This morning there will be, as there has been for the past 22 September 11ths, a memorial ceremony to the lost at the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan, a solemn reading of the names of those who died during that cataclysmic attack on innocent people – by Arab incels who immolated themselves on the orders of a lanky bearded freak billionaire who had a massive VHS and DVD porn collection he definitely never told them about, let alone let them watch for their pleasure.
On the other 364 or (365) mornings it’s crowded with tourists from all over the world, not a small number of them carrying selfie sticks and throwing up hand signs in poses, which in a way comes across as being just as morbid and disrespectful as the shitbags on convicted felon former President Trump’s campaign team’s politicized desecration of Arlington National Cemetery last month. After all, the footprints of the former Twin Towers – now beautiful waterfalls and reflecting pools lined with the names of the dead etched in stone – are a gravesite, the resting place of several hundred souls whose bodies were obliterated in the kamikaze crashes of the two airliners with 147 passengers and crew on board, the raging fires, and the subsequent collapses of the two skyscrapers.
There’s something off about some dickhead from Argentina or South Korea or France or wherever just cheesing it up for his several hundred Instagram friends before he does the same thing at the Statue of Liberty. Like who the fuck would do that at Auschwitz or Cabanatuan or the site of some other atrocity? You sure as hell aren’t allowed to do it at Arlington, where those who sacrificed themselves in the post-9/11 wars are buried (except if you’re a fascist who flouts the rules).
Yet in a way, maybe New York City sort of unintentionally invited that behavior. That’s it’s just a minor, if disgraceful, side effect of what no one could argue convincingly is a story of anything besides resilience and strength. This city didn’t just leave a pile of twisted rubble and a hole in the ground as a reminder to that horrific day, it built a single tower considerably taller than the ones that fell. A tower with an observation deck that costs like $40 to visit and sells beers for $10.95 each. A massive shopping and transport hub underneath sporting a kind of ugly fishbone-like design with at least four Dunkin Donuts locations and a sprawling Apple store where the guy fucked up the very keyboard this piece is being typed on before a guy at another location fixed it a few weeks later.
The 9/11 Memorial Site does not stand alone as a monument to that dark day, but just one part of a modern city-within-a-city, the global capital of media and finance, where more than 300 languages are spoken, where Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, MAGAism (unfortunately), atheism, Hinduism, and so many others exist in far more harmony than tension, where more dreams are made than broken, where you can drive on the wrong side of a one-way street and the NYPD just calls you a fucking idiot and drives away instead of sticking you with a ticket, where strangers care about each other far more than any outsider raised on dated, douchey cliches would ever believe.
This is a thriving place that is going to take more than hijacked planes, a stock market crash, a hurricane that some dipshits still call a “Superstorm,” and a viral pandemic could take down.
This morning they’re honoring the dead, the innocent lives destroyed and the sacrifices of the first responders who ran toward the danger instead of away. Every other morning however, when this city wakes up and does its thing is in a way the real tribute. Leaving a crater would be the dishonor.