Lileks consistently makes me break my rule of "no choking sobs on a weekday."

No, wait, that was some sick self-righteous fuck of a clown over in Afghanistan.

I'm a Lileks fan. Really. But today, he's just irritating. Characterizing the thought processes of certain people who might be bothered by the fact that "there hasn't been a day" that he hasn't thought about September 11, he writes,

"They can’t stand people who won’t let go of 9/11. Once they washed the ash off their car it was over for them; why can’t it be over for everyone?"

First things first: James Lileks, like 99.9% of the rest of the country, watched the events of September 11 on a television, in the safety of his home, perhaps with friends and loved ones close by. The fact that he has a really excellent widescreen television with surround sound doesn't put the intensity of his experience in the same category as anybody who had to "wash ash off their car." It doesn't put his experience in the same category as my own, which consisted of washing ash off my body at the end of an eight-mile walk from downtown Manhattan to Queens with thousands of other evacuees. And it doesn't put it in the same solar system as the experience of the wounded and the families of the dead.

Which is a bit snarky, I realize. But Lileks thinks about September 11 every day because he chooses to do so. He doesn't live or work in New York. He's in Minnesota, which is most probably not a target for anybody anywhere in the world except, perhaps, for haters of Garrison Keillor and Marty Feldman. He's not forcibly reminded of that day. He will never be propelled back to that day by a random odor. He doesn't have to walk by the hole in the sky of downtown Manhattan, or look into the pit from his office windows. His memories can only be of watching video footage. He's got a choice, and what he has chosen is to dwell, to replay his memories of watching television, and to look at his daughter and think of the children on board those planes.

There is a certain tendency in this country to fetishize trauma. I'd blame it on the media, but the media wouldn't do it if the people didn't watch, read, and listen, so I'll blame it on the people instead. September 11, of course, is not the "trauma" of Jon Bonet Ramsey, or a summer "epidemic" of kidnappings. It's historical trauma, horror on a scale never before seen in this country. It's important that the rest of the country remember these events. People want to empathize and show their support, and that's a good thing. I'm not saying that Lileks is making an emotional fetish out of September 11. But he is wrong to put people who were so close that they had to "wash ash off their cars" in the same category as people who think that there’s "something unhealthy about thinking about 9/11" and were in, say, Berkeley.

Lileks is bitching about people who think he's being indulgent, who "can’t stand people who won’t let go of 9/11." I've got news for him: there are many people in this city who want nothing more than to "let go of 9/11," and are unable to do so. I, like many others here, are indeed "bracing" for the first anniversary. And our reasons are different from the reasons that Lileks and his presumed audience have. I want it to be over. All of the "Concerts for America," the "Special Live Coverage," the tributes, the speeches. That's for the rest of the country, the ones who need something visual or aural to remind themselves, whose memories of that day don't feel real, intense, or emotional enough, or don't seem to measure up to the monumental nature of the catastrophe. Last night I saw the ad for NBC's planned "all-day" coverage, with Tom Brokaw, and I thought: Great. Just what we need, all-day coverage...just like on September 11, when we had all-day coverage, and all-night coverage, for days on end. Way to send us all back, Tom.

So, James: Empathize. Remember. Put your daughter on one of those planes in your mind, if you choose.

But don't tell me that I shouldn't be sick of hearing other people's thoughts and musings about September 11, particularly those of people who weren't there. I've been hearing about it, and looking at it, and smelling it, for 359 days. I've had enough.

Ian, I don't want to get into it in depth, but I think you totally, utterly, completely missed James' point.

You want to get over it because, emotionally, it's too overwhelming. The people James is mad at want us all to get over it, because of a particular worldview that is shattered by 9-11. You need an emotional break, if only to cope with the constant reminders. They need us all to forget the anger, forget the rage, and forget what needs to be done to our self-identified enemies.

If I'm wrong about this, please let me know. I certainly hope you're not on the side of those who would blame the US. Being a survivor of the attacks, I doubt you are.

Tom--

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I missed the point. Deliberately, too.

Like I said, there's more than a touch of snarkiness in what I wrote. While I'm quite sure that not everyone in NYC feels this way, it just rubbed me the wrong way to see people who had to "wash ash off their cars"--meaning people who were close to Ground Zero--lumped in with the America-haters. I might be wrong, but I suspect that anybody close enough to deal with volumes of skyscraper ash wants to forget for different reasons than the targets of James' ire.

I know what and who he meant, but that's not quite what he said.

I realize this is...what, petty? Provincial? A small point? Well...that's just where I'm at at the moment. Perhaps I'm guilty of the same sort of exhibitionism I'm condemning.

But I really *am* tired of seeing the "rest of the country" (not to mention celebrities of all stripes) go on about What September 11 Means To Me, and so are the people I know who were there that day. I understand that people need to do what they need to do, but I'm just...tired.

--Ian

Ian may have missed Lileks' point, but if I may make an assumption, I think he was responding to the same thing that many of us who read Lileks' Bleats for their cringe-worthiness do.

Or, to put it another way: Maybe you have to be a tiny little guy like Lileks to get such a kick out of going 15 rounds with a straw man. Winner and still the undisputed champeen!

