Six months from now the news is going to be insufferable for at least a week, and probably much longer. Oddly enough, this has very little to do with whether or not the NFL is actually playing football. Mostly it’s going to be the avalanche of media masturbation over the tenth anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
It will be interesting not so much for the content, which will be cloying at best and pitch black stupid at worst, but for how long it goes on and what forms it takes. Everything from commemorative coins and plates to big political speeches to moments of silence will be foisted upon the American public. The Red presidential hopefuls, however many of them there are, will be climbing over each other to most fulsomely praise America and damn Barack Obama. Campy drawings of eagles shedding a single tear and vicious political name calling should also be expected.
It’s unlikely that much, if any, of what is said will be the least bit memorable. But how the country responds, what lines of argument and commemoration are most common, will be a real barometer of the national mood. It’s not like we’re lacking for reminders of just how fucked the country has been by ten years of disasters. But the overall level of calm or chest thumping when it comes to the bogeymen of Islamic terrorism is difficult to gauge against the normal background noise of current events and politics. In the lead up to the tenth anniversary those other things will fade into the background and the great American noise machine, from the swankiest television executive suites to random people on Twitter, will concentrate on one topic only.
As that process ramps up and reaches its crescendo on Sunday, 11 September 2011, some things are to be expected. The Truther conspiracy nuts will make themselves as visible as possible. Wingnuts will bray and bleat that we haven’t killed enough brown people over the last ten years. But there’s at least a chance that a real counter current will develop as well, one that recognizes the sad reality that our reaction to the 2001 attacks has done far more damage to America that the attack itself. How visible those sentiments are, both in big money media and is lesser outlets, will tell us a great deal about how recovered the frail psyche of our country really is. That’s worth keeping an eye on as the first of the magazine articles start cropping up over the summer.
