We’re heading into a weekend of orgiastic patriotism, when on September 11, 2011, Americans will mark the ten-year anniversary of the most shocking national moment that anybody reading this blog remembers.
Any of our memories of 9/11 is doubtlessly colored by all that came after… the wars, the patriotic piety, the craven co-opting, the things that were justified in its name. 9/11 is now shorthand for all sorts of things, apt or not depending on the eyes of the beholder.
But, those who witnessed it, lived through it in some small way, will always hold on to a glimmer of the feeling they had when it happened, that mixture of shock and confusion that burned the moment into their brain. It wasn’t just the significance of the event or the level of the violence that makes them remember, it’s the way it instantaneously changed the way they saw the world.
9/11 is obviously the recent champion of “Where Were You When…” moments. But what else has stopped people in their tracks over the past 30 years?
David Simon Cowell
The Dilemma
