Looking back on 9/11 I don’t think I could have predicted the subsequent 10 years. Other people did. They talked about a new age for American people; a fundamental change to the country. I was too wrapped up in my own studies at college to really devote enough attention to really generate the fear and panic the rest of the country seemed to be feeling. After 10 years the memories serve to reveal the kind of people we are, and the kind of people we want to be. 9/11 and the subsequent 10 years provided us with a mirror so we could see ourselves for who and what we are.

At the precise moment of the planes hitting the towers, I was a freshmen in college sitting through an early-morning science class and trying to stay awake. Even now I can’t be completely sure which class it had been. My first inkling of trouble was when I returned to my dorm room after my class for a free period between my early science class and the beginning of a scheduled school assembly. When I walked into the dorm there were an unusually large group of guys standing around watching the television. It might have been a bit early for TV, but the guy’s dorm would have been oddly empty if there hadn’t been someone watching it at any particular hour. On the television was tall building with smoke pouring out of it. I was told something about how a plane had collided with a tower somewhere. I imagined a small plane accidentally hitting the tower, and I thought this was vaguely and grimly funny. It was something on the level of the Darwin awards. How incompetent do you have to be to hit a freakin’ skyscraper in downtown somewhere? I stayed for a moment to watch the television but they didn’t really seem to be talking about anything. I walked back to my room and in generally putted around for twenty minutes until it was time to go to the assembly. When the University President addressed the students, he said two planes had collided into the Twin Towers. They had collapsed.

As in collapsed. They fell? This couldn’t possibly be. I just saw them on the TV. I wanted to run back to the dorm to check and see if the television was faulty. I also had the extremely guilty thought that if I had been willing to be late for the assembly I could have seen the towers fall for myself. I don’t remember the rest of the speech. I think it had something to do with school outreach to New York and prayers or something. The awful gravity of the situation didn’t really sink in until later that afternoon when no one seemed to think that grounding every airplane in the country was an overreaction. Up until that point, I was still wondering if I still had classes that afternoon.

The biology department cancelled its classes and one of the professors set up a small TV in the hallways outside of his lab. Information came in bits and fragments, when it came at all. A newswoman was saying that there could be as many as 50,000 people working in the buildings at any given time. There was something going on at the Pentagon and Pennsylvania. Fortunately, over the next few days the death toll kept being revised downward. This was the first view we have of ourselves. Stories of heroism began to percolate. Stories about rescuers running into the burning buildings and perishing there. Stories about outreach and friendship. For the first time since New York was a Dutch colony, the denizens of that place developed a short-lived beneficence toward another. In an outpouring of support and camaraderie, our NATO allies sent warplanes to patrol our skies like a bunch of Mach2 blankies.

I remember how we vowed as a country we we’re not going to be afraid, and we were not going to let the terrorists win, while at the same time letting our fear motivate us into unwinable wars, torture, and the oppressive need for new security measures. I’m not even altogether certain when it was in these myriad of events that the word terrorism was first uttered. But soon it had seemingly replaced all the other words in the dictionary. It was the year of anthrax, yellow cake, WMDs, and another geography lesson for Americans regarding central Asia.

When I say it was the day we failed, I’m not talking about intelligence failures, structural defects, absent WMDs, or truth issues, I’m talking about how our short-lived beneficence was cruelly withheld from those with even the vaguest resemblance to Muslims. Because of fear and hatred, we abandoned our egalitarianism and enlightenment for crass xenophobia and revenge. With flagrant hypocrisy we put, “national security” above human rights and used that common excuse to abuse and torture.

Perhaps this controlled violence saved lives by disrupting terrorist plots, maybe it cost lives as Guantanamo became a recruitment ad for terrorists. Perhaps in the chaos of war it never mattered at all. God only knows. I only know that when our ideals were tested, we failed them. 9/11/2011 is a day of remembrance, and it behooves us to remember not only this tragedy but the others before it. In many ways, we’ve improved as a country. Unlike the past, we didn’t use biological weapons on anyone, forced marches, or ship our own citizens off to camps in California. We may have learned from the past, but that does not exempt present cruelty.

