0:04

Uh, nine eleven is

0:06

in a couple of days. I'm Robert Evans. This

0:08

is it could happen here a podcast about

0:11

nine eleven. Um, well, as as

0:13

Garrison said in the intro, that we're not using

0:16

it's about things falling apart, and boy

0:18

did that happen on two things

0:20

that fell apart? Yeah? Um

0:23

yeah. So this was originally

0:26

going to be a slightly cruder episode

0:28

than it wound up being. But I'm just gonna I'm

0:30

just gonna delve into the script and

0:32

uh, Chris Garrison, you

0:35

guys, just buckle in, because the reason

0:37

I have you both as guests on this is that you are

0:39

both too young to remember nine

0:41

That's not true. I remember, I

0:43

remember why I remember? Were you

0:46

like four? I

0:48

hope? So yeah, I was four, But I

0:50

remember my mom like so

0:52

she she was trying to explain the Pentagon,

0:55

right, and so she has

0:58

like a coaster on the ground and

1:00

she's making an airplane with her hand is

1:02

just going into anyway.

1:05

So, as I said, neither of you properly

1:07

remember nine eleven. I I don't remember

1:09

that even I I was at the age

1:11

where every moment of it is burnt

1:14

into my into my brain. As is the reaction.

1:16

So I wanted you both on this because

1:18

we're gonna talk about how

1:21

nine eleven kind of became a

1:24

cult um and how

1:26

to maybe how to maybe deal with that, and then we'll

1:28

be chatting about Glenn Beck's nine

1:30

twelve project, which is something I'm sure neither

1:32

of you are very familiar with. Now.

1:35

In its sixth season, the popular cartoons

1:37

South Park ran an episode in which Jared

1:39

Fogel, who was at that point just a subway

1:41

spokesman and not a convicted child molester,

1:44

came to town and announced the start of a new program

1:47

to give everyone AIDS. Now,

1:49

he was talking about dietitians and personal trainers

1:51

to help people lose weight, but everybody heard

1:54

AIDS the disease, which led to wacky hijinks.

1:56

That's the episode. It ends when everyone

1:58

realizes they'd misunderstand good Fogel and they

2:00

all laugh. Uh. This leads them to realize

2:03

that AIDS is finally funny, because

2:05

things that are tragic become funny exactly

2:07

twenty two point three years after they

2:09

occur. That's the joke in the episode,

2:11

and went on to become a minor little

2:13

internet joke that, like you know, once

2:15

you hit that twenty two year point, you can laugh about

2:18

something tragic. We are now at like

2:20

twenty one years and change since September

2:22

eleven, two thousand one, and I think if we're

2:24

all honest, most of us can admit that we've laughed at

2:26

a lot of nine eleven jokes. We're recording this

2:28

the day the Queen died, and people are like

2:30

photoshopping her face to be the Twin Towers,

2:33

and it's so it's quite a time

2:35

on the old Internet. Now. I think the first

2:38

I think the hardest at least that I ever laughed at nine

2:40

eleven joke. I'm sure it's not the first time was this

2:42

picture of Trump Tower that was posted

2:44

to Twitter like right after he got inaugurated,

2:46

with the text George Bush, do you thing

2:49

um? Still an excellent nine eleven

2:52

joke? Now. The first person

2:54

with any kind of platform to making an eleven

2:56

joke was the recently deceased comedian Gilbert

2:59

Gottfried. In September twenty nine, two

3:01

thous one, he took part in a roast of Hugh Hefner

3:03

at the New York Friars Club, and I'm gonna

3:06

play you the audio of that right

3:08

now, I have to catch up flight

3:10

to California. I can't get a direct flight.

3:12

They said they had to stop at the Empire State

3:14

Building party.

3:17

Tame, extremely

3:20

tame joke. Honestly not a

3:22

great joke. UM, but

3:25

it went on too. It was It's probably

3:27

like maybe the most famous and like kind

3:29

of stand up history like bombs um.

3:32

Gottfried and said himself said

3:34

that he lost the audience more than anyone else ever

3:37

has. UM. I think it caused some

3:39

career problems for him. Um.

3:41

He later said, like a few weeks after,

3:43

this was days after. So

3:45

this is at the Friar's Club roast of

3:47

Hugh Hefner on September twenty nine.

