9/11, +20

[BoSoxGal]

A number of excellent documentaries releasing to mark the anniversary.

This one is very good:




After all the hours I spent watching it unfold in real time on TV, and all the times since I’ve seen the video again, I didn’t think it could still compel me to such emotion to see the towers fall and hear the narratives of those on the ground and trapped in those highjacked planes.

I think after 20 years of perspective, of seeing how much the country was damaged by this moment in history and our collective response to it - and all the lost treasure in Afghanistan and Iraq - it’s just so much more profoundly heartbreaking.

Looking back now, looking at what we have become - it feels like Osama bin Laden was the victor after all.

[Burning Petard]

I have never seen the towers fall or the impact on the Pentagon. I stoped watching the tv news or reading a newspaper for six months after. I gradually got back to my old news-junkie habits. But whenever I hear something that is introducing the pictures from that day, I change the channel. It hurts too much. My son was supposed to be in the conference room in the Pentagon right where the plane hit. It was five hours before I knew his meeting had been moved and he was ok. As the towers burned I was sitting in a 'team room' with my boss. People who had radios on came streaming out into the hall way and my boss ignored it tried to continue on with stuff that was just make-work paper shuffling.

That was the moment I lost all respect for my boss.

snailgate

[MajGenl.Meade]

A number of excellent documentaries releasing to mark the anniversary.

This one is very good:

Have just teed it up - thanks. I echo much of your reaction about the 20 year perspective

[BoSoxGal]

Last night I watched the documentary 9/11, first released in 2002 (I didn’t see it then) and re-released via CNN with added material.

A documentary was being made of a rookie firefighter’s first 9 months on the job and morphed into a documentary on 9/11 because the filmmakers were riding with the crew when they got the call that eventually led them to the towers. They captured both towers being hit and the only video from inside the towers on the day.

I highly recommend the documentary if you can find it - I watched on CNN and recorded it, it might be available on demand.

This is an interesting piece from the 15 year anniversary of the attacks, with viewpoints from the firefighters featured in the documentary.

https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/07/us/9-11- ... index.html

[MGMcAnick]

I saw the second tower fall, live on the TV in my office. I have seen both towers fall MANY times on tape. I honestly think I, and a good lot of the American populace, have suffered from PTSD because we've seen the towers fall. OVER and OVER and OVER. I have no desire to watch a documentary to see them again.

I'm with snailgate.

[BoSoxGal]

I saw the second tower fall, live on the TV in my office. I have seen both towers fall MANY times on tape. I honestly think I, and a good lot of the American populace, have suffered from PTSD because we've seen the towers fall. OVER and OVER and OVER. I have no desire to watch a documentary to see them again.

I'm with snailgate.

I saw both towers fall live on TV and I spent a few agonizing hours trying to get through on overloaded phone lines to make sure a dear friend at the Pentagon hadn’t died in that attack. I most definitely have PTSD from the event.

Everybody grieves and processes trauma differently, and that should be respected. If the idea of contemplating the 20th anniversary of this tragedy is upsetting to some of you, please feel free to stay out of this tribute thread.

[TPFKA@W]

I was doing pediatric home care that day and was in a special ed classroom with the child I was caring for. I have never felt so trapped in my life as that day. All I wanted to do was get home and I had to stay where I was to care for the child. It was so terrifying even way out here in the Midwest.

My now BIL was in the Pentagon when it was hit. He was on the far side away from where it hit and says they hardly even felt it where he was. My husband says it was a hellish wait that day to hear of his brother's fate. .

[MGMcAnick]

If the idea of contemplating the 20th anniversary of this tragedy is upsetting to some of you, please feel free to stay out of this tribute thread.

I didn't think of it as a tribute thread so much as an "advertisement" for the upcoming documentary, which I will plan to miss.

[Burning Petard]

A support group for grieving military has adopted a convention which I like very much. Don't call it an anniversary. Call it a Day of Remembrance.

snailgate

[Crackpot]

You mean Remember Day?

[Big RR]

Back to the remembrances, I was supposed to be on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania that day (UA 93); I traveled to the bay are around 15 times a year, and usually took that flight (or its predecessors around the same time) because it arrived early enough that I could get the better part of a day's work in the office when I arrived. Being on that flight a lot, I we familiar with many of the flight attendants and some of the "regular" passengers, which made that crash even more poignant to me. The meeting I had scheduled for that Tuesday was cancelled on Friday and I never went, thankfully. I was initially concerned that I would be contacted by the FBI because I canceled my reservation, but I was not; all I can guess happened (and I never pursued it to be certain) is that our travel group tended to book some travel (like a lot of mine) at the last minute because plans often changed (not to mention that most planes were pretty empty at the time and we usually flew on full fare tickets as the return plans often changed). I recall going out to San Francisco a few weeks later and when I met with the woman who cancelled the meeting she got very choked up and left the room; I think it emphasized to both of us what serious effects even innocuous decisions can have.

An interesting aside, a couple of months later I met a former colleague of mine on a San Francisco flight, and when we discussed 9/11 he told me he was scheduled on the next flight (which of course never took off); when he got to the airport they had offered to put him on Flight 93, but he said no because he had to use the restroom. As he told me, "If I didn't have to take a shit, I'd be dead". Life is quite strange.

