Of 9/11 and 7/11

#7/11Strong.

Today marks the twenty-second anniversary of the beginning of the twenty-first century. Personally, I was young at the time - young enough to remember where I was the day of, the general attitude of the people around me, and certainly what transpired after, but it didn’t really make sense to me at the time. Like, I knew something had changed, and profoundly, but that was mostly because of the way the adults around me were acting and the discussions I heard in the following days, weeks, months, and years. When it comes to the previous American epoch, I recall it like one might remember a half-remembered movie. The broad strokes are there, as are some of the more iconic moments, symbology, and memorable lines, but the finer details are sanded out, indistinct, and a little blurry. It’s strange and granular minutiae that remain the most clearly defined for me.

The fashion is one. So much of it was bright, garish, and colorful, but, in hindsight, it looks downright puritanical compared to what you’re liable to see going through Wal-Mart today. I understand I’m painting with a broad brush, here, but I remember people generally took more pride in their appearance. This is to say, they actually wore clothes and combed their hair to make themselves presentable on a base level, which is more than the vast majority of bleary-eyed slobs shuffling about the grocery stores in pajama bottoms and ill-fitting, sweat-stained wife-beaters today can claim. I can’t even recall the last time I saw someone in a casual setting with a tucked shirt.

I also remember big hair. A lot of big hair. That might have been a southern thing, though. Or so I’m told. My mother had her hair permed for most of my childhood, and I can distinctly recall that when she straightened it for the first time, I cried because I didn’t even know who she was. Shoulder-pads were big in formal-wear for women, too. Going to church, I felt like most of the women were dressed like this:

Again, outside of attending the occasional Mass with friends, most churches I go to are filled with people wearing graphic tees and shorts. I’m not even saying that you need to dress to the nines, or anything, but, c’mon, guys - put on a pair of slacks, at least.

More than anything, though, I recall the fast-food joints of the time. They were all unique, and they all had their own different character - their own separate identities that a lot of effort went into cultivating. Taco Bell had the horizontal lines and cool colors that looked like a pattern that would be on a windbreaker my dad might have worn at the time:

Alternatively, it looks like the print on those paper cups you’d find everywhere back then.

McDonald’s was like micro-dosing on an amusement park, what with the cartoonish clown iconography, toys, playgrounds, and burger-shaped stools and the bizarro tree which, frankly, I was never too sure why that needed to be there or who thought it was a good idea:

I can feel the layer of sticky scum that would accrue on those ugly brick-brown tiles sticking to the soles of my shoes just looking at this picture.

Wendy’s looked like an old-folk’s home cafeteria, but there was a certain charm to the silk plants (which always needed to be dusted), the muted colors, brass fixtures, and the sun-room, something about which always made the burgers hit different when you ate them in there.

And everything was yellow. The burger wrappers, the cups, the napkins - it was all yellow. And yes, that is a Coldplay reference. You can laugh now.

Couldn’t have put it better myself.

I have exceedingly fond memories of shopping malls from that time. Probably because we spent a lot of time in them, since we lived in a po-dunk town outside of Dallas where there was nothing to do except drive into Dallas and find something to do there. I have so many memories of the various malls around the Dallas area, more than a few of which are now abandoned, moldering shells that are either in parts of town you wouldn’t want to leave your car unattended in, or surrounded by sketchy neighborhoods. I remember we used to go to Valley View Center, which, even then, was being supplanted by the much larger and much more expensive Galleria, which was within walking distance - because building two malls that close was a great idea, I guess. A friend and I actually went in and explored when the theater was still open - everything except the theater was walled off, but, being enterprising (and bored) young men… we got in regardless.

From this angle, dead ahead, there used to be a store that only sold corn dogs back in the 90’s on the ground floor, where everything was piss yellow and greasy to the touch. I loved it.

It was empty, but not destitute. That was four, maybe five years ago. Recently, the place was bulldozed. This is a scene from the interior shortly before it was:

Note the bullet holes in the elevator glass.

Today, short of going to the nicest malls in the most ritzy parts of town, you might as well just save yourself the trouble and walk through the ghetto than go to a shopping mall - you’ll have roughly the same experience. On the rare occasion I’ve made the mistake of visiting one in the past several years, I feel as if I’ve been transported to some nightmarish mix of Calcutta and Honduras. It’s not how I remember the malls of my youth

They were clean. Relatively. Pleasant. Relatively. The neon and white tile and fake plants and the smell of chlorine in the fountains - it all comes back to me in a rush.

