September 11, 2011

I don't know what to write for the 10th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I have written quite a bit about it in the past - most of the posts under the Memorial tag are about September 11. I've seen a lot of pieces this week about the legacy of 9/11 - I won't add another, since most of what I've written in the past was about the political fallout. The political legacy has not been a good one - we are a weaker nation now than we were before - though I admit in the last couple years, it seems the sins of Reagan (systematic destruction of the American economy) have overtaken the sins of Bush (systematic destruction of civil liberties, the rule of law, democracy itself.) So it's true, if I were to rant, I would be more likely to rant about the continued need for a trillion or so dollars of infrastructure spending to put people to work....

So no, I'll skip the politics. Though I don't know quite what else to say - I wish to mark the day - and mourn the dead and maybe look back at what was lost. I was in New York in the summer of 2000, and like every tourist, shot the length of Manhattan from the top of the Empire State Building. An iconic view, as filmmakers certainly knew - how better to show the promise of America? It may be coincidence that the image I found first was from Stroscek - but it's hard to think of a better encapsulation of the promise and threat of America. So I'll start with Herzog and end with me, looking out across the great city, at those two towers anchoring the composition, and hope we can find more of the promise of America as we go forward...