So unless you’ve been living under a rock on some distant unknown planet, or maybe even then, you’ll recall yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks. The day contained the usual memories, mild patriotism, moments of silence, etc.
I’ve also seen lots of references to the day that it is “the day everything changed”. And with that, some have said it was the day America “lost its innocence”.
Um… what?
Statements like this, as well as weirdly similar statements about so-called childhood innocence make me seriously think that, well, they keep using that word, and I don’t think it means what they think it means.
For one, being innocent tends to mean you haven’t done anything wrong, or at least not in a certain context. Which, yeah, I don’t think I need to point out there why it’s then a wildly inappropriate statement about the United States! I mean, hey, I love this country and am proud to be American, but I’m not for a second going to pretend this country is by any stretch “innocent”. Just… no. 😆
It’s also incredibly odd to then pretend that 9/11 destroyed whatever this so-called “innocence” America had was. Innocence tends to go hand in hand with “purity” for some reason, and I’m not entirely sure how these people think the USA was so “pure”. I mean, we’d been attacked before, albeit of much smaller scale than this. And even if we were to pretend being attacked like this was an indelible blemish on the supposed white sheet of American purity, is that really the main thing to be focusing on? Not that, you know, three thousand people died and New York is still missing its two tallest buildings?
It’s also troublesome to claim that being a VICTIM of an attack makes you not innocent anymore. Um, no, it’s the perpetrators who aren’t innocent! Again, confusing being innocent with being pristine. That the terrorist attack somehow permanently spoiled us. And how did it do this exactly? Is it because of some cultural purity fetish that some loss of it is a deep crime and loss in and of itself? I mean, really?
Though perhaps, if we’re to use this “innocence” ideal here, maybe it’s telling. As said by Mignon McLaughlin and Julian Gutierrez, innocence is basically ignorance that pleases the rest of us somehow. And as it pleases us, we treasure it for some reason, despite the fact that ignorance is lack of knowledge and lack of knowledge is a vulnerability.
And ten years ago yesterday, three thousand people paid the ultimate price for this supposedly beloved vulnerability.
In which case, why again is it a BAD thing we’ve “lost our innocence”?
The US was pretty much in a drunken stupor of euphoria as far as foreign policy goes after the end of the Cold War. 9/11 was simply the hangover.