(no subject)
I was so tired today. I had a bath a one o'clock, feel asleep in there for half a freaking hour. Got out, woke up enough to crawl into bed and sleep till 6. The past two weeks sort of buried me--Latin and the advisory jurisdiction of the ICJ do not make relaxing companions swimming around my head 24 hours a day. Especially since the judicial body of the latter like to abuse the former in their wanktastic judgments with unfortunate regularity. Seriously, Law tends to be pretty prone to wankery, not more perhaps than some of the Arts courses I've taken, but it's up there. International Law is Teh King of Wank. Whoever decided they were going to abolish stare decisis for the ICJ is going right at the head of my 'people to go back and bitchslap in an egregious abuse of time travel technology' list. Because the ICJ, made up as it is, afterall, of judges, for whom the quoting of previous judgements as if they had precedential value is an ingrained habit of a life-time. Unfortunately, things being as they are, these same judges aren't bound to take the effort to be truly consistent with those judgements that they would have had to take otherwise. I mean, it's not like I personally care whether they want to follow precedent--it's a doctrine which has a multitude of arguments, for and against. But it'd be nice if they could just be upfront about it, rather than contorting previous judgments with re-characterizations a three yr old wouldn't buy, or quoting a previous decision ad nauseam while conveniently ignoring crucial points.
All which having nothing to do with why I opened lj in the first place...
So, my law essay was due Friday, I worked Friday night, I worked Saturday till 4.00, then went out to a friend's 20th, where I got drunk enough to be irritating, but not, unfortunately, drunk enough that my memory could hazily misconstrue my behaviour as brash wit and charm. All of which is to say, I didn't remember the significance of the date till we were all waiting in the Check-Out Line of Doom, buying party supplies. Then we were getting drunk, and I slept most of today. So, I don't think I've seen a single piece of coverage on the September 11th anniversary. But reading my flist was reminder enough--and rooting around my files found this, an entry I'd written on the 1st anniversary of the Bali bombings, but never finished, or posted.
I decided to avoid the Bali coverage today--I don't really know why. When September 11 was plastered across our screens on the two anniversaries we've had--then I watched almost everything. Partly, I was trying to wipe out my initial reaction to the attack, because it isn't a reaction I like to associate with a tragedy that killed 3000 people.
When the events of 9/11 were unfolding in America, it something like 11 o'clock at night in Oz, and in an ad-break during an episode of The West Wing (how's that for ridiculous irony, huh?), I wandered into the lounge room where my dad and brother were gaping at a news item on our second television. They had helicopter shots and were saying it had been a light-plane. To me, it looked like nothing at all--a little bit of smoke leaking from the side of a skyscraper. I didn't even know what city those skyscrapers where in till my dad told me. If you'd said 'the twin towers' or 'the world trade centre' to me a day earlier, I wouldn't have been able to even connect the two phrases as belonging to the same set of buildings, let alone to a skyline I could visualise. The news break didn't last long, and they went back to The West Wing and played the end of the episode. After that it switched over to the news again, and they transfered to a live feed from CNN, because the second plane had just hit. We got my mother out of bed to watch it. I had school the next day, and mum kept telling me I should quit watching and go to sleep. I didn't want to--I was transfixed. It wasn't horrifying to me. I wasn't crying. This was a freaking Tom Clancy movie, with better actors but crappy direction--jump cutting to confusing and conflicting reports do not make for a coherent storyline. It was a movie. A movie on which I had a running critique playing in background of my thoughts. Spectacular visuals, if clumsily edited. There are some affecting moments, like when we hear about the calls to loved ones from those on the hijacked planes and from peopled trapped in the towers, but there is no cohesion. The discovery that the forth plane simply crashed into a field somewhere was a bit anti-climatic. Having it crash into the White House would have given the piece greater synchronicity. There was such a string of fantastic events that I was waiting for the next one with something like anticipation, and when nothing did happen I reacted with something like disappointment.
After a day or so of the frantic, 24-hour media coverage, I got tired of the movie. The images where overplayed. The cliches were making my teeth hurt. A decent director, I thought, needs to know when enough is enough and, quite frankly, this guy has over-extended himself with all the hyperbole he had flying around. 'The world has changed'? Dude, I know you worked hard on this, but are you serious? I've still got to pass my AME Options class and if your fantastic feature doesn't wrap itself up soon, I'm going to get annoyed.
Reading this again, I know why I didn't finish it, or post it. I'm not proud of that immediate reaction, and nor of the self-righteous bitching I did in the weeks afterward when the first fifteen minutes of every single news program was devoted to it, that if this had happened anywhere in the third world, we'd have moved the fuck on already. I accept now that a lot of the 'hyperbole' wasn't, really. The world did change. Not day to day, not for me, not for vast, vast, majority of people. But day-to-day is only one measure. People's perception of the world is perhaps less tangible, but it has its effects: economic, and most obviously, political.
It's hard to under-estimate the extent of the political effect of September 11th. John Howard won an election afterwards, when three months earlier he was hemorrhaging so badly people couldn't be bothered betting on the outcome. He won because people were afraid, pure and simple. Afraid a handful of people, people desperate enough to climb into leaking boats with their children, people who wanted a better life. A lot of these people were from Arab nations. Members of John Howard's cabinet flat out stated the possibility of terrorist infiltration via these boats. Don't tell me 9-11 didn't effect that election. George Bush will probably win his next election because of 9-11. I don't in any way sympathise with terrorism as a means to achieve your ends, nor do I understand the mindset of someone who can strap explosives to their chest and blow themselves and others to kingdom come. But I haven't lived in a country under violent occupation. I've only ever lost a family member to old age. There are reasons for terrorism, and I think the worst tragedy of terrorism, from my uninvolved standpoint, is that it is an act which will almost inevitably overshadow, obscure and taint those reasons. So we had September 11th, and now we have Iraq, and Afghanistan. And the fact that people's families are dying in the process of 'democratisation' is equally irrelevant to the perpetuation of the cycle as whatever those hijackers hoped to achieve.