3:50

Is this work too soon? It's from

3:53

UM, well yeah, this I mean, I don't I don't

3:55

know that it originated there, but this was the response

3:58

to him. Um, and I think it's

4:00

the first time I ever recall hearing someone say

4:03

that. Godfried said that like the reason

4:05

he decided to tell a joke this close to nine eleven

4:07

was that he was personally offended by the fact

4:09

that anything could be too soon to make

4:12

a joke about. Um. One

4:14

of these is interesting about this A little side thing

4:16

is that like, after bombing and getting shouted at

4:18

by the audience, Godfried like decided

4:21

to get them back by telling a particularly

4:23

long and foul version of the Aristocrats,

4:25

which is a meta joke about jokes

4:29

primarily anyway. Um, it's basically

4:31

just being his foul mouth to shoot can possibly

4:33

be to an audience. Um. And that

4:35

that audio has been lost to time apparently,

4:38

But boy, you can watch

4:40

a fun documentary about the Aristocrats if

4:42

you want to learn more about that now. I

4:44

think the first good actual comedy

4:46

bit about nine eleven came out a little bit

4:48

after this. This is about two weeks after the day

4:51

and a couple of months later at like the three

4:53

month point. South Park season five

4:55

aired, Uh, and they ran an episode

4:58

about nine eleven. Um has been

5:00

criticized rightly so because there's some kind

5:02

of racist bits of humor in there, using

5:06

that's not surprising. Um. That

5:08

said, it's also kind of a valuable snapshot

5:10

of history. For one thing, The

5:13

huge part of the episode is just kind of

5:15

like the Afghan child counterparts

5:17

to the main characters in the show, walking around their

5:19

town as everyone is murdered by US

5:21

air strikes. UM. So it's it is

5:24

not like the it stands kind

5:26

of an opposition to sort of the kind

5:28

of like bootlicking responses you got

5:30

for For some context, the show The West

5:32

Wing, which is the favorite show of everybody

5:35

who runs anything in politics right now, ran

5:37

an emergency nine eleven episode like

5:39

a couple of weeks after the attack, which

5:41

was the kind of turnaround you didn't do in TV

5:44

at that point in time. So you put in a

5:46

ton of effort to have this special nine

5:48

eleven episode of The West Wing. Um

5:50

that number one. In the alternate West Wing universe,

5:53

there's no nine eleven. There's like some vague

5:55

like there's basically basically the episode focus

5:58

on like a bunch of kids on a tour getting stuck in the

6:00

White House because it locks down because some vague

6:02

terrorist attack thing happens in a fake

6:04

country they made up. So when the West Wing needed

6:07

to talk about Muslims, um

6:09

and kind of like the breakout piece of this.

6:11

While there's two breakouts, one of them is a

6:14

very racist retelling of the story of

6:16

Isaac and Ishmael that explains like why

6:18

Muslims are always so angry all the time, um.

6:21

And then the White House Press Lady C. J. Craig

6:23

goes on a rant about how awesome the intelligence

6:27

apparatus is and how like what good people

6:29

uh CIA agents are, and how the

6:32

best thing to do for politics sometimes

6:34

is to have a guy dressed as

6:36

a waiter murder somebody with a silence pistol

6:39

like it was out of its mind, unhinged.

6:41

That's the fucking like. So the fact

6:43

that South Park does an episode that's like, yeah, we're gonna

6:46

murder a bunch of people in Afghanistan for no reason

6:48

is like, not a not a bad response,

6:50

not a bad thing to recognize about that

6:53

day. Um, the other things that

6:55

are like pretty good or

6:57

pretty I think meaningful sort of

6:59

bits in that episode. It opens with

7:01

all of the kids at the bus stop wearing gas

7:04

masks as they stand in line for the bus.

7:06

There's a piece in that episode that

7:08

kind of sticks with me today

7:10

still, um that I'm gonna play for you guys.

7:16

I don't know, I always found that bit fun. So when

7:18

the school bus arrives, there's a cop

7:20

on it, searching bags and confiscating items

7:23

that might be used as weapons. The school classroom

7:25

doors are reinforced with a massive military

7:27

grade lock, which resonated more

7:30

in a time when like school shootings weren't

7:32

a constant thing. Um, and it

7:34

it kind of hit me because, you know, when this episode

7:36

came out and I watched it when it came out, I was at middle

7:39

school, Clark Middle School in Plain, oh, Texas,

7:41

and on nine eleven and twelve,

7:44

the attacks were like the only topic of discussion

7:47

that anyone had. And I have this vivid memory of

7:49

a couple of girls in my US history class

7:51

weeping because they were scared that Al

7:53

Qaeda was coming for our schools next. Um,

7:56

Like, this was a a very real worry

7:58

for kids that I grew up with of what

8:01

like Midland, Texas or something. No,

8:03

it was, indeed, it's a big school. But like,

8:05

I don't I'm certain that fucking Osama

8:08

bin Laden had never heard the name plane

8:10

of Texas, let alone the

8:12

Joatha thing with like anytime

8:15

a plane was like going

8:17

down, people would point at it and be like, oh

8:19

my god, yeah

8:22

yeah, um No.

