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The Long-Term Legacy of 9/11
Nearly 10 years later, new studies point to lasting effects on the nation's mental, physical and political health
Like most Americans, I can still remember it as if it were yesterday: The images of the burning building on the screen, the murmurings of bewildered morning TV anchors, the burst of "holy shit!" subject lines in my email box and then, shattering the slow-mo dreamlike quality of it all, the bark of a police officer telling me to get out of the Capitol complex as quickly as possible because a plane-turned-missile was headed our way.
(Reuters/Brad Rickerby/Salon)
This was my particular 9/11 experience -- a Washington of complete chaos where chest-thumping tough-on-terror congresspeople were instantly transformed into cowering child-trampling George Costanzas as they fled for the door. I'm sure everyone fortunate enough to survive that day has their own unique flashback -- it was, after all, a generation's "where were you when" moment a la the JFK assassination. Only now, approaching the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, a trio of new studies show the post-traumatic stress of the attacks resulted in deep cultural shifts that go way beyond mere haunting mental images and bouts of insomnia.
As probably the single most politicized event in modern American history, 9/11's most obvious long-term impact can be seen in the electoral arena -- and not merely in individual election cycles or races.
Just as the Vietnam-era draft once produced a structural shift toward the Democratic Party among potential draftees, a recent analysis by the University of Warwick shows that 9/11 generated a permanent shift to the Republican Party among newly registered voters. Using voter data from citizens who registered just before and just after the attacks, the May 2011 study found "that voters with birthdays in September were more likely to register as Republicans than voters with birthdays in August" and that "the political affiliation of these voters persisted through to the year 2008...even for those voters who moved and, thus, had to change their registration." In short, a psychologically traumatized electorate ran to a party that promised quick, easy and vengeful solutions to the terrorist threat.
Less obvious but equally profound is the effect 9/11 had on the health care system, according to two University of California studies looking at what researchers call "collective stress." As reviewed by Miller-McCune, the studies found that:
Among a nationally representative sample of about 2,000 American adults, reports of physical ailments increased 18 percent over the three years following the attacks of September 11, 2001…
It turns out watching [the attacks] in real time had huge health consequences. "When compared to individuals who learned about the attacks only after they happened, those who watched the attacks live on TV reported a 28 percent increased incidence of physical ailments over three years post-9/11," Holman and Silver write.
But maybe the most profound legacy of 9/11 is the attack's effect on our very concept of wars and enemies. Before 9/11, those ideas were finite and tangible -- though there were red scares and McCarthyist crusades that argued otherwise, we for the most part believed that conflicts had beginnings and ends and that villains could ultimately be thwarted. But the post-traumatic stress of 9/11 has elicited a kind of neurotic psychosis that embraces Permanent War and allow enemies to occupy a psychological space usually reserved for immortal bogeymen.
That's the takeaway from Ohio State University's recent national poll, which, thanks to serendipitous timing, inadvertently tracked how Americans attitudes shifted sharply after the killing of 9/11 architect, Osama bin Laden. Here are the key findings:
In the weeks following the U.S. military campaign that killed bin Laden, American attitudes toward Muslim Americans took a significant negative shift, results showed. Americans found Muslims living in the United States more threatening after bin Laden's death, positive perceptions of Muslims plummeted, and those surveyed were less likely to oppose restrictions on Muslim Americans' civil liberties…
Changes in attitudes were not related just to preventing a possible terrorist attack, but also included attitudes about religious tolerance of Muslims. For example, nearly one in three respondents surveyed after bin Laden's death agreed that "Muslims are mostly responsible for creating the religious tension that exists in the United States today." That was up from about one in five respondents before the killing... The negative feelings even carried over to personal relationships. The percentage of respondents who said they were unwilling to have a Muslim as a close friend doubled after the death, going from 9 percent to 20 percent.
