Hug a fireman

It would seem everyone has had it up to here with the coverage of the Sep. 11 anniversary. But this morning NPR was still going at it, not just with coverage of Bush's speeches and the other events yesterday, but still with the stories of firefighters and so forth. So in that spirit...

I went into New York again yesterday afternoon. I tried to get cute and take a ferry instead of PATH, but the ferries were disrupted just then by the visit of Shrub to the WTC site. When I finally did get on a ferry, it took me to the 38th St. terminal near the Javits Convention Center. Despite the delay and the detour, the ferry ride was glorious -- it was a beautiful sunny day, the humidity of the previous two days was gone, and it was very windy, but in the late afternoon, the view of the Manhattan skyline lit up by the setting sun was out of this world.

I got downtown and went to the 9/11 service at St. Luke's in the Fields. So I've now heard three 9/11 sermons and I finally realize what is so dissatisfying about them. They're all directly addressed to congregations that have actually lost people, congregations with people who barely made it out alive or who otherwise directly experienced the events of That Day. And sitting in the pew listening to this extremely low-energy, dry sermon -- it wasn't just that they were Episcopalian, I mean this woman was speaking as if she were still in shock -- I realized what was going on. New Yorkers think the attacks of Sep. 11 happened to them. They feel a sense of ownership. Similarly, but even more strongly, the well-organized and vocal Family Members also feel a sense of victimhood. They think they totally own this event. It not only happened to them -- it is still happening to them.

I'm not going to start a rant about victimhood, but as a Californian, I have to tell New Yorkers: that attack was not directed at you. It was directed at the whole country; the WTC and the Pentagon were just symbols. And I say that not because I feel a sense of ownership of the event or a need to control how it is remembered (as the Family Members seem determined to do) -- I say that because the conflict between fanatical religious fundamentalism and capitalist democracy is not a goegraphical conflict. It's not like the World Series where everyone pretends the competition is two cities actually duking it out like Athens and Sparta. It's a conflict of religious fundamentalism against liberal tolerance and feminism, of which New York is a worldwide symbol.

And there's something else that is completely ignored in the sermons I've heard: any notion that the listeners bear some responsibility for what happened. After a year, I would expect the ministers of these liberal New York congregations to reflect, at least a little, on the whole symbolism of the World Trade Center and what it might mean to desperately impoverished third world people. Yes, for some it might have been a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow: come to New York and get rich too. That is surely what's meant by Shrub's decision to give his big speech on Ellis Island -- he's trying to distinguish the good brown people (they want to become just like us and get rich) from the bad ones (they hate us for being rich and want to punish us for it). But for the terrorists who executed the hijackings and crashes of jets into the WTC, it was a symbol of U.S. greed and decadence. Nobody talks about this, at least not the ministers who are speaking directly to people who worked there.

I would say: "We have to get beyond our view of ourselves as innocent victims and think about what American greed and decadence means to the Third World. There's a reason they attacked -- not once but twice (in 1993 as well as 2001) -- the World Trade Center. It's because the Third World is enraged by American arrogance and by the fact that we use up more than our share of the world's resources, as much as by our famously tolerant society. Yes, it was an attack on our values, but at least as much upon our negative values -- greed, selfishness, arrogance -- as upon the positive values we cherish -- tolerance, liberalism, equality."

Afterwards, I went for a little walk and found myself passing a firehouse on Sixth Avenue. A crowd that was standing outside with candles erupted in applause as the fire engine came streaming out, siren blaring. It turned out to be a dry run: the fire engine simply circled the block, then parked in the street, and the crowd came into the truck bay and there were a few prayers by a Catholic priest. I overheard a woman say, "I just want to hug a fireman!" That seemed to sum up the day for me, and I headed back to my hotel.