Oh, people are gonna just hate this entry. While I’m supposed to be joining in “celebrating” today’s events (I’m really shocked that today hasn’t been made a national holiday yet) I am instead writing a screed about how we taken a national tragedy of modest but dramatic proportions and made it a uniquely American exercise in marketing and politics.
The Non-Proportional Response
More people in the U.S. die each year from the flu than died on September 11. In the years since 2001, an average of around 42,000 people died in automobile accidents each year in the United States.
The September 11 terrorist attacks killed 2,977 innocent people. We retaliated by going on to cause the deaths of more than 7,500 troops and the estimates say up to 33,000 civilians killed in Afghanistan and more than 100,000 innocent people in Iraq — which had nothing to do with the attacks. And these deaths continue, every day, ten years later.
We have succeeded in transforming ourselves from the victim and the recipient of world support to being even more hated by great swathes of the world’s population. We have created an incubator for even more extremist hatred and made ourselves more of a target.
We are spending billions every day on the aftermath of September 11 with no real tangible benefit, worrying about using backscatter x-rays to screen grandmothers and trying to ward off another event that could kill a few thousand people. Imagine if we, as a nation, came together and threw the same amounts of money at making safer cars or a better medical system. Big business would still benefit, the same way they do now – but they wouldn’t have the motivator of fear to generate profits.
The Me Generation
It’s all about me. Where I was. What I was doing. How I feel. What it all means to me. How it affects me.
USA Today is even running a series called “9•11 + Me.”
We have a uniquely selfish streak. We’ve taken this event and used it as an excuse to talk about ourselves, and we are aided and abetted by a media that seems to think that everything, even a national tragedy, must be made “relatable.”
While the attacks were witnessed and experienced directly by great numbers of people, why does the media feel it necessary to uncover the remembrances of those who were hundreds or thousands of miles away by asking a guy in California where he was when the towers fell? An office worker in Iowa what she was doing when the Pentagon was struck?
I lived in Arlington, Virginia, a mile or so from the Pentagon. And yet, this doesn’t make me important nor my remembrances of the day notable. I have nothing to contribute to the national memory of that day, and yet I am encouraged at every turn to make it all about me.
The Brand
By the end of the day on September 11, 2001, it had already been agreed by marketers, branding professionals, television producers and merchandisers that the events of the day would always be branded using the shorthand 9/11. Slogans and taglines were created from quotes passed around like a game of telephone, and within hours of the events unfolding live on television, they had created special theme music, graphics and logos which found their way onto stickers and t-shirts in just a few days. Remember the 9/11 Telethon, staffed by movie stars and celebrities shortly after that day? Doesn’t anyone, with the benefit of hindsight, look back on that and wonder what the hell we were thinking?
Ten years later, 9/11 is a bigger business than ever. And I think this is what bothers me the most: you can buy 9/11 Gifts. Remember this tragedy with a t-shirt, bumper sticker or a bottle of commemorative wine, served in Twin Towers glasses.
And I can’t shake the feeling that it is disrespectful to package all the horror of that day in a shorthand date notation. The least we could do is take the time to spell it out: September 11.
The Rhetoric
They hate our freedom! We must protect our freedom! Support our troops by slapping a Chinese-made magnet on your Japanese-made car, fueled with gasoline that comes from the oil they are dying to protect our access to. We have a ridiculous need to compete with our neighbors — the quality of our patriotism must always be a little bit higher. How many American flags can I fit on my car? People who have never once set foot on a military base, volunteered for the USO nor believe they should have to pay any taxes, but dammit, they support our troops and think they should be sent to fight manufactured wars to protect our freedom.
Our freedom has never once been threatened by an Islamic extremist. Not ever. Instead, our freedom has now been severely curtailed by our own government. We have done it to ourselves — or allowed it to be done to us by flag-waving fearmongers who used the tragedy to gain power and plunge this country into a bizarre parody of itself. Ten years later we are still using alien words like “the Homeland” (when have we, in America, ever used phrases like that?) and allowing the most egregious, anti-American assaults to our civil liberties. Because rhetoric, when repeated consistently and applied using the best branding techniques, has a way of becoming “truth.”
And this is how we remember the people who were horribly murdered on that day ten years ago. We’ve packaged them into an industry and used them to make money and consolidate political power.
Thus endeth the lesson. Tell me what you think. Have we gone too far with the merchandising, the branding, the rhetoric and the maudlin Dr. Phil hysterics? Comments, please.