Intensifying hatred after an enemy is killed -- this particular particular 9/11-related symptom is rooted in classic paranoia and it explains quite a bit about recent events. For instance, it explains why America barely flinched when, after bin Laden's killing, our government announced plans to stay in Afghanistan, increase the defense budget, begin a new war in the Muslim world and expand the president's authority to unilaterally initiate even more foreign conflicts in the future. It also explains why so many American media outlets initially blame Muslims for terrorist attacks that we later find out had nothing to do with Muslims -- and it explains how we so quickly define terrorism exclusively as violence committed by Muslims, but not by anyone else. In the 9/11-addled psyche, the war must continue even when the threat is neutralized.
No doubt, America's political and media class will collude to turn the upcoming anniversary of 9/11 into yet another platitudinous display of pomp, circumstance and hyper-nationalism that celebrates our abiding Americanness (whatever that means), trumpets our supremacy -- and ignores any of these findings. That's become the standard simplified script for 9/11, and its 10-year anniversary will likely be no exception. Lost in that spectacle, however, will be any effort to develop a deeper understanding of 9/11's impact -- one that both honors the dead, and better appreciates the grave psychological injuries that continue to scar the living.
Ignoring that deeper story, of course, is no accident. Exploring 9/11 as a complex and enduring psychological event requires an uncomfortable look at how the mass PTSD that followed the attacks fundamentally differs from standard PTSD.
Think about it: Whereas the mere act of physically experiencing a natural disaster may psychologically damage a victim, 9/11's immediate aftermath was at least as responsible for its negative stress-inducing psychological effects as the attacks themselves (especially for the majority of Americans who did not actually physically experience the attacks) -- and the 9/11 aftermath was anything but natural. On the contrary, the rank saber rattling and the carefully crafted fear mongering that became the Official 9/11 Reaction was exquisitely manufactured at the highest reaches of the political and media establishment -- and as we see, it worked like a charm, with significant downsides.
To understand those downsides and begin any kind of mass healing process, though, asks the political and media establishment to be willing to scrutinize itself. And in America, that remains the ultimate taboo.
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38 Comments so far
Show AllThe diagnosis should not, in fact, be PTSD, but rather the "emotional plague" diagnosed by Wilhelm Reich, the symptoms of which correspond to classic paranoid schizophrenia -- a condition afflicting an untreatable 20 to 25 per cent of the population, including many of the doctors that should at last be acknowledging the diagnosis.
" ... a recent analysis by the University of Warwick shows that 9/11 generated a permanent shift to the Republican Party among newly registered voters."
Real smart. Register with the party that allowed the attacks to happen.
As opposed to that miserable me-too "opposition" party, you mean?
"On the contrary, the rank saber rattling and the carefully crafted fear mongering that became the Official 9/11 Reaction was exquisitely manufactured at the highest reaches of the political and media establishment -- and as we see, it worked like a charm, with significant downsides."
Jesus H. Freakin' Christ, man!!!
You can lead a horse, Mr. Sirota, you can lead a horse....
So it was just the "reaction" that was manufactured, huh?
Hopeless.
DITTO! (emphatically stated)
Mr. Carp, The first words out of my mouth were, "Boy, was that lucky it fell straight down."
As time moved on, it became obvious that luck had nothing to do with it.
Exactly. As long as 'respected journalists' continue the charade without question, the public 'trauma' will remain as a significant lever for the pols to manipulate us.
The U.S. just plain LOVES 9/11.
As for me, I think the best thing we could do is to forget it. Yes. Forget it.
I know that won't happen.
I am so sick and tired of having "9/11" affect and taint every single thing in my life for the past ten years, -which is what it feels like by now.
I am so sick of hearing about the whole subject of 9/11. It's as if the world has turned into a Rudy Guiliani audio loop. It's maddening. 9/11 all the time, every day, on the tube, the radio, the web, everywhere.
For the rest of our lives we will suffer through annual holidays and have to hear the same old same old lies and jingoism that we have now been hearing each year since the event.
As for the "post traumatic stress" the author mentions, that is a stretch, which feeds into the meme of making 9/11 appear much larger than it should.
Only a tiny percentage of Americans actually have PTSD from 9/11.