This is the type of thing I think about on 9-11. So I'm kinda glad I missed it all this year--watching remembered grief is unpleasant, but it can be cathartic. Watching grief, and raging at where that grief has lead a nation, and the world after it...there's not much catharsis in that.
All which having nothing to do with why I opened lj in the first place...
So, my law essay was due Friday, I worked Friday night, I worked Saturday till 4.00, then went out to a friend's 20th, where I got drunk enough to be irritating, but not, unfortunately, drunk enough that my memory could hazily misconstrue my behaviour as brash wit and charm. All of which is to say, I didn't remember the significance of the date till we were all waiting in the Check-Out Line of Doom, buying party supplies. Then we were getting drunk, and I slept most of today. So, I don't think I've seen a single piece of coverage on the September 11th anniversary. But reading my flist was reminder enough--and rooting around my files found this, an entry I'd written on the 1st anniversary of the Bali bombings, but never finished, or posted.
I decided to avoid the Bali coverage today--I don't really know why. When September 11 was plastered across our screens on the two anniversaries we've had--then I watched almost everything. Partly, I was trying to wipe out my initial reaction to the attack, because it isn't a reaction I like to associate with a tragedy that killed 3000 people.
When the events of 9/11 were unfolding in America, it something like 11 o'clock at night in Oz, and in an ad-break during an episode of The West Wing (how's that for ridiculous irony, huh?), I wandered into the lounge room where my dad and brother were gaping at a news item on our second television. They had helicopter shots and were saying it had been a light-plane. To me, it looked like nothing at all--a little bit of smoke leaking from the side of a skyscraper. I didn't even know what city those skyscrapers where in till my dad told me. If you'd said 'the twin towers' or 'the world trade centre' to me a day earlier, I wouldn't have been able to even connect the two phrases as belonging to the same set of buildings, let alone to a skyline I could visualise. The news break didn't last long, and they went back to The West Wing and played the end of the episode. After that it switched over to the news again, and they transfered to a live feed from CNN, because the second plane had just hit. We got my mother out of bed to watch it. I had school the next day, and mum kept telling me I should quit watching and go to sleep. I didn't want to--I was transfixed. It wasn't horrifying to me. I wasn't crying. This was a freaking Tom Clancy movie, with better actors but crappy direction--jump cutting to confusing and conflicting reports do not make for a coherent storyline. It was a movie. A movie on which I had a running critique playing in background of my thoughts. Spectacular visuals, if clumsily edited. There are some affecting moments, like when we hear about the calls to loved ones from those on the hijacked planes and from peopled trapped in the towers, but there is no cohesion. The discovery that the forth plane simply crashed into a field somewhere was a bit anti-climatic. Having it crash into the White House would have given the piece greater synchronicity. There was such a string of fantastic events that I was waiting for the next one with something like anticipation, and when nothing did happen I reacted with something like disappointment.
After a day or so of the frantic, 24-hour media coverage, I got tired of the movie. The images where overplayed. The cliches were making my teeth hurt. A decent director, I thought, needs to know when enough is enough and, quite frankly, this guy has over-extended himself with all the hyperbole he had flying around. 'The world has changed'? Dude, I know you worked hard on this, but are you serious? I've still got to pass my AME Options class and if your fantastic feature doesn't wrap itself up soon, I'm going to get annoyed.
Reading this again, I know why I didn't finish it, or post it. I'm not proud of that immediate reaction, and nor of the self-righteous bitching I did in the weeks afterward when the first fifteen minutes of every single news program was devoted to it, that if this had happened anywhere in the third world, we'd have moved the fuck on already. I accept now that a lot of the 'hyperbole' wasn't, really. The world did change. Not day to day, not for me, not for vast, vast, majority of people. But day-to-day is only one measure. People's perception of the world is perhaps less tangible, but it has its effects: economic, and most obviously, political.
It's hard to under-estimate the extent of the political effect of September 11th. John Howard won an election afterwards, when three months earlier he was hemorrhaging so badly people couldn't be bothered betting on the outcome. He won because people were afraid, pure and simple. Afraid a handful of people, people desperate enough to climb into leaking boats with their children, people who wanted a better life. A lot of these people were from Arab nations. Members of John Howard's cabinet flat out stated the possibility of terrorist infiltration via these boats. Don't tell me 9-11 didn't effect that election. George Bush will probably win his next election because of 9-11. I don't in any way sympathise with terrorism as a means to achieve your ends, nor do I understand the mindset of someone who can strap explosives to their chest and blow themselves and others to kingdom come. But I haven't lived in a country under violent occupation. I've only ever lost a family member to old age. There are reasons for terrorism, and I think the worst tragedy of terrorism, from my uninvolved standpoint, is that it is an act which will almost inevitably overshadow, obscure and taint those reasons. So we had September 11th, and now we have Iraq, and Afghanistan. And the fact that people's families are dying in the process of 'democratisation' is equally irrelevant to the perpetuation of the cycle as whatever those hijackers hoped to achieve.
This is the type of thing I think about on 9-11. So I'm kinda glad I missed it all this year--watching remembered grief is unpleasant, but it can be cathartic. Watching grief, and raging at where that grief has lead a nation, and the world after it...there's not much catharsis in that.