged everyone to shut up and think about the people who are actually suffering, bleeding or dying on the evening of the 11th — I still think that’s good advice. Remembering each of those people as just that — people who suffered, bled and died — and not as patriots or heroes or anything else is the greatest possible respect that we can pay them, without agendizing the last moments of their lives towards some personal or political end. If you’ve gained three hundred pounds and stopped socializing since September 11th, is it really because of the people who died in fires in a New York skyscraper? Were people really being pulled from the rubble days, weeks and months later so that you could galvanize your sociopathy?

I’ve defended the moment of silence at 8:46 this morning to a number of people, and my point has always been the same: A moment of silence exists to make that short time about else, free of your input, free of your expression. It is a simple gesture of respect and remembrance, to prove that for sixty seconds of your life you can stop and listen to those who’ve been lost or taken away, and understand that they will never speak again.

It’s a victory for us all, in a way. It’s a shame it couldn’t have been a greater one.