The "post traumatic stress" the author mentions is almost entirely a creation of the media: specifically, the influence, via the media, of various and sundry government officials, many ex-military types now pundits, and a slew of right-out-of-the-woodwork "terrorism experts", who all kept up the propaganda and the drumbeat for war, constantly bombarding Americans with messages designed to produce fear and anger.
Not to diminish the scale of the destruction of the Twin Towers- it was a horrible mess, obviously- but the 9/11 site, which now haunts every one of us every day, is an area of just a few acres on much larger island which is part of a large state which is part of a large country which is part of a double continent (north and south America) which is part of a much larger planet.
What I am saying is that, if the U.S. was a person't body, 9/11 was the size of a mosquito bite, or smaller; and its real effect on the rest of the "body"- i.e. the whole country- was no more than the effect of a mosquito bite.
The rest is the result of the media coverage.
Without the media throwing 9/11 at all of us 24 hours a day month after month, there would have been no wars, in my opinion, because the destruction of a few large buildings in a country as huge and populous as this one is is not a sufficient reason to take a nation of a third of a billion people to war.
9/11 may or may not have been done by foreign terrorists. I have my own ideas and suspicions about it, but I don't know.
But one thing I am sure about is that the post-9/11 reaction of the U.S. has been insane, and so disproportionate that the word disproportionate is insufficient to describe it.
It's as if a man, stung by a bee, kills a hundred, or five hundred, of his neighbors in retaliation, and then burns half the town down- and, by the way, he never does find the bee.
Excellent post. 3000+ (and even 1) death is tragic. But the reaction from the US, even if it was stoked by MSM, like you so excellently describe, was ridiculous. To me it proves the US is the spoiled kid on the block, and a bigotted one at that. What about Indonesia losing 200,000 people in the tsunami? What about Russia losing 27,000,000!!! in WW2?
Frodnonag
Thanks for jarring my collective memory or what's left of it. I agree totally with your post.
In worldwide scope and in pain and suffering zones, 9/11 doesn't even register on the Richter scale. pun intended.
Cheers
Really. Want to talk about terrorism? Then let's talk about the thirty thousand murders by firearms occurring every year inside the United States. One has a much better chance of being murdered by a U.S. citizen than of dying as a result of a "terrorist attack". In fact one has a better chance of being hit by lightning, 1 in 10,000.
The long term legacy of 911: Iraq, Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, MSM censorship of nano-thermite and WTC #7. Ect.
It's indisputable that the mysterious events of September 11, 2001 constituted a collective Amerikan mega-trauma with pernicious and permanent debilitating after-effects.
I'm intrigued by Sirota's circumspect insistence on the need to "Explor[e] 9/11 as a complex and enduring PSYCHOLOGICAL event".
It's obvious that he's being fastidiously noncommittal about whether an exploration of the controversial proposition that "the carefully crafted fear mongering that became the Official 9/11 Reaction was exquisitely manufactured at the highest reaches of the political and media establishment" necessitates a concomitant "exploration" of the still-obscure causes and effects of the events themselves.
As it is, it's as if after a major automobile accident, Amerika woke up in the ambulance on the way to the hospital with only a dazed and confused recollection of what happened-- and afterwards, was forced to make sense of it by relying on bits and pieces provided third-hand by the other party's insurance company adjuster.
excellent analogy...I was in a fender-bender last year, and the opposing insurance company produced medical records of a person with my same first and last name, but all other info different, and tried to pursue action regarding...it took some effort to get both companies to understand data had been imported from one case to another incorrectly, and that personalities had been transposed...
the general anonymity that our current society has fostered leaves all of us vulnerable when it comes to even such basic things as identity and character...
how many know one at all, any more, let alone well enough to testify to character?
I don't know that I would characterize post-911 America as dazed and confused, however...I felt the opposite...I felt that I had seen clearly, had observed buildings being professionally demolished, as I had seen before, but was intentionally being made to feel dazed and confused by the continual piledriver-like repetition of the immediate response that followed: that hijacked airplanes, flown by Middle Eastern terrorists, brought the buildings down by crashing into them at high altitude...
I felt betrayed...and not for the last time...
The official conspiracy theory.
I agree with Dubet. Great analogy.
It's time to shut down the U.S. Murder Machine.
