I cannot speak for 9-11 survivors for I am not one, but I can give you some windows to look through that most have never seen…
Recently, there was much blather on television by various women and men about keeping the ‘sanctity’ of the 9-11 bomb site where so many souls were killed by nineteen murderers. Keeping the sanctity?
There’s a reason that all these trout-pout commentators hog the discourse. Those directly afffected by 9-11 who themselves escaped or/and who lost dear loved ones, suffer still. No one thinks to ask after them, to ask first and foremost how they are doing now, this nine years later, and then what they think… IF they decided to be interviewed, which is a mighty big IF. Why? Because many have their craw full of intrusive media over all these years camping out uninvited on their lawns, often having decided what is so even before the interview, and instead, leading interviewees to answer tilted questions–and via editing after, what one often sees in media is what the media had to say, rather than the person. That’s not only p-poor storytelling; it’s inhumane.
On the other flank of misery for the survivors, when politicos, media or others colonize suffering people, harvesting the personal stories away from the survivors, spinnning them til they little resemble reality, acting as though a middleman telling a story can ever replace the first witness teller themselves, no one can trust the story or the middleman storytellers.
Because the deepest inner stories of survivors are sacrosanct, they can only to be told by the one who lived and lives them, at their own will and wish… or entrusted to those few they have real relationship with, an unbreakable trust with. Not only survivors of 9-11 know this: so do our soldiers who return from war only wanting to speak of others’ heroisms, not their own, speak of the funny parts, seldom ever in public, only with buddies, about the gore and the graves.
Thus, even investigative media is not allowed to enter the private minds and souls of people who suffer so deeply. Most in media offer that the people so shocked and harmed can report well on what has occurred. They cannot. They will know a bit while in shock, but most will only know how they feel and think in depth after many years of mulling, questioning, inquiring, dreaming, weeping, condemning, lifting us, lifting themselves… pass. The quickness of vapid media today is out of synch with the longer time it takes a survivor to tell their story in depth.
Why? First and foremost modern media is too often stuck in the old dead and dried out ‘how do you feel about this?’ trope used by many journos over the years. Survivors who are asked intrusive questions by media whilst the survivor is in literal clinical shock, consider later that it was, as many survivors have told me, “a sacrilege” to “take advantage” of the suffering souls who have lost so much, to intrude on them, only in order to compete for money, only in order to make the 5 o’clock news or the whirl-a-gig of 24 hour news channels.
Other vapid and intrusive questions to the suddenly traumatized at first moments, such as ” What do you hope will happen, etc.,?” “What do you wish had happened?” will never lay plumb, nor help the depths of despair, never come close to touching the essence of what has happened to bring innocent souls to their knees.
That grief, in part, is like being dismembered, and over decades’ time, finding one’s parts and sewing oneself, somehow, back together again. The part media does not speak about, but the survivors in their quests for healing do, is that after being ‘interviewed’ they often find themselves not only trying to heal from the unbearable, but also having to heal from being exploited/ emotionally harvested by an intrusive reporter when they are in the midst of bleeding out emotionally.
The intrusive reporter is not remembered kindly. I think it would not be far off to say, certain reporters are seen as vampires sucking off others’ misfortunes and giving nothing of substance and longevity to help, only robbing the so battered one of their last shred of dignity…. all in order for the vampire to look good to his/her boss, to win awards that often carry prestige and money with them.
Can those who suffered first-person through 9-11 be healed? Yes, and it takes time. Much time. And, when certain matters occur now, such as the current media whipped controversy over whether a Muslim cultural center ought be built out of sight but near the site of murders of innocents… the suture lines of each person still grieving, enraged, scarred up from 9-11, begin to ache again… and in some, threaten to tear open again after so long spent trying to mend.
The tongue wagglers on television carrying on about ‘the sanctity’ of it all, dont know sanctity from Sancho Panza. Understand, for some survivors and first responders, there may be a resistance to anything Muslim being within 5000 miles of anything having to do with them. For their own reasons, not publicly stated. On the other hand, if one polled every last survivor and friends and families of the murdered, if all thoughtful responses were gathered, many might be deeply surprised at the discernment many survivors carry: that it wasn’t a religion that murdered their loved ones. It was men. It wasn’t any set of Muslims. It was men who were put together like Timothy McVeigh. Men without souls. Evil given a room. Men who chose malignant evil as higher than their own God.
The one-sided rabble rousing in media about these matters, including the President’s joining the roil, and the Repubs and Dems then fol-der-olling around grandstanding… that’s most often not the path of integrity for survivors learning to thrive again. The survivor families, individuals, first responders, are strong in ways–often at first unrealized even by themselves– but they all have ever been strong each in their own ways, and always will be. But for many, their scars vibrate when their sensibilities are insulted. Again.
While media continues to act in outrage, or not, re whomever is building what at ground zero, supposedly as uninvited proxies of the survivors, I’d say, sadly, the damages to the honor, health and hopes of the survivors have already been profaned. Not once, dozens of times. Again, just last week, watching a woman on TV carrying on about ‘protecting the survivors’ sensibilities’ … this tells me she hasnt been within a mile of any group of survivors, has not sacrificed to walk with those who could barely walk, let alone remain standing. That she’s just a lookie-lou who jumped on an issue to fan her own thick makeup dry.