More than anything, I recall how everything looked like it had effort put into it. Every store, every food court stall, every mall in general - they felt like they had… more. Just look at the facades of these shops:

I’m aware that not every store in any given mall looked like this, but, hell, at least they put some effort into their aesthetics. These days, most places look like they can barely bother to slap a sign over the door, and the interiors are gray, bare, sterile, and uncomfortable.

It’s kind of like the fast food restaurants. You look at these pictures from the time - the fashion, the architectural styles, the interior design trends, everything - you get this sense that people were trying in a way that they just don’t anymore.

If anyone puts effort into anything anymore, it’s big companies finding out how they can sand off all the edges and unique qualities from literally fucking everything so they can serve the same bland, sterile bullshit to the lowest common denominator, and save money by being as boring and basic as they can possibly be. Perhaps the differences between fast food chains in the 90’s stands out so starkly because of just how emblematic they are of this loss of diversity and pernicious spread of minimalist, Apple-chic aesthetic into literally everything.

Taco Bell:

Cringe.

McDonald’s:

Lame.

Wendy’s:

Weak.

This really should be a crime.

And, yeah - look, I get it, I’m being nostalgic. The 90’s was no lost utopia, and I’m perfectly aware of the fact I’m opining icons of mindless mass consumerism that paved the road that leads to where we are today. I’m also aware that many of these memories and what I am most fond of were holdovers from the eighties that were already gradually fading away at the time. I know that, by the end of the decade, things were a lot less Big Willie Style:

Oh… how the jiggy have fallen.

And a lot more Willennium:

As the clock moved ever closer to Will2K the turn of the century, things took a turn for the sleek, silver, chrome, and slick and polished rather than the blocks of bright colors from the early 90’s as the influences of the alternative scenes - goth, grunge, just plain alt-rock - were felt increasingly in the mainstream.

Can you believe there was a time when people actually thought Lance Bass was straight?

Even though N’Sync were relatively tame about as alt-rock as Barry Manilow, the earrings, dyed hair, and dark, subdued colors all speak to shifting attitudes in the zeitgeist.

Regardless of these trends, even the late 90’s seem like a sort of golden age compared to the total dysfunction you see today. It’s almost hard to believe that, at the time, you had the Desert Storm fiasco, the Lewinsky Scandal, and, in 2000 proper, the single most contentious election in history (up until that point), all in the span of a decade. I was too young to really understand it, but even I was aware that George Dubya Bush’s ascendancy to the Oval Office was controversial. I remember people saying that he only got in because of help from his brother, Jeb, who, uh… go on to bigger… better things…

Was governor of Florida at the time, which basically decided the election. This was in Texas, too, where Bush had the home-field advantage with the public and remained largely popular well into his second term, or, at the very least, was given a very generous benefit of the doubt. I remember the pictures of men scrutinizing the chads (remember when we voted on actual paper ballots?) being blasted all over the news and print media.

I feel like it’s often forgotten that the Clinton years were also the years of Janet Reno as the nation’s attorney general, which was rife with dramatic attacks, stand-offs, and other forms of low-intensity violence as the government - the ATF in particular - went hog wild under Reno’s purview. For as much as the whole right-wing nutters gets bandied about today, right wing militias in the boonies of Montana, Idaho, and Utah were a very real threat… or so Reno said.

Pictured: the end result of the infamous Waco siege.

I could have just as easily posted an image from the Ruby Ridge stand-off, the remains of the Alfred R. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, shortly after being bombed, or even the World Trade Centers.

Yeah - remember that? I don't. But it did happen. All of this did seem to set the stage for what would come for what we’re living through now, though I don’t think anyone expected that mass shootings that would put Columbine to shame would become as regular as seasonally migrating geese.

Still, despite a contentious election and egregious government overreach, the rhetoric from the government, the media, and the laypeople was never as chaotic, dysfunctional, or violent as it is now. Elected officials routinely call for citizens to be imprisoned, or worse. Much of their constituencies call for outright bloodshed. We’re told we have to rip out the basic democratic functions of our political machines to save out Democracy, which kind of sounds like arguing to remove an engine to keep a car running. Hell, if I had a nickel for every time the current sitting president threatened to use nuclear weapons or fighter jets on American citizens… well, I’d have two nickels.