Stay Home Friday, July 29. If you can, stay home from work and do not go shopping.
Call Congress and tell them:
HANDS OFF OUR SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE & MEDICAID!
TAX THE RICH AND CORPORATIONS!
END THE WARS AND BRING OUR TROOPS AND DOLLARS HOME!
Contact Congress: 202-224-3121
Contact Obama: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER
(202) 225-0600
EMAIL: http://www.speaker.gov/Contact/
SENATE MAJORITY LEADER HARRY REID
Phone: 202-224-3542
EMAIL: http://reid.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm
SENATE MINORITY LEADER MITCH MCCONNELL
Phone: (202) 224-2541
EMAIL: http://mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=ContactForm
I wonder what the party favors will be during the celebration of the tenth anniversary of 9/11.
Maybe something with more USAMRID lab anthrax...
Galenwainwright,
My neighborhood is probably throwing tea parties in celebration. So I might be throwing up putrid tea or at least the bags!
That's the takeaway from Ohio State University's recent national poll, which, thanks to serendipitous timing, inadvertently tracked how Americans attitudes shifted sharply after the killing of 9/11 architect, Osama bin Laden. "
David, on this one, you QUACK QUACK QUACK. It amazes me how someone as intellectually gifted, as David Sirota, can write about the cultural effects of 9/11, not realizing he, in this regard, has become blindly part of that cultural effect. Ironic.
In fact, anyone, who accepts the official fictional story line of the events of 9/11, are too, part of that effect.
Blah, blah, 9-11, blah, blah, 9-11.
Only one sentence in this article explains why Americans are still forced to continually talk about 9-11 ten years later.
"On the contrary, the rank saber rattling and the carefully crafted fear mongering that became the Official 9/11 Reaction was exquisitely manufactured at the highest reaches of the political and media establishment -- and as we see, it worked like a charm, with significant downsides. "
The entire event was manufactured, as were the anthrax attacks, which started a week later, and scared a lot more Americans than the attacks on NYC did!
However, the anthrax attacks quickly were placed down the memory hole, since it was soon admitted that they were an inside job.
9-11, on the other hand, is repeated as a mantra to this day. Obama, following all of Bush's policies, carries on with the 9-11 references.
There is nothing natural about America's obsession with 9-11. It is a totally manufactured phenomenon.
Oh, the fascists dare not let go of their "reichstag fire" opportunity. In fact, be looking for another one, to cover for the impending financial meltdown, and subsequent financial dictatorship (we'll be forced to use their dwindling supply of company script, and into permanent debtor servitude; those of us who are allowed to live ,that is, "useless eaters" that we are, ya know).).
Short version:
The cognitive dissonance most Americans were subject to by the avalanche of lies, obfuscations and outright bullshit by our government about 9/11 has made us all sick.
But Halliburton, KBR and others got a lot of no-bid, cost plus contracts out of it. The bankrupting of the USA and the destruction of infrastructure and wanton killing of people in at least two countries is, to me, the most enduring legacy of 9/11.
WTC Building 7 and nano-thermite! Visit ae911truth.org for the facts. As long as we accept the myth they created, we will follow them to the hell they have in mind for us all. Find and prosecute the real killers!
thanks for the studies David.
But does anyone need studies? this countrey lost it's mind on 9/11. they decided to go bomb Afghanistan, a poor, miserable hungry and helpless country. no one seemed to mind or to notice something more than a little bit crazy about this, not even when every day brought news of children, civilians, shepherds, wedding parties getting massacred.
plus the u.s. revealed itself to be a nation of cry babies and cowards.
the manipulations from washington played upon those fears, keeping the country jumpy and nervous. and afraid of Muslims or other foreigners.
bombing helpless people for ten years can ruin any country- not just the bombed, but the bombers too.
and the gulag and the torture- no, i don't think i need a "study" to find out why we are so crazy. does anybody?
PTSD?
More like the Stockholm Syndrome.
1) Buildings explode as dust (not into dust) and planes disappear into 15 foot holes etc, etc.
2) We're told to give up our freedoms.