In the wake of 9/11 we see a version of our country where xenophobia is the norm. Where we’ve forgotten that meaningless persecution of race and religion is the grossest betrayal of our founding principles. However much of an improvement, we still have a long way to go as a people. For example noted political commentator, Juan Williams, once stoked controversy when he said he feels very nervous when getting on-board an airplane with observant Muslims. He’s obviously entitled to his own feelings and in the wake of 9/11 it’s a very human reaction. It’s an understandable reaction. The problem is that he said this without the slightest bit of shame or regret. He’s not a bad man, just a small one.

The greatest tragedy of 9/11 was not the lamentable loss of life for which we still grieve. The tragedy of the falling towers was that they somehow made us all something a little smaller. It was a grievous wound and worthy of revenge. 9/11 did not make us this way. It just somehow gave us an excuse.

Terrorism has personal, economic, social and politico-military implications, it is the penultimate act of nihilism. Meaningless destruction, on any scale, is nothing more than artistic rage and is self-defeating in the long term. Ten years later, I don’t think that anyone believes anthrax, yellow cake, WMDs are in every cave, just waiting for the chance to destroy us. As much as we may wish it, 2001 was not a fevered dream. The consequences are real. Whatever else terrorism has done, it has shown us our two faces. It has illuminated the choice we have before us.

The antidote to rage will never be hatred and prejudice. In the face of anger and hostility we should rise to the challenge of magnanimity and moderation and embrace the principles of equality and equanimity upon which our country was founded. Without them, we will forever be victims to a blood-soaked pyromania. We may be attacked again. On that day I hope we will find a better version of ourselves.

The Northwest faced particularly brutal weather last week, which meteorologists are calling the most racist storm of the century.  The near blizzard snow storm which began December 30th, and subsided days later, plummeted minority communities, literally punching them in the face.  The racist sheet of snow forced many minority groups, like blacks for example, into their homes and out of the workplace.

While some Northwesterners have called this storm just a fluke, others are suggesting foul play.

One resident was attacked by the weather just leaving her home. “I walked out my front door,” says hate crime victim, Penelope Mardre, “and I slip on some ice and fall into a pile of snow. Then the snow is getting everywhere, on my arms and legs. . .down my pants. And when I think it’s going to be all over and I can go back inside, snow hits me right in the eye. And by now I’m crying, freezing and wet, and I have to think that the only reason I was targeted like this is because I’m a Mexican.”

Other workers are angry about their inability to receive a paycheck. “I can’t believe they did this to us,” says resident of Tacoma, Victor Tyson, “White people are having the time of their lives not going to work and letting their kids play outside. But not my family. I can’t even go to work if I wanted to, and I’m not letting my kids go out and play in that shit. When was the last time you saw a black snowman in this country?”

Asian meteorologist, Chris Hyrotaki concurs. “You see when rain turns to snow, it can choose to be any color. In some parts of the world, snow comes out black or yellow or Hispanic. But of course, in Caucasian dominated America, the whites have to one up us once more with white snow. What’s next? Separate drinking fountains? How much power do you need, white people? How much power do you need?”

White people have yet to respond to Chris Hyrotaki’s question but some analysts believe the answer is “a lot.” Snow is expected to fall again this January before the clouds dry up and warm blue skies pervade the Northwest.

Politics corrupts. It is a natural process – just as expectable as a jilted woman murdering her lover or the naïve being taken in by a con. This, it seems, is one of the inevitable conclusions of All the King’s Men, currently playing at the INTIMAN Theatre.

The play is set in Jim Crow Louisiana. Written in 1947, its plot is loosely based upon the life of Louisiana Governor Huey P. Long. The play centers on the life of Jack Burden (Leo Marks), who lives his life hanging around the line between legitimacy and corruption. He begins his career as a journalist with a pushy reputation, and eventually manages to become the shadowy employee of the Democratic Governor of Louisiana, Willie Starks. He knows how to empathize with and manipulate almost everyone around him. But who he is, what he values, and why he does what he does – these things the audience is never privileged to know. Jack spends the play alternatively in a state of cynical detachment or in soul-wracking conflict with himself. But why? What are the exact forces pulling him? After watching for three hours, I still could not say that I know much about Jack Burden.

The play opens with the ensemble coming out and singing about a metaphorical/physical flood: “They’re trying to wash us away” is the refrain. Like a Greek chorus, throughout the play the ensemble will come together and sing the inner thoughts or general feelings of “the common people.” This was a common device in ancient Greek theatre, and to heighten the connection between the two eras the foreground of the stage is set with Greek columns. This implies that the events portrayed in the play are as ancient as, well, the ancients, though of course the modern theatrical form is not a copy of past form. Sometimes the chorus device works and sometimes it doesn’t. At one point the ensemble sings about how they are all rednecks who are proud of it, but the kinds of things they say are so insulting that no actual “proud redneck” would say them. The intrusion of the urban intellectual playwright’s opinion is rather obvious.

