Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

Thats really beautiful, man.

Posted by: Jack Strocchi at September 11, 2004 11:59 AM

As a small child, living in a fourth-floor walk-up in Brooklyn, I saw the opposite view of those buildings every morning from my kitchen window, lit up bright orange and gleaming in the reflected sunrise. Somehow, they were a symbol of hope and a triumph of human ingenuity to this grade-school kid growing up in a troubled, working class family.

I hope that whatever rises in their place will have the same meaning to another kid, living under similar circumstances. We all need a shining, distant goal.

Thank you for the photograph, and the memory.

Posted by: LarryB at September 11, 2004 04:17 PM

Go, go Brad go!

Posted by: El Gringo at September 11, 2004 07:15 PM

So I heard all the kids in New York will be wearing their trousers half mast to commemorate the loss of the towers. Really.

Posted by: Jethro Q. Walrustitty at September 11, 2004 08:12 PM

You know, this reminds me of a friend of mine who died, tragically, in high school. The classmates who spoke most emotionally about him were preps and bullies who couldn't stand the poor geek.

I remember, when the WTC was still standing, it was considered an eyesore and New Yorkers (deserved or not) had a reputation for being jerks. My, how quickly that changed. A mountain of corpses sure can change a lot, can't it? Unless, of course, those corpses are Iraqi. . .

It seems we're adept at treating things and people like crap, right up until the moment they're gone. Then we realize how foolish we were -- always too late. The surge of patriotism after 9/11 wasn't goodwill; it was guilt.

This isn't a tirade against what we did. It's that the lesson of 9/11, being forgotten with frightening speed, is to appreciate what we still have -- NOW. Don't wait for the funerals.

Posted by: Dragonchild at September 12, 2004 06:28 PM

Now if Brad would just post a picture of East Timor before Jimmy Carter approved it's invasion by the US-backed Indonesian government, and a couple 100,000's innocent civilians were raped and killed on our behalf for East Timorese oil, thanks to Dwight Eisenhower's "domino theory",
which also resulted in the deaths of a couple 1,000,000 of innocent land reformers when the US-backed Suharto held his Night of 1000 Knives.

"The sun never sets on the American Empire."

Oh, wait, those are the World *Trade* Towers!!!
We *traded* those M's of innocent lives for oil. Oh, it's OK, then. Wave the bloody American flag!

Posted by: aaron haffen at September 12, 2004 10:48 PM

Aaron:

We were on a tiny island in a Micronesian atoll Protectorate of the United States when 9/11 WTC happened on satellite TV, and though you would have expected the natives to cheer for joy after the atrocities the United States has imposed on them, instead, they remained subdued and glum.

As brown-skin folks, they knew only too well what "lock down" meant, and who were the screws and who the convicts in this white man's world, and what would follow after the 9/11 WTC attack.

These islanders, who are anonymous, were made famous first in 1945. Americans liberated their atoll from the Japanese ... and then proceeded to occupy it themselves, moving the natives off their home island en masse, onto a tiny treeless spit of sand only slightly above sea level, all crowded into tin and scrap wood shanties to the point where these people became *twice* famous, as now the most densely populated place on the entire earth, all without reliable running water, sewage treatment or electricity.

You might remember when America atomized the home island of Bikini Islanders. Same thing.

Today, US Army American's live in bourgeoisie comfort only one mile away across open water, their clean barracks, hotel, airport, marina, even a golf course, have removed all trace of an aboriginal native civilization once on the home island, and almost all trace of WWII Japanese, (although the Japanese get to keep a shrine).

Are the Americans kind to their displaced wards? Oh, of course! Every day, barges are dispatched to bring a few natives back to their homeland, where they work as sub- minimum wage caretakers, groundskeepers, manual laborers and pleasure girls for American scientists and soldiers. What a shangrai-lai for world trade, American style!

So what?

Now they have an indoor sports center, thanks to our small efforts, but it's no matter. Their homeland will never be their's again, "traded" away without their consent to the white master, and forever they will be barged back and forth en masse as servants to those masters, southern plantation style, right here in the 21st Century.

Is this a great country, or what?! Hey, Aaron,
the South shall rise again! Make book on it!

Posted by: Hesai Deshaid at September 12, 2004 11:35 PM