3) We comply, in exchange for perceived safety not from terrorism, but from truth about sources of terrorism.
Stockholm syndrome is a term used to describe a real paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors; sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors as an act of kindness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
911 was an inside job. Deal with it.
Absolutely!
Good comments all. It's the one reassurance I have in these dark times, that a great many people see through the lies. That truth can prevail in the mind, even in the face of the continual tsumanis of falsehoods and manufactured events, is a good thing indeed.
It still amazes me how people still believe that three steel framed buildings fell straight down into their own foot print, on the same day, in the same city, in easy to transport segments. And they call it an act of terror.
About the terror part, they're right.
From Mr Sirota's Article: 'That's the takeaway from Ohio State University's recent national poll, which, thanks to serendipitous timing, inadvertently tracked how Americans attitudes shifted sharply after the killing of 9/11 architect, Osama bin Laden.'
That in a nut-shell shows the problem w too many in so-called 'liberal-leftist' media when it comes to the 'official' 9-11 'story'. He didn't even qualify this by using the term 'alleged' 9-11 architect... or- Who 'apparently' was killed execution style by a US Special Ops hit squad & whose body was supposedly disposed of in the bottom of the sea- according to 'official' accounts. Thus either Mr Sirota really believes the Bush Cheney NeoCon 'official' 9-11 'Conspiracy Theory' - hook, line, & stinker - OR....
And notice how Mr Sirota went out of his way to avoid saying anything about the 9-11 Truth movement - because it raises serious questions about the validity of the "Official 9-11 'Conspiracy Theory' ".
Not even a word on how the Bush / Cheney / NeoCons used 9-11 to hype an illegal war on Iraq based on lies, or threaten an unprovoked attack on Iran, or justify using torture, illegal surveillance, & rolling back civil-liberties & due-process...
Probably this article's most relevant paragraph was: ['Intensifying hatred after an enemy is killed -- this particular 9/11-related symptom is rooted in classic paranoia and it explains quite a bit about recent events. It explains why America barely flinched when, after bin Laden's {alleged} killing, our government announced plans to stay in Afghanistan, increase the defense budget, begin a new war in the Muslim world {IE: Libya} and expand the president's authority to unilaterally initiate even more foreign conflicts in the future. It also explains why so many American media outlets initially blame Muslims for terrorist attacks that we later find out had nothing to do with Muslims -- and it explains how we so quickly define terrorism exclusively as violence committed by Muslims, but not by anyone else. In the 9/11-addled psyche, the war must continue even when the threat is neutralized...]
Other than that - what was this article [The Legacy of 9-11] really about?
Granted, I don't read every article. However, I usually find the comments more perceptive than the article, as in this case.
It is incredulous that there are still people writing for the alternative media who will not face the truth: That "9/11" was an inside job, greatly aided by the usual outside suspects to grab power & wealth & render the populace infantile & submissive, ceding all their interests & rights. That the actors are part and parcel of a global thrust by a nucleus group intent on global domination, with most of the so-called "elite" or lap dogs of the world in the fold, with tongues hanging to preserve their bit of bone or increase its size, regardless of the consequences to this earth or its inhabitants..
9/11 is the sickness that the USA will never recover from until it has been exposed for the horrible lie that it is. I cannot forget that our leaders murdered 3000 people directly, and thousands of more NYC first responders and citizens were made ill over time and many died due to "perfectly safe air" after the demolition. Then followed the hatred created by their controlled media against Muslims, solely for the purpose of fomenting war against them for the assets these countries own and to place Muslim countries into debtor slavery by the IFM. There are no words to describe the evil of this act, and it will not go undiscovered nor unpunished. The US must face the truth of what has happened, and to hold all of the participants accountable who profited insanely through the wars; they are Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, the entire Bush/bin Ladin family, Paul Wolfowitz, and many others. This anniversary, join with the Architects and Engineers 911 Truth movement and force a real investigation into the events of 9/11 as the first and necessary step in healing our nation. Do not forget this.. but bring justice to those who deceived us for their profit. The are examples of the greatest evil on earth. It is our duty, our mission to find them.