Shunning grace
Because I was working in a newsroom on the day and because I'm a newspaper columnist, it's expected that I can (and will) produce a Sept. 11 column.
And why not? I'm 64. I was no kid on that day.
And why not? I won an Associated Press award for writing about Sept. 11. I know what happened, right?
I wish I'd never won the damn award. It's on a shelf behind several cans of pipe tobacco I'll smoke sooner or later.
Giving me a piece of paper “certificate” saying I won an award on the backs of other people's death is somehow a little obscene, even though I spent a fair amount of my daily newspaper career writing about people who were murdered or died in house fires.
I know what happened, right?
What happened was a flash of killing light followed by two decades of increasing darkness.
Pure dark is as pure as pure light, and America has known the dark since the flash of killing light.
I know what happened, right?
You bet I do.
The nation broke out in flags. The paper I worked for printed an American flag that covered a whole page and told people they could tape it up in a window of their house. They did it, too. My elderly mother taped that paper flag to the front window of her second-floor apartment. Flags were attached to overpasses and fences. The Chinese got busy making NYPD caps, while still keeping up with the demand for “I'm With Stupid” T-shirts.
Politicians grew noble and sad, and they told us the terrorists were wrong, wrong, wrong.
The cowardly, backstabbing attack on America wouldn't divide us, the politicians said. The attack would unite us, and the enemy, whoever that was, would soon face a desert shield of shock and awe during a desert storm.
The part about the bombs was true. Bombs fell on our chosen enemies.
The unity part was at best a misprediction, and at worse, a damn lie.
The flags on the overpasses blew away. The flag in my mother's front window sun-faded until you couldn't count the stars. She took it down, and I used a razor blade to scrape the scotch tape off the window glass.
The unity wasn't so hard to scrape off; the candlelight vigils didn't last too long. The speeches were just words. We did not overwhelm the recruiting offices, offering our bodies as a sacrifice.
Having withstood an attack on America, we began to attack each other as no other nation had ever attacked America.
Hatred built up between the races. Cities flamed. Dark things were said about Jews. Foreigners were suspect. Attacked by unreasoning fanatics, we elected unreasoning fanatics. We answered perversions of Islam with perversions of Christianity, and the Y'allatollahs of the old Confederacy rolled in the stinking, poisonous dung of slavery, loving the smell.
I know what happened, right?
Yes. I do.
We didn't deserve 9/11. Given the opportunity to pass through the fire and come out stronger, we shattered in the heat.
No turbaned skulker invaded the United States Capitol. No bearded imam led his jihadis into Texas and took away the rights of women.
Martyrdom is supposed to bring grace, but Americans refused grace, laughed at nobility, split our grand national purpose into a million pointed tongues.
The mountains weep. The prairie is ashamed. The pioneer trails lead nowhere.
Marc Munroe Dion’s latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called “Devil’s Elbow: Dancing in the Ashes of America.” It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle and iBooks.