following the media frenzy surrounding the events in new york on september 11, 2001, people all over the usa engaged in fervent displays of patriotism, the likes of which some had never seen. as the government prepared to invade afghanistan, the corporate media played drummer boy and the subjects of its monotonous beat marched placidly along.
the holidays neared, invasion began and memories of burning oil fields ten years earlier filled the heads of some. a chasm had opened in time, and we were slipping rapidly into it. for others, advertising campaigns successfully linked their newly wrought patriotic sentiments to years of propaganda which repeated: "what's good for business, is good for america."
as long as people stayed glued to the tv screen, the ratings stayed high. the investors were happy, the advertisers were happy. the patriotism became the glue.
that it was so easily accepted, was an overcompensation for something which had been slipping away for decades: immediate experience. the twin towers fell over and over again in the television, and all the pundits said the world had changed. new york in panic, the trauma of the victims and their families, enemies of freedom. how the world would change, and what the events would mean for those separated from them by thousands of miles, this was not clear. perhaps it was easier to accept the package of responses delivered by fox, nbc, cnn etc. than to admit that, watching those towers fall in the tv, and all the chaos and suffering, evoked absolutely the same feeling as if it would happen in palestine or serbia or rwanda, and that is: none.