The chorus also provides an eye-rollingly obvious justification for playwright Robert Penn Warren to ignore black experiences. “See?” he says, “These characters are racist! They’re ‘keepin’ the niggers down!’ Therefore I don’t have to include black people in my play about Jim Crow Louisiana, not even as ensemble characters with no lines!” Other than that one song, an epithet-loaded exchange between some “hicks,” and a line or two about how in Baton Rouge “everyone looks like me,” the issue of race never comes up in the play. The main characters don’t give their opinions on race or interact with black people because then we as the modern liberal audience would be forced to dislike them. The playwright clearly sees racism as a side issue to whatever he wants to talk about, and director Pam MacKinnon went along with it. Perhaps it is simply that neither of them are skilled enough to address race without distracting from the play’s main themes.

We first meet politician Willie Stark (John Procaccino) as small-town player trying to prevent the local school board from selling a contract for a new schoolhouse to their relatives. He fails, and two years later the school falls down and kills and injures students. Willie is recognized as the one who stood against the corruption, and off the momentum of good public opinion he is eventually elected as governor.

Willie Stark in the first half of the play is almost as intriguing as Jack. Unlike Jack, his struggles are obvious. He tries to stay true to his values while jumping into the deceitful world of politics for the first time. He learns to abandon naïveté, but disturbingly, he concludes as part of this (as so many politicians do) that voters are stupid and there is no place for transparent discussion of issues. He morphs from a relatively bumbling, kind-hearted and principled man to a suave politician. Willie in the second half of the play is so different that he bears only passing resemblance to the man he once was. Yet the moment he crosses the line from his past self to his present takes place offstage. I can only conclude that Willie’s fall was considered an inevitable result. Watching the process is not important, except to the extent that Jack is caught up in it. In this play, all the characters lack free will – one cannot imagine them making different choices if Jack were not there. The question, then, is why Jack makes the choices he does.

This is the only way I can think about Jack in a way that makes sense: in his cynical youth, he decided that there was no such thing as consistent “higher values” or “morality,” and so he became comfortable with doing the dirty work of others. But as time went on, he came to realize that there were limits and objective standards, lines that he deeply feels he should not have crossed. Yet he did, in part because he had such a stake in seeing himself as “the one who really knows what is going on,” though he seems to have a fantasy about the depths of Willie’s corruption. Visiting his mother and childhood friends reveals the essential conflict between the way they see him and the way he sees himself, which makes him so uncomfortable that he pushes them away. But eventually, he is forced by circumstance to resolve the division within himself.

This interpretation is extremely tentative. I do not know if I would come to the same conclusion upon seeing the play a second time. Those who know about the life of Huey P. Long would certainly bring a different perspective to the play. But the value of it is that it is so opaque. How I interpret the sources of Jack’s struggles says more about me than about the truth of his situation.

Despite its flaws, the worldview of All the King’s Men and Jack’s psychological conflict deeply impressed me. My theatre-major housemate, however, was less impressed. “This should have been a TV miniseries,” she said as we left. The play is long, I grant, but the second half in particular went quickly due to the intense emotional action onstage.

But she had another reason to be unimpressed, and I cannot state that better than in her own words, so: “What is it about male playwrights and feminism? It seems like they listen to us on everything except the sexual relationship thing. They get the intelligence, they get the spunkiness, but when it comes to sex the whole thing is as traditional as ever! I sat through this play and watched Sadie [Burke, Willie Stark’s publicist, played by Deirdre Madigan] turn from a strong character into a weak one because of a sexual relationship. I believe she was a good publicist who made Willie what he was, who was willing to speak the truth when none of the other characters were, and yet she becomes mentally unbalanced because she was dumped! What the hell!”

Clearly we feminists must be underestimating the power of the man juice.

All the King’s Men runs until November 8, 2008.

Charleston, Mississippi is a town that was deeply segregated, deeply affected by Klan activity, and shielded by the Civil Rights movement in the South during the 1950s. With a population of around 2,000 today, and with influence from the outside being very low, the town is still trapped within the kind of time loophole devices found in Star Trek episodes.

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