8:24

That was definitely a meme and there was, you

8:26

know, one of the most famous ones was this

8:29

this video called Triumph Dot

8:31

a v I that started to spread on the Something Awful

8:33

forums. That was just footage of

8:36

the September eleven attacks set to yakety

8:38

sacks um.

8:40

And again, these were all kind of

8:43

the comedy that that you know, the South Park

8:46

put out here and that you saw, and

8:48

stuff like the Triumph video were

8:50

reactions to how fucking seriously

8:53

everybody else took nine eleven right. Like

8:55

I have to, I have to point out that like watching an episode

8:57

like this or watching something like Trump felt

9:00

like legitimately transgressive

9:02

in the days and weeks after nine eleven, because

9:05

it was kind of a as we'll talk

9:07

about, had turned into kind of like a secular

9:09

cult um. And I think people who

9:11

were just a few years old then or born

9:13

after nine eleven missed this part

9:15

of nine eleven. Um. I think you inherited

9:18

the wars and the intrusions on civil liberties

9:20

and the creeping fascism, but not the derangement

9:22

by terror that had preceded it. Like everybody's

9:25

permanently deranged from nine eleven, But

9:27

you didn't really get to know people

9:30

before that kind of happened and

9:32

drove a lot of them mad. As a

9:34

kid, it was like a strange and exciting

9:36

and scary moment. But I think my parents

9:39

and I think the people who were kind of in their age range,

9:42

um, completely lost their minds, and oddly

9:44

that that South Park episode has kind of the

9:46

best depiction of that too.

9:48

There's a scene in which stand who is one

9:51

of the main characters they're all like middle school kids,

9:53

walks into his house and sees his mom like

9:55

lying on the couch staring blankly

9:58

ahead UM and just like

10:00

weeping. She's surrounded by tissues. She's

10:02

been crying for days, UM

10:04

and as her husband says, she's just been watching

10:07

CNN for like the last eight weeks straight.

10:09

And the the image of her just kind of like lying on

10:12

the couch staring at the TV is I can

10:14

remember every adult that I knew as a kid

10:16

doing that, and it really did go

10:18

on for days, Like people moved

10:21

around as if they were like in kind of a shocked

10:23

stupor. I'm sure there's places where this wasn't

10:26

the case, UM, But for my

10:28

family, who were very very conservative

10:30

people, and I think for people particularly who

10:32

lived closer to the attacks, like it was

10:34

just this period of um

10:37

like post traumatic stress for the entire

10:39

country.

10:57

I think a good amount of research backs up the act

11:00

that this it had this kind of and I

11:02

think it is hard to understand if you weren't there impact

11:04

on people. I found a Pew Research study

11:06

that I'm gonna quote from now. Our

11:09

first survey following the attacks went into the field

11:11

just days after nine eleven. From September thirteenth

11:13

seventeenth, two thousand one, A sizable majority

11:15

of adults said they felt depressed. Nearly

11:17

half said they had difficulty concentrating,

11:19

and a third said they had trouble sleeping. It

11:22

was an era in which television was still the public's

11:24

dominant news source. Said they

11:26

got most of their news about the attacks from television,

11:29

compared with just five percent who got their news

11:31

online, and the televised images of death

11:33

and destruction had a powerful impact. Around

11:35

nine and ten Americans agreed with the statement I

11:37

feel sad when watching TV coverage of the

11:39

terrorist attacks. A sizable majority

11:42

seventy percent found it frightening to watch,

11:44

but most did so anyway. Fear was

11:46

widespread, not just in the days immediately

11:48

after the attacks, but throughout the fall of two thousand

11:51

one. Most Americans said they were

11:53

very twenty eight percent or somewhat forty

11:55

five percent worried about another attack. When

11:57

asked a year later to describe how their lives changed

11:59

in a age a way. About half the adults said

12:01

they felt more afraid, more careful, and more distrustful

12:04

or more vulnerable as a result of the attacks.

12:06

And I think you can't separate this

12:09

because the main people were talking about here and we're

12:11

talking about the response to this. When

12:13

we're talking about the people who got to make decisions,

12:15

it's boomers, right, which is not all that

12:17

different from how it is today, but even it was even more

12:19

so boomers then. And you

12:22

know, my parents and the people of their generation

12:24

are all children of the Cold War. They

12:26

both grew up, my parents on different military

12:28

bases. Um. And I can remember,

12:31

you know, my dad told me stories about doing like

12:33

duck and coverage drills as a kid, like literally hiding

12:35

under a desk to get ready for an atomic

12:37

bomb. Um. His family

12:40

like went out into the countryside during

12:42

the Cuban missile crisis to hide because they were

12:44

afraid all the cities we're going to get nooked. And

12:46

this is not These are not uncommon experiences.