Politics were always present in American, yes, and I remember people talked about it, but it didn’t dominate people’s lives and every waking thought as they do today. There was a time and place to discuss them, but it wasn’t the be-all-end-all, all-consuming black hole of public attention it seems to be today. Hell, I remember entering college in the Obama years, and even then, while political talk was beginning to manifest in corners of life I had never seen them before, and the nebulous promise of change was Pee-Wee’s word of the day -

Deep politic discussion was usually something you only did with your friends while you were drinking on the back porch at one in the morning, and politics was still something pretty much only politely discussed charismatic grifters, autistic policy wonks, and generally the realm of some pretty weird people. I would know - I started off as a PoliSci major! I remember my parents telling me, Never ask someone who they voted for. I was raised to view that as being impolite and bringing in politics somewhere it didn’t belong. I didn’t get it at the time, but today, where you basically have to swear your allegiance to the ruling regime just to function in every day society, I completely get why they felt that way, and what a tragedy it is that political thought can’t just be compartmentalized and packed away into the background again.

Today, I’ve seen scads of posts pertaining to the general theme of, Can you imagine if 9/11 happened today? Everyone comes to the same general agreement - it would probably tear this country apart. If it wouldn’t be the final nail in the coffin, it might just be the Harper’s Ferry or Archduke Franz Ferdinand moment of the republic. I’m not really here to speculate or play “What If”, but, to briefly summarize my thoughts, I imagine that, given the antipathy most of the country holds to the glorified homeless encampment that is New York and the overwhelming majority of the people that live there… well, just draw your own conclusions. I doubt much of red America would be laughing or making memes about the tragedy, as certain detestable corners of blue America routinely does whenever people die en masse in a red state, but I don’t think there would be such a strong, nation-wide, ubiquitous, and unconditional outpouring of sympathy the way that there was in 2001. I can’t remember where I heard it, or who said it - I’m sure a lot of people were - but I distinctly recall hearing, “We’re all New Yorkers today.” And that really was the general sentiment.

I think there’s even a tell to it in the language. We are New Yorkers today. Now, the Boston Marathon bombing twelve years later was not on nearly such a dramatic scale, but, ever since we were #BostonStrong, we’ve only ever been Strong. We were #ParisStrong when 90 civilians were butchered in the Bataclan. Today, we’re #MauiStrong as the people of Lahaina still have over a thousand conspicuously missing dead - mostly children. But we weren’t all Bostonians, or Parisians, or Hawaiians. If Los Angeles was devastated by some colossal earthquake tomorrow, no one would be saying we were all Angelenos, just like if the New Madrid fault finally slipped, I doubt we’d all be Missourians, either. And, yes, I also understand that 9/11 was not some localized attack on New York City alone, and that it was, effectively, an attack that happened on the entire country that happened to be in New York City, but the big apple was still the fruit that bore the bruise it.¹

But, at the same time, I’m biased. This is coming from someone who’s spent most of my life in the post-9/11 era, increasingly desensitized to the violence. I like to think I’m a creative person, but it’s legitimately difficult for me to try and imagine what it would be like for such a major attack to happen today, with no real parallel or crisis of similar magnitude. Having witnesses the shock and awe and trauma of the event, it’s kind of hard for me to imagine being in a world where we hadn’t gone through it, you know? A world that may not have been innocent, but a world where the idea of a plane crashing into some of the tallest towers in the country was unthinkable, and, even worse, a world where the questionable inconsistencies surrounding the whole affair would be so laughably absurd they would be roundly dismissed, if not met with hostility. The only reason Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams is a meme is not because it’s being mocked, but more of a collective coping mechanism. I remember there was a time where questioning the official narrative was borderline sacrilege, and liable to get you chewed out, but the fact that #WorldTradeCenter7 is trending on Twitter today should tell you much about how attitudes have shifting in the intervening years.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is imagine if 9/11 happened today is almost a silly question, hardly worth devoting much thought to - today is today because of 9/11. Had those towers not fell, the trajectory of the 21st century would have been completely and totally different. I’m not saying that it would have been a good one. In fact, I have a feeling that something would have happened, sooner or later, that would have kickstarted history again after Francis Fukuyama declared it dead in the mid-90’s - something catastrophic, something violent, and something that would have killed a whole lot of people. Today, as I write this, after two decades of spectacle and unabating fear pornography, I’m tempted to say that the only thing I can imagine that may trigger a similar effect to 9/11, if not on a national scale than a personal level, where every single person in the country will remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard in the news, would be if we watched Los Angeles or Washington or New York or maybe even Kiev go up in a nuclear conflagration on live television.

