Still Falling [9/11]

I’m going to tell you my 9/11 story at the end of this post. It’s not exciting, nor is it poignant. It is, I suspect, a lot like your own 9/11 story.

I’m also not going to pontificate on the significance of 9/11. We all know what happened, who caused it, and why. We know about the Pentagon, the World Trade Center, the heroes that took down UAL Flight 93. We know about the three thousand — the fallen.

What I will say is this: to me, those airplanes are still falling, those buildings are still falling, those people are still falling. They will always be falling, forever falling in my mind. And we are falling along with them, still falling, ten years later.

At the time, I was stupid enough to hope that losing three thousand Americans to a sneak attack by the Muzis would be the catalyst that would reignite the American Spirit. I thought it was our Pearl Harbor. I thought that we as a nation would finally sweep aside the bullshit, the weasel words, the lies, and the ideas behind the lies, and deal with reality as it exists. I thought were finally going to shrug away the spiritual rot of the past fifty years and cure ourselves of our cultural and political madness.

I wanted to be part of this rebirth. For this reason, I began electronically publishing in 2002 a series of original color propaganda posters intended to commemorate the attacks of September 11. I thought my posters, put out to the world at large via the Internet, might play some small part in reawakening the America I remember from my childhood, the America of old war movies and quiet resolve.

I was a fool. The rot goes too deep. We never woke up. In fact, over the decade that has passed since the attacks, the madness has grown far, far worse.

I no longer have hope for this country. My hope now lies in the slim chance that enough of the Good Guys will survive the inevitable collapse of this country to begin the rebuilding of the West. I may have a part to play in all that, Deo volente, but you won’t read about it here.

Ten years have passed since 9/11. Ten years of war, of cameras everywhere, of TSA goons, of creeping sharia. Ten years of bad presidents, of growing rancor, of flash mobs and Tea Parties. The building is coming down, the fire is licking at our backs. We are falling, falling like that poor guy from Windows of the World fell on that sunny Tuesday in 2001, and no one and nothing will stop us. And may God help us when we hit bottom.

I have given up on America, and on creating posters. It was a stupid idea. Nevertheless, I hereby present to you for your amusement a gallery of the annual 9/11 posters I did for which I still have files. May the pathetic naivete that oozes from each one provide you with a sad smile on this saddest of days.



Oh yes: my 9/11 story. I was at home here in Tarrant County. I watched it on TV like everyone else. A few weeks later, I was in New York on business. I was walking through Tompkins Square Park with a New Yorker friend of mine. “Something’s burning, maybe a garbage Dumpster,” I told her. “It stinks like burnt wiring and rotten meat.” I sniffed the cold air.

‘It’s not a Dumpster,” she said. “That’s the World Trade Center you’re breathing.”