12:49

So you have to think, like all of the all

12:51

of the adults were either

12:54

very close to this period or had spent

12:56

most of their formative years, like

12:58

constantly scared of being ordered by

13:00

a nuclear weapon. Um. There have been

13:02

clinical like studies and stuff that

13:04

have shown that that fear of nuclear annihilation

13:07

is a major factor and anxiety like it's

13:09

not ever been properly I think

13:11

explained how much that fucked up that generation.

13:14

But what you had is all these

13:16

people who had spent the first couple of decades

13:19

of their lives living with the sort of damocles

13:21

over their heads. And then the war ends,

13:23

right, the Cold War ends, the USSR falls

13:26

apart, and suddenly people aren't

13:28

talking about nuclear warfare for the first

13:30

time in anybody's memory. Um,

13:32

And I think for most of that generation

13:36

they felt safe for the first time.

13:38

There was this kind of celebration that was

13:40

pretty bipartisan that capitalism

13:42

and democracy had triumphed and that like this

13:44

kind of horror that had stalked through their childhood

13:47

had been defeated. When people like

13:49

Francis fuki Yama talked about the end of

13:51

history, what Fukiyama meant was that liberal

13:53

democracy was kind of, in his eyes, the end of

13:55

the evolutionary road for states, which

13:58

is a flawed idea, but the intern pritation

14:00

that I think people like my parents had

14:03

was that we didn't need to worry anymore, right,

14:05

like that that's the end of history, right, our way of life

14:07

had one, and we like we we didn't need to

14:09

worry. And in nine eleven happens

14:12

and suddenly this decade or so of relief

14:14

from that all ends in a minute,

14:17

and all of that fear that they lived with their whole

14:19

lives came roaring back with abandoned.

14:21

Nine eleven was like the emotional equivalent

14:24

of splitting an atom. And and the Internet

14:26

that was released by that is going to be used

14:28

for something, right. I want to

14:30

kind of touch on that a little bit, because I mean, I

14:33

obviously don't remember the nineties because I wasn't

14:35

there, And it is such a fascinating idea

14:37

to me of like this time where nero

14:39

liberalism kind of reached their paradise,

14:41

like like we didn't we could we we? We

14:43

we did the thing. We found the spot And

14:45

how that you know,

14:48

talk about like the edge of chaos theory, how it was built up

14:50

to this super high point and then all because

14:52

because it got so high and then immediately

14:54

crumbled um and shot down.

14:56

And there's this thing that one

14:59

of my favorite there's graat. Morrison talks about

15:02

how nine eleven kind

15:04

of became this moment where the

15:06

world of imagination and the world

15:08

of like the lowest material visceral

15:11

reality crashed into

15:13

each other. Um. And he says

15:15

a quote the collapse expressed itself

15:17

in the material world when the twin towers

15:20

of the World Trade Center were reduced to dust

15:22

by determined extremists. When cement

15:24

occurred, reality and fiction began

15:26

their slow collapse into one another.

15:29

After the fall of the towers, quote unquote,

15:31

reality became more fictional, and quote

15:33

unquote fiction became more realistic,

15:36

I think plausible, realistic,

15:38

superhero movies like The Dark Night films,

15:41

fake news, deep fakes, a

15:44

r VR, and the rise

15:46

of magical thinking. Um. And

15:48

I would extra plate that out to like stuff like you know

15:50

Q and on um and you know the

15:53

how just these images

15:55

that we thought were only viewable

15:58

in film and television, uh, became

16:02

descended down onto the onto the

16:04

dirtiest, most visceral material

16:06

plane. Um. And then

16:08

things that were fake, like this idea like the

16:10

Perfect Nineties, It's gonna be this is gonna continue

16:13

continue like dis forever that fiction. Uh,

16:16

it felt almost more real like it like that that

16:18

that should have been what's real and it's not anymore.

16:20

Yeah, it feels like there's an alternate

16:23

and I think that's part of why liberals

16:25

are still so goddamn in love with the West

16:27

wing. And by the way I talked about liberals, my

16:29

parents, who loved Ronald Reagan more than life

16:31

itself, watched every episode of that show.

16:33

They thought it was wonderful. And the Republicans are

16:36

always portrayed very sympathetically on the

16:38

West wing. Right, it's very much this noble opposition

16:40

sort of idea um

16:43

and uh, the

16:45

the that I think there's something in

16:47

that that there's lists almost since that

16:50

we've been locked out of the right reality.