Now, I'll admit, while I don't think 9/11 should be some sacrosanct civic holiday wherein we must all wear black and no one is permitted to smile or laugh under threat of public flogging, I do think it's pretty fucking disrespectful for the sitting President to fuck off to Alaska for the occasion.

So much for “Never Forget.”

I think part of that is due to the eroded cohesion of this country and the stark partisan fissure that’s erupted between red and blue America. As stated before, things were far from perfect in 2001, but there was still a sense of national unity that you just don’t see today. And it would be easy to chalk it up all to politics, or the 24 hour news media cycle, and, of course, evil cabals of faceless ghouls plotting against the west. And yes - they all do have their own part to play in the decline of this country. But it’s a lot more nuanced than that. There’s a lot of complexities to it all that are beyond what I could catalogue here, now, and probably ever.

But, as I sit here and reflect on today and compare our present situation to this very day, twenty-two years prior, I find my mind continually returning to a simple, unassuming YouTube video that was uploaded sixteen years ago, of two buddies visiting a 7/11 outside of Disney World in Orlando, Florida, at 2:30 AM, in August, 1987. It’s a random home movie - the kind of stuff you used to see a lot more of on YouTube, before it became the miserably corporatized, sterilized advertising platform it is today.

A few years later, in 2014, the two men in the video returned to the very same 7/11.

Watch these videos, back to back, if you have the time. The stark difference between the appearance and the attitudes of the people in them will put into perspective just how drastically, radically, and fundamentally not just the politics, but the entire social structure of this country has changed. The thing is, a lot of people watch the second, and the comments bear out this common idea that, People aren’t social like they used to be. Sure enough, in the 1987 video, you’ll find that pretty much everyone is quite loquacious and pleasant and willing to talk. Part of this, I’m sure, is the two men documenting their nocturnal slurpee run’s natural charisma. But the thing is, in the 2014 edition, if you actually watch, most of the people he stops to have a random, short conversation with are not particularly rude… but they’re all rather awkward. Even the guys who open up after a moment all seem so puzzled that someone’s just… talking to them. I won’t lie - if I was in a gas station today, I’d probably be hard pressed to stop and chat with a stranger, no matter how friendly they are, partially because I’m an introvert by nature, but also, in today’s day and age, I’d be waiting for the moment the guy started to give me a sob story about how he needs to get to Portland or something and if I could just spare a few dollars for gas, bro, that would be great. If I was back in Orlando on that August night in 1987, I don’t know if I would have been as chatty as some of the others, but I’d like to think that, even if I was a bit quiet, I wouldn’t be suspecting the man behind the camera of trying to bilk me or worse.

I’d be interested to see what would happen if this guy went back to the same 7/11 today. I suspect it might be hazardous to his health. Even 2014 - eight years ago - looks and feels like a different world. I suppose it was. Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, Google - all those sites and social media had been released upon the public like a plague by then and were already ubiquitous facets of many people’s lives, but Tinder, if it was out, was only in its infancy, and had yet to fully demolish the already fragile dating ecosystem in America, and the veritable social atom bomb that is TikTok was still but a feverish nightmare waiting to be born.

There isn’t really a greater point to all this. It’s really just food for thought. I also like sharing that video of the 7/11 in 1987 - it always brings a smile to my face. I know the world wasn’t perfect then. Far from it. But, at the time, the country and the people in it, took themselves seriously. Or, at the very least, more than they do today, where it seems like more and more become so cynical and desensitized that they don’t see any point in being serious.

And I understand the appeal. Really, I do. I’ve struggled with it off and on throughout my adult life. It’s easy to bask in the nostalgia of times that came before. They might not have been better, but they were simpler, and there is something to be said for that. But, more than anything, if you find yourself opining for the past that can never be again, I share with you this quote that always brings me some solace by the great Ernst Jünger:

And while I do agree with Mr. Jünger, here… I suspect he might question his conviction about that happy century remark if he ever had Yellow Wendy’s. I’m telling you - it really did hit different.

Literally me.

1. Pentagon and Shankesville, PA not withstanding.