[Guinevere]

Like so many, I have the relative working in Manhattan we couldn't find/contact until late that day, the colleague in one of the Towers that morning, the horrifying memories of that day, still clear as a bell, and still causing angst and PTSD. I remember those we lost, and those who tried so hard to stop it. If you have not been to the Memorial, the water flowing and the names, at the base of the Towers, I recommend it. It is sad and also painfully beautiful -- and that's how I chose to remember and honor. I don't need to see those images again either.

[Big RR]

I agree, I lost too many friends, and went to too many funerals, after Sep 11; I'll recall them and the others lost. A friend of mine who lost his wife in the WTC collapse, stopped going to the annual ceremony years ago, preferring to honor her and grieve her loss in his own way.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Watching the first episode tonight with tears in my eyes - and then regret/amazement/horror that I had no idea of all the background that created the monster that Afghanistan lives with today

[Sue U]

No. Just NO. I object to the annual public pageant of grief and grievance that is the memorialization of 9/11/01. As I said last year:

More people are killed by covid-19 every week than were killed on 9/11/01. Not that 9/11 wasn't horrific, but so was the OKC bombing and so is the annual toll of gun violence. Why is 9/11 somehow sacred? Why is it promoted? What is it that we are supposed to "never forget"?

The tragedy of 9/11 is that we haven't actually learned a goddam thing.

viewtopic.php?p=295890#p295890

And as I said four years ago:

Every year when 9/11 rolls around, I think, what is it exactly that we are supposed to "Never Forget"? What's the point of these flag-waving memorials? To gin up unquestioning nationalism and militarism, and to promote the endless "war on terror"? To fear and mistrust the "other"? What are we being conditioned for? Doesn't anyone ever stop to think what they are stopping to think about, and why?

9/11 is "Wingnut Christmas" because its memorialization promotes a grotesque indulgence in national victimhood and xenophobia, propagating a mythic false narrative that panders to the basest fears and most bigoted delusions of the far-right.

"9/11" could be a great educational and public policy tool, if it were analyzed as "9/11: What Happens to Democratic Values When A Nation Panics," or "A Case Study in Cynical Exploitation of Irrational Fears for Political Gain." Instead, it is destined to become a day of mindless patriotic fervor, barbecues and retail sales.

Gah, it all just makes me ill.

viewtopic.php?p=242875#p242875

Nothing has changed my mind about any of it.

[Big RR]

Let's all sing God Bless America, which seemed to be come the National Anthem after 9/11. God wanted us to invade Iraq, otherwise how did they get invisible WMDs?

There are tons of lessons from 9/11, but invading Iraq and Afghanistan are not among them.

[Joe Guy]

It's as though our government wants us to remember that it's okay if the U.S. invades and bombs other countries as long as we are labeling the enemy as terrorists.

[BoSoxGal]

NatGeo also has a multiple episode 9/11 documentary newly released that is really excellent. It’s airing currently and on demand.

When I was a young person I recall a fairly significant acknowledgement of the attack on Pearl Harbor in the media every year on December 7th. This has waned very much in recent decades, and I suppose the same will happen to 9/11 commemorations as the decades go by and the survivors and victims’ family members age.

But at least for the last 20 years, thousands of them have wanted and needed to participate in both public and private commemoration of the event, including involvement in making many of these documentaries that include footage of the towers being hit and the chaos afterward, including the towers falling. Many survivors *need* to see those images in order to process their trauma - desensitization is the concept in psychology.

One thing I do know, as I said before, is that grief and trauma are processed differently by everyone, and how each person chooses - or needs - to process it should be respected by others - so long as the process chosen doesn’t involve inflicting harm on any other person.

I don’t think it’s fair to refer to the various annual 9/11 commemorations as trauma porn - perhaps that is how some individuals feel about them, but it seems like a very unfair way to categorize them in general, as clearly many people are actually comforted by such practices as revisiting the day via images and video, or the recitation of the names at ground zero aka the 9/11 memorial, etc.

[Big RR]

You are right BSG, clearly some find comfort or solace or other emotional release from these commemorations; even though I don't understand why, I would never deny them that. We have all been affected in different ways, so it's no surprise that we deal with it differently as well.

[BoSoxGal]

For those who *are* interested, the NatGeo documentary 9/11: One Day in America, which also airs on Hulu, is really a stunning tribute to the people affected by 9/11. It was made in cooperation with the 9/11 Memorial Museum and includes loads of archival footage interspersed with survivor interviews, telling the story of 9/11 minute by minute over six hours of episodes. As the disclaimer at the start of each episode says, there are many depictions of intense suffering and trauma. But the stories of the survivors, and the stories they tell of the people who gave their lives to save others, are incredibly life affirming.

Because I am the sort of person who processes trauma this way, I feel that for me watching this particular documentary is much like how I felt about visiting the National Holocaust Museum, and after viewing all the heartbreaking exhibits, sitting in the little hall where you can listen to firsthand accounts from survivors as they were collected to forever preserve our ability to bear witness to the tragedy they endured in the Shoah.

When all we can do is bear witness, to me it feels like it is very important to give that little that I can give - my respectful attention, my only real way of honoring those who died and those who endure.