16:52

And that's that's what you know, That's what

16:54

liberals are constantly harkening back to with with

16:57

nine eleven. But it's also or with

16:59

with stuff at the West wing. But it's also like what

17:01

conservatives. I

17:04

think for a while they were looking for that. I

17:06

think that's what George W. Bush

17:08

promised and failed to deliver. Um.

17:10

It's what they were hoping to get with Romney

17:13

and when that didn't happen. I think part

17:15

of what's going on with Trump is this desire. Part

17:17

of the desire to burn it all down is the

17:20

inability to get back to this imagined

17:24

If you're talking about the collapse of reality

17:26

and fiction going into each other, that's what Donald

17:28

Trump represents. He is this so

17:31

fictional person that in order

17:33

to meet this new world of reality and fiction

17:35

the same thing, you need somebody that under

17:38

that, that represents that. Um So

17:40

they turned to him because he he

17:42

was meeting the way they saw the world

17:45

was going. The reality and fiction are going

17:47

into each other, So you're going to get the reality

17:49

television president who

17:52

who who? Who kind of embodies

17:54

that essence on a very very

17:56

visceral level. And I think that's

17:58

part of why when you have of nine eleven

18:00

happen, you have all of this energy released.

18:03

Both parties kind of come

18:06

together in this idea that

18:08

the United States should strike back and

18:10

that we were at war. It's rightly pointed

18:12

out by people that particularly protests against

18:14

the Iraq war were massive, and they were,

18:16

they were historically large. But President

18:20

Bush was also the most popular president

18:22

of our lifetime briefly, and it's because people

18:24

were in line behind this idea that we need

18:26

to hit someone well and and I think

18:29

something that's important about this that's completely forgotten

18:31

is that the invasion of Afghanistan

18:33

there was like no protests. There

18:36

were there were a few, but like the left imploded,

18:39

Like here's I'm going to read a quote from Doug Henwood.

18:42

This is an attack on us. There

18:44

is a near certainty that something will be done

18:47

soon. Clearly considerable

18:49

use of force will have to be used to capture

18:51

these motherfucker's um

18:54

like Adolph read He's

18:56

like talking about how like there's gonna

18:58

have to be military action. Like a

19:00

bunch of the people from like who like the the old

19:02

school, like anti Vietnam War protesters

19:05

like from STS are like, well, we don't

19:08

oppose all wars, we just opposed bad

19:10

wars, so like here we should go in vadive guys

19:12

like everyone lost their

19:14

minds. Well, and I wanna what

19:16

I really the core of when I talked about today is why

19:19

that happened. Because I think there's on

19:21

particularly kind of some of the more superficial

19:24

left wing analysis of this, this idea that

19:26

like George Bush did

19:28

what he did in response because he's

19:31

like this Christian holy warrior um.

19:33

And there's a couple of reasons people do this, including

19:35

the fact that he once referred to the invasion of Iraq

19:37

as a crusade, but as a general rule,

19:40

what Bush did was not because of

19:42

his Christianity and had nothing to do with any

19:44

kind of conflict with Islam in

19:46

particular. What it was

19:49

was the reaction of a group

19:51

of a kind of fundamentalists, fundamentalists

19:54

of belief in the American state, reacting

19:57

to an attack on the sanctity of

19:59

that kind of idea. Uh um.

20:01

And this is this is you know why

20:03

all these liberals were on board at least with you

20:05

know, the strike on Afghanistan or attacking Afghanistan.

20:08

Christopher Hitchens probably no one embodies

20:11

like what happened to a lot of the left better than

20:13

Hitchens. Hitchens was a well

20:15

known liberal journalist. He wrote an excoriating

20:18

book about Henry Kissinger. Right, he's one

20:20

of these people who was criticizing the Empire,

20:22

who was attacking it for its excesses. For

20:25

builds his career on that and the nine

20:27

eleven happens. And the first big thing

20:29

he does is he puts out a massive column titled

20:31

Bush's Secularist Triumph, in which

20:34

he argues that the war on Terror is

20:36

not a crusade, but a battle

20:38

to keep religion in public power separate.

20:40

And I want to quote now from a study published in the

20:42

Journal of Political Theology by William Kavanav

20:45

of DePaul University. It's kitled

20:47

the War on Terror Secular or Sacred.