This Bleat reminded me of the one he wrote for July Fourth, in which he wandered through the grocery store, read the minds of his fellow shoppers, and found them Content. Just like James. He invents some people, puts words in their mouths, thoughts in their heads and then proceeds straight to his favorite subject: Him.

It must never have occurred to him that perhaps some of the people who aren't looking forward to the 9/11 wallow have their own reasons, and it's not because they're writing love letters to John Walker Lindh. Maybe, in fact, they're disgusted with the waves of approved emotion surrounding the event. Maybe they don't want Katie and Matt telling them how they feel. Maybe they're sick of people like James Lileks telling them how angry he is because he was scared! Because he has a child, and because he loves his child so much!

(Because, you know, no man or woman ever loved a child as much as James loves his child, a fact he reminds us of every single day, usually with an update on how smart and precocious and cute she is, too. Airpane! Airpane, daddy!)

Ian is right -- Lileks wasn't there, and he has to stand many steps back from those who were. Most of us who weren't there aren't trying to equate the fear and anger and confusion we felt that day with those who were. Not, unfortunately, all.

Seems to be a little ill-will towards Lileks here, and for more than just his latest Bleat. Fine, you're welcome to your opinion. I, for one, agree with pretty much exactly what he's saying. I don't think he's angry because he was scared. He's angry because he sees in Gnat all the other children who either died or lost a parent that day. I see the same thing in my child.

Honestly, I really don't want to see those images that get me so mad. They make me angry not in a hot, rage at the world way, but in a primal, heartless, cold, push-the-button nuke-a-city way. Tears in my eyes while doing it, but nuking them nonetheless. THAT is a very scary feeling. I don't want to feel it any more, but I know deep down that I have to. I have a huge storehouse of those pictures and videos on my hard drive, but I won't look at them. I download and save them because I know I need to look, but I just can't make myself do it.

I don't want to feel those feelings without having something happen that lets me know we're doing something real to keep it from ever happening again. I haven't seen much evidence that we are. I want Bush to call me back to uniformed service so I can kill bad guys like they trained me to do. Put my life on the line? Hell yeah, I'd do it. Sit here raging while nothing happens, feeling impotent? Fuck that.

I think James sees the same things I do. We're all caught up in this idea that 9-11 was a tragedy. It wasn't. It was a massacre, an assault by an enemy who wanted to kill even more than he did that day. I agree with you on one point: No more concerts, memorials, or other such love-ins. That can wait till later. For now, I want to see determination in the eyes of my fellow Americans, steeling themselves for the sacrifice required to defend liberty. I want to see people pissed off and ready to fight. I see nothing of that nature now in the general public, and I suspect the 9-11 retrospective crap that the media will feed us won't show it to me either.

I know this probably sounds a little disjointed, but I have a hard time writing about it. I just want SOMETHING to HAPPEN already, and I want America to shake itself out of this stupor she seems to be in! These bastards want to kill us, not because of Israel, not because of troops in Saudi Arabia, and not because we're rich, decadent Westerners. They want to do it because they think God told them to, and they're not going to stop, ever, until they're crushed out of existance. If the 9-11 anniversary helps to remind people of that just a little bit, it's worth it. If not, I fear for the future even more than I already did.

An irrelevancy: if anyone at all is wondering what a bug-eyed comedian has to do with Minnesota, the answer is: nothing. I meant *Michael* Feldman, host of "Whad'Ya Know?", which I thought was based in Minnesota but now, apparently, hails from Wisconsin.

Ian, it's a mistake to assume that one has to be a New Yorker to feel the enormous pain of what happened there, or to be angry beyond words, or to feel real, nauseating fear.

There's a saying in rural areas of this place where I was born, that the worst sleep you get is near dawn, after the rooster's first crow, waiting for his second.

I'm in my homeland, Alabama, still angry, fearful, hopeless, hopeful, angry again, in some of the same ways that you are, and some different, no more or less valid or real. I made the move back here because no one knows what the future holds, and I don't ever, ever again want to be away from my amazing, beautiful, annoying, loving parents, as long as they live. I gave up an enormously lucrative job to return here, and I don't care one whit.

This time last year, I was living in Baltimore County, in quiet, bucolic horse country, and incidentally directly under the flight path usually connecting the White House, Camp David, and the "underground Pentagon" on the MD/PA border. I saw the military choppers flying overhead with the fighter jets circling whenever George or his boys moved around betwixt them

My beloved baby brother has lived and worked in DC one block from the White House for several years now. He and I took the subway to Pentagon City the weekend after the attack, to take some flowers from my garden, a bit of rosemary for remembrance, to pray, and to see this horrific thing that we felt as humans and Americans it was not only our duty but dubious privilege to see, that we could share these awful but vital memories with our nieces and nephews.

It's painful Ian, I know, to see what you've seen. But everyone else, me, VodkaSteve, Lileks, whoever, have a different and just as important perspective... it happened to the greatest city in the world, and to symbols of the greatest of civilizations... and we are all on pins and needles waiting to see who gets bitten next. No one feels safe. No one can sleep. No one can leave for work in the morning without wondering if they or the baby they kiss good-bye that morning will be around for another kiss the next day.

That's nothing to snark at. Please don't. It isn't fair.