Why I Make 9/11 Jokes
When mad men run the asylum, the only sensible thing to do is go insane.
On this day in 2001, just under 3000 people died. Inside job, outside job, Bush, Cheney, I don’t give a shit your viewpoint on the matter, but the one thing we can hopefully agree on is that 3000 people died on this day in 2001 and THAT IS a tragedy.
I don’t want to underpin other tragedies or say that 3000 people losing their lives should be a focal point for public policy in America. Shit. If I had time, I could bring up half a dozen genocides right off the top of my head. The point is not to belittle what happened in Darfur. The fact is that when anyone has their life cut short, it’s a tragedy. 1 or 1 million, our feelings should be the same on the matter. We should feel as much regret for what happened under the reign of Pol Pot as we do for the kids in Sandy Hook.
And humor helps us deal with these tragedies. Death is one of the few certainties we have in life but it makes no difference that most of us feel pain and anger when we lose someone we care about. We KNOW it will happen to our friends and family, but for many of us, it happens too soon.
So we make jokes. Because it helps distance us from that terrible emotion we feel. It’s a coping mechanism. We learn to laugh and soon the pain diminishes. I mean, it never really goes away but it helps us view it from a perspective that isn’t barren and depressing.
It’s the same for anything that unsettles us. If we can laugh at Hitler, he deflates from this unstoppable ubermensch into the narc in gym class everyone wants to beat up because OH FOR CHRIST SAKE, LARRY WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT THE RULES WE ARE JUST TRYING TO FUCKING HAVE FUN.
I mean, it’s all perspective and it’s all entertainment. It helps us put some distance between us and the reality of what has happened to us so we can look at it far less emotionally. The reality becomes fantasy and slips into that same area of the brain that recognizes werewolves as bullshit. Entertaining bullshit.
It’s a process that helps us empower ourselves from the awful things that happen in this world. People suffer needlessly all the time. Children are starving in the third world when all logic dictates that they shouldn’t. Why didn’t the UN intervene in Rwanda? The resources were there.
As individuals, in a situation like this, all we can do is ask the question about why it happened? Why? WHY? We are unable to do anything about it.
With 9/11, there is a special kind of powerlessness. It is the powerlessness brought on by the hubris of invincibility. Terrorist attacks happen all the time in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine but here, it is an uncommon thing to consider that at any given moment you could become the victim of a rocket attack. We do not fathom the ramifications and would not understand how to defend ourselves. We allow ourselves to become fearful and disempowered.
And with the September 11 attacks there is a special kind of confusion. Even now, many people still don’t understand who to blame the attacks for. “Al Qaeda” has become synonymous with “Muslim” causing mach q levels of fear. There has been a lot of positive growth and understanding in the past decade, however, many will still chant the rejoinder “All I Need To Know About Muslims I Learned On September 11th”.
It is fear that makes us do this and allow us to continue to misunderstand. Fear that allows us to wallow in our ignorance and beat our chests. It can be manipulated by unscrupulous people who want to pander to the patriotic sensibilities that cause us to think rashly and persecute an entire section of people simply because they happen to pray 5 times a day instead of once a week.
But manipulation can also be used for other ends as well. And as sacred as many would claim the day is, for many others, it is a shallow celebration of the dollar and and just another way to make a quick buck. But today is special, preying on the patriotism drummed up in the name of fear.
Yes, Virginia. Life can be measured in dollars. Exactly $19.11 at your local wine retailer.
Is this how we mourn the dead? By lining the pockets of merchants whose interest and value in human tragedy extends only insofar as what profit can be made of it?
How is it that we honor our dead when we turn tragedy into capitalism?
I would argue the lives of those 3000 dead has been effectively rendered a phantom. The image of the World Trade Center has been repeated endlessly by those looking to make a profit that it has become a parody of itself. It is a meaningless iconography that holds no more shock value than the masturbatory antics of celebrity. “NINE ELEVEN” is no more than any other day we hold in regard. It is not sacred. It is simply another day to open the cash register and sell a few more flags.
It has become devalued, debased and crass. The very notion that one should “remember” by buying a “commemorative” plate or T-shirt or video game should be insulting to anyone who lost family that day. It should not be fertile ground for snake oil salesmen to ply their trade.
But it is and people permit it. They latch onto it and buy the shirt featuring the twin towers in flames superimposed over the American flag as a bald eagle sheds a single tear. This is how the public WANTS to remember things: by buying a product that was manufactured in China for 14 cents an hour.
I don’t argue that making shitty jokes about the death of 3000 people is more moral, but considering the environment we live in today, I fail to see how it could be any worse.