20:50

There may be some Christians who think that we are fighting

20:52

for Jesus, but the battle is being one in the name

20:54

of secularism. George Bush may

20:57

subjectively be a Christian, but he and the

20:59

US armed for Is have objectively done more

21:01

for secularism than the whole of the American agnostic

21:03

community combined and doubled. While

21:06

the left makes apologies for religious terrorists,

21:08

the right supports their obliteration to protect our

21:10

secular state. Secularism is not

21:12

just a smug attitude. It is a possible way

21:14

of democratic and pluralistic life

21:16

that only became thinkable after several

21:18

wars and revolutions had ruthlessly smashed

21:21

the hold of clergy on the state. We are now

21:23

in the middle of another such war and revolution,

21:25

and the liberals have gone a wall. That's

21:28

Kavanaugh's summary of hitchens

21:31

is article, But like what's going on there

21:33

is really interesting because Hitchens is proceeding

21:35

as an a priori assumption that the attack

21:38

on the Twin Towers is an attempt by a theocracy

21:41

to take over and destroy a secular state,

21:43

rather than an attempt to damage economically

21:46

a military enemy um

21:48

and goaded into a war that would weaken it socially,

21:51

militarily and economically, which is exactly

21:53

what had actually happened. The liberals

21:55

that Hitchens attacks as former allies are

21:57

basically saying, don't take the bait

21:59

right, don't do the thing that he wants

22:01

you to do, because it will it will lead

22:04

to the results he wants to achieve. All

22:06

Hitchens can see is that, like Muslim

22:08

extremists are scary and they want to hurt

22:10

him as an atheist, religion is

22:12

doing things that hurt me, So

22:15

I must destroy the people who believe in this

22:17

city. Yeah. And it's interesting because everybody,

22:20

all of the people who are kind of on the side

22:22

of this civic religion, which

22:24

is which is why they're responding, because they're they're

22:26

civic religion has been attacked and this strike

22:28

on the towers, they all find kind of different

22:31

ways to justify it. Hitchens is a prominent

22:33

atheist, so it makes sense that he kind

22:35

of sees it as a fight against theocracy.

22:37

If you go through a lot of footage of news anchors

22:39

in the immediate wake of the attack Garrison, you and I

22:41

were doing this a couple of nights ago. There were numerous

22:44

references that the Twin Towers,

22:46

which were a symbol of capitalism,

22:48

and that they represent capitalist

22:51

and American supremacy over capital

22:53

It's like it's it's it's like the American supremacy

22:56

of the economic system and

22:58

and and like a reified

23:01

symbol of capitalism. Almost like it's like it's

23:03

like an idol to like to the

23:05

god of capital. Yeah,

23:07

there's a there's a number of different things you can

23:09

find making this point. But in a column that published

23:12

on nine twelve, uh, the Washington

23:14

Post editorial board wrote, for three

23:16

decades, the Twin Towers of New York's World

23:18

Trade Center stood as the symbol of American economic

23:21

might, as powerful an icon for capitalism

23:23

as the Statue of Liberty is for freedom.

23:25

Exactly, exactly.

23:28

Yeah, Yeah, it's amazing. No people were just

23:30

saying this ship the day. You ever think that's funny

23:32

about it. It's like no one thought this

23:34

before, Like these are cheap fucking

23:36

buildings, like the world trades like

23:39

a license Like it's literally it's

23:41

just like license is a name is license out.

23:44

It's like that, you know, But that doesn't

23:46

because again, what what you by

23:49

saying this when they're saying like, for three decades,

23:51

this was the symbol of American economic might. People

23:54

and I keep going back to my parents, but I think they represent

23:56

a lot of Americans saw the

23:58

defeat of the so be A Union as being

24:01

achieved by the U. S economy, by

24:03

capital, right, and and that's the thing that ended

24:05

history. That's the thing that got them to their neo liver

24:07

paradise. It's the thing that saved them from

24:09

the nukes. And so by taking these towers

24:12

down, bin Laden basically killed

24:14

Superman. Right, That's how they're reacting

24:16

to it. Um.

24:19

George Bush and Christopher Hitchins and the Washington

24:21

Post editorial board, they all saw their

24:23

support for war not as as

24:25

not based in religion. All of them would have denied

24:28

this right, Um. But Kavanaugh

24:30

argues that they were motivated primarily by what

24:32

he calls the civil religion of the United States,

24:34

which is why I've been using that term. I'm gonna quote from his

24:36

paper. Again, the United States has

24:38

its own civil religion, which they're relying on

24:40

the support of Christians and undoubtedly borrowing

24:43

much from Christian imagery, transcends

24:45

mere sectarian religion to unite

24:47

all Americans on a higher ground. Indeed,

24:49

this is what makes secularism compatible with

24:51

civil religion. What Robert Bella calls

24:54

traditional religion is privatized,

24:56

while civic rituals revolve around a generic

24:58

God who under its America's identity

25:01

and purpose in the world. In this sense,

25:03

Andrew Sullivan is right. This is

25:05

a religious war. The war of which nine

25:07

eleven was a significant marker, is not extremist

25:10

and expansionist religion against a peace loving

25:12

and neutral secularist order. It is

25:14

rather the violent confrontation of Islamist

25:16

terrorism with the civil religion of American

25:19

expansionism, that is, the evangelical

25:22

insistence that liberal social order

25:24

is the only viable kind of social order.