Sanctity being used as a cudgel to try to shame one group or another? I wont go into much detail about the name-calling of 9-11 victim widows by a so-called author, repeated ad nauseum then, by media, even giving television time to said author to repeat the screed mind-numbingly. Sanctity? I wont but mention by specific names about the beastly efforts to deport young children of the dead. Sanctity?
I wont go into the ugly fracases over insurance pay-outs and those who had no insurances, and the disgusting paces they put the aggrieved through re who deserved to have better food and shelter for their children, according to prior economic status. I wont but mention the bureaucratic wrangling over the body parts of the dead left undiscovered in the land fill. I wont but mention the media photos published of poor poor souls forced to leap from the burning towers, these bandied about, copied and reprinted, collected as though baseball cards. Sanctity?
Nor will I go into minute and hideous detail about the firemen and diggers and animals who became so ill after working for months trying to find body, hand, foot, head, ring, wallet, paper shred, and how they have been treated by media and by those in government who claimed they would take good care of them, but didnt and havent.
I wont talk at length about the foolish and cheap fight over re-building at ground zero that goes on between Port Authority governmentally and the owner of the property who appears to want to wring every last million out of it for himself while mouthing the words ‘memorial’ and ‘sacred’ and yet has for nearly nine years been an obstructionist to true memorial.
Nor will I detail the egregious character attack on a stewardess who died on one of the highjacked planes, by a high-end journalist who was nowhere near any of the disasters and just pulled a plaint out of thin air to criticize the stewardess who went down with her plane. Though said thug-journo appeared to give a vapid half-apology eventually… I and others were present when the journo’s wrong assertions were printed. The lacerations, public humiliations, the bleeding and sorrow that journo caused to an innocent family already on their knees with grief, was the kind of deep inhumanity– that any version of “sorry about that” –can never ever mend as though it never occurred. Never. Sanctity?
There is more, so much more, including imposters who claim to ‘have been there,’ and werent… those who loudly claim they knew someone, who didnt… those who embellished beyond recognition what actually occured… including those who are just so giddily aroused by laying blame for 9-11 on their favorite reviled group of the month. We could even include somewhere in the lower end of the mix the ghoul Phelps and his ghoulettes, but there are so many others. Insulting, derisive, dishonoring: all profane. Over and over. For nine long years.
Decency? I’ve heard many survivors ask time and again, Where is media’s decency? Where is government officials’ decency? Where is the decency in using the words ‘honoring 9-11 victims’ while assiduously dragging out the films again, dragging out the most horrifying, the most wounding, dragging out the same old interviews with grandstanders, dragging out the same old hyperbolic analyses by people who were ‘not there,’ who have not ‘been there,’ and who will never ‘be there,’ for more than just ‘assignment time’ or photo ops for anyone.
Some of the survivors wonder too that some people who consume medias’ opinions … seeming to find so very interesting and exciting this latest contretemps regarding the development of a building in NYC near the fallen World Trade Towers… This flurry of feathers about ‘two sides’ yes or no, right or wrong, often only serves to make those most affected by the bombing murders, turn away from the media … and it’s advertisers… not because the survivors are weak, but because they lived 9-11 as most reporting on it havent and never will… Those who lived face in the dirt despise the false projections and trivializations of their emotions and thoughts and feelings. Thus, for many, commenting on this most current fracas seems only one more profaning of their hearts and souls they simply will not collude with. Understand: they may have their opinions for and again, but they’re not very willing to share them… they who are at the real heart of the matter.
So, I’ve listened now for close to a decade… next year in September will be ten years. NO ONE who is first witness, first responder, eye witness, family, friend, friend of friend, inhabitant of New York City, is ever likely to forget what happened on that infamous day… no matter who builds what. NO ONE is ever going to forget the faces of Atta and others who took flying lessons, tongue-dragging their ways through strip clubs, paying whores to ‘do them,’ and then committed the sacrilege of daring to let the words Allah akbar God is great… pass their lying lips while slaughtering thousands of innocents. No one is likely to ever forget. No matter what is built and what isnt, no matter what it looks like or doesnt look like. No matter what.
Also, the media has been AWOL in showing that often those who are harmed most are also most merciful. That healing requires a much larger picture from outside the wound, not whilst ever sitting in the wound. Though most survivors of murders go back to the edges of the wound for life, most would be surprized at what mercy and understanding for others comes out of being so deeply wounded.
People who are 9-11 survivors have moved on, or not, have come to terms more than halfway, or not, are working to create peace in the world, or not, have strong feelings of their own that are unique to each person. No one knows where those most affected stand and probably we ought not know. For in many ways we have forfeited the trust by allowing bellowing people on television, quasi analyses rather than asking the tens of thousands of people in the survivor families and individuals of 9-11 to the person, what they think and feel.
To pretend there are only two sides to any issue about 9-11 is fatuous. There are thousands of sides belonging to survivors. It would have been respectful, to ask them all. And if the answer were ‘no comment,’ it would also be respectful to not make up out of whole cloth what one imagines they might really mean.
Muslims profaning the memory of 9-11 site? It’s the hand-ramped tempest about Muslim Centers that is most profane on this anniversary… and the ones who are most in need of being not dragged into the lastest controversy by false witness and grandiose alarms, that is, the living who are still trying to heal, are forsaken. What kind of honoring of the living and the dead of 9-11 is that, not by Muslims, but by one’s ‘own people’?