25:26

It is what Tarik Ali has called the clash

25:29

of fundamentalisms. And

25:31

I think that's important because I think one way area in

25:33

which the left really got things wrong and

25:35

sort of their interpretation of what happens in this

25:38

period of seeing it as a clash between kind

25:40

of Christian fundamentalists as embodied

25:42

by George Bush and Islamic fundamentalists.

25:45

No, no, no, The people who were leading this country,

25:47

including Bush, but including most of liberals, were America

25:50

fundamentalists. They were fundamentalists

25:52

in the idea of the secular American state,

25:54

and so were my parents. As conservative as they were.

25:57

My family was never about you know, Christianity

26:00

needing to be spread over there. It was about this

26:03

this belief in America as

26:05

something holy and that's something holy and

26:07

sacred had been struck on September eleven.

26:11

I will say I

26:13

I think, I

26:15

I don't know, it's easy for me to see

26:18

why people think

26:20

about this on the left sort of as this Christian

26:22

holy war, because like I grew up with a lot of people who

26:25

like in the wake of this, who like really

26:27

were full on into the crusade thing. Like

26:29

I had classmates who are talked about how they

26:31

were going to join the military to kill a Muslims,

26:34

like there was I mean, like,

26:36

I think this is a real thing. And

26:38

that's what I mean, that's sort of analytics wrong, that's

26:41

what that's what Kavanaugh saying, and that it's kind of

26:43

scaffolded on Christianity,

26:45

but like that's fun

26:47

fundamentally, like the fact that there are some people

26:50

who are going and there being like this is finally religious

26:52

crusade doesn't mean that's like what the leadership

26:55

of the country is doing. And as I have to do. I

26:57

think that's part of why we get

27:00

ump and the current Christian extremist surge

27:02

is that, uh, it's a reaction

27:05

to how kind of the neo cons

27:07

go with this, because for the neo

27:09

cons, this isn't really about this

27:11

isn't about Christianity is something you use

27:13

in this fight, but like that's not what you're

27:15

fighting for here. Um.

27:18

And I think there's there's a good amount of evidence for the

27:20

fact that Americans identified

27:23

something as being like holy about

27:25

the Twin Towers, particularly after the

27:27

attack. UM from Kavanaughs

27:29

study in Public Theology. Quote in

27:31

August two thousand and ten of poll found that fifty

27:33

six percent of Americans regard Ground zero

27:36

as sacred ground, and a slightly larger

27:38

majority opposes construction of a mosque nearby.

27:40

For this region, a sacred aura surrounds

27:42

the identity of the nation that was attacked on that day,

27:45

and the attacks concentrated that sacredness

27:47

in a particular location in time. It

27:49

is not necessary to go back to the more famously

27:52

evangelical George W. Bush to make the

27:54

link between piety and nine eleven and

27:56

his speech at Ground Zero last September eleven,

27:58

two th ten, Barack Oba talked about

28:00

gathering at this sacred hour on hallowed

28:02

Ground and talked about how those who are not only

28:05

killed but sacrificed in the attacks. God

28:07

was invoked, of course, but it was a generic God

28:10

who belonged to no particular faith,

28:12

because, as Obama made clear, the victims

28:14

themselves were of many faiths. Yeah,

28:17

this is I mean one of the things that I think

28:20

is interesting if you're actually trying to analyze

28:22

this and you want to see kind of the degree

28:24

to which why I think it's important to look at how

28:27

people treated the

28:29

space itself is sacred. Is

28:31

how actual religion responded

28:34

in the wake of nine eleven, and how Americans

28:36

responded to religion in the wake of nine eleven.

28:39

Um, because you know, it says they're

28:41

about fifty percent of the country. See,

28:43

this is like hallowed ground in some way. Um.

28:45

And I think there's evidence that people kind

28:47

of rose up to defend this civic religion

28:50

more than they actually did their

28:52

real faiths. Um and this is because

28:55

primarily the reaction on

28:57

a on a population basis to September

28:59

eleven, as at religiosity in the United

29:01

States continued to decline. Right, There's

29:04

a public idea that it led to this like

29:06

surge of people coming back to the church and

29:08

getting religious again, but there's really no

29:10

demographic evidence to back that up. And I want to quote

29:12

from an article I found in Christianity Today.

29:15

For a few weeks after nine eleven, people packed

29:17

the pews, but it soon became apparent there was not a

29:20

great awakening or a profound change

29:22

in America's religious practices, as Frank

29:24

M. Newport Gallop Pole editor in chief, told

29:26

The New York Times in November of two thousand one.

29:28

Barne Group confirmed that conclusion in two

29:30

thousand six, attract nineteen dimensions

29:33

of spirituality and beliefs and found none

29:35

of those nineteen indicators were statistically

29:37

different from pre attack measures. In

29:39

other words, the nine eleven attacks didn't put

29:41

American Christians on a trajectory towards

29:44

more orthodox beliefs or more consistent

29:46

habits of prayer, church attendance, or scripture

29:48

reading. In so far as we can measure matters

29:50

of faith, the decline of American religiosity

29:53

continue to pace spiritually speaking,

29:55

said barn As David Kinneman. It's as if

29:57

nothing significant ever happened, and

30:00

that's something evangelicals have had to

30:02

grapple with ever since the US did not turn

30:05

back to God demographically. And

30:07

while hateful attacks against Muslims surged,

30:09

you have to acknowledge that a lot of those were from people who

30:11

were more or less secular um in the

30:13

traditional sense. And this is part of why so

30:16

many of the online atheists set

30:18

Uh sided with the alt right in two thousand

30:20

fifteen and two thousand and sixteen. Right, it's because

30:22

there are a lot of those people, um,

30:25

while they would have described themselves as

30:27

an opposition to Christianity as

30:29

well, were very much a part of the same

30:31

civic religion as everybody else, and we're

30:33

willing to engage in racist attacks against

30:35

members of religion as a result of that. You

30:38

know, when when you look at the fact that a majority

30:40

of Americans saw ground zero with sacred

30:42

and opposed building a mosque. Because of that, a

30:45

decent chunk of those people are not Christians.

30:47

Who opposed the building of a mosque, right they're a

30:49

religious or their atheist, and they opposed

30:51

the building of a mosque because they still see Islam

30:53

as an enemy.

31:12

Yeah, it's uh, it's interesting. But Americans

31:15

were not moved to embrace religion

31:18

by the attacks um and

31:20

the deterioration of our sense of security that

31:22

followed, and I think that evangelicals have

31:24

never been able to actually accept this. A

31:27

two thousand thirteen Barnard Group survey found

31:29

that most Americans, but particularly born

31:31

again Christians, believe nine eleven quote

31:33

made people turn back to God. And

31:36

this again has led to kind of a fetishization

31:38

of the period right after nine eleven

31:41

UM. The writer of that Christianity Today article

31:43

I cited earlier theorizes quote. My

31:45

first suggestion is what we thought was hope wasn't

31:48

lost at all. It was less Christian trust

31:50

and character and redemption of God than American

31:52

optimism coated with not quite biblical

31:54

bromides that when there's bad, good

31:56

will follow. Americans love to

31:58

believe that everything happens for a reason,

32:00

and that after a short period of time, sorrow

32:03

will always turn into joy and suffering into

32:05

sanctifications. We quote

32:07

Romans, we know that in all things

32:09

God works for the good of those who love him, and incorrectly

32:12

interpreted to mean that everything that happens to us

32:14

will also somehow work out. Okay,

32:17

And I think that they're onto something here and this really

32:19

that this goes back to what Kavanaugh was saying about

32:21

how this civil religion is kind

32:23

of grafted on over the bones of Christianity,

32:26

right, Um,

32:28

And it's it's there's

32:30

so much. Part of what's interesting to

32:32

me here is that well, I think it's it's worthwhile

32:34

that he quotes Romans. I have

32:37

to think that this, this belief that Americans

32:39

have that everything happens for a reason, is

32:41

at least as undergirded by like Disney

32:43

as it is with scripture. It's undergraded

32:45

by the way we tell stories, by the way fiction

32:48

works in our society, which is a very

32:50

unique to us. Right, Every culture

32:52

does not tell stories the same way. Well,

32:55

and I think, like, if

32:57

you want to trace that out to like,

32:59

I think that's part of the reason why

33:01

people are so unbelievably

33:03

any conspiracy theories here. Yeah,

33:06

if everything needs to have a reason,

33:08

that it's part of an overarching grand narrative

33:10

that ties everything together. Yeah,

33:13

and it's obviously again I don't want

33:15

to like underplay, and perhaps we should do an

33:17

episode maybe behind the Bastards on the reaction

33:19

of the religious right to nine eleven, which

33:21

was nuts and it was vicious

33:23

and horrific. I'm not I'm not trying

33:25

to deny that, but I think one of the

33:28

things that happens in this period is they grow

33:30

increasingly infuriated that that

33:32

is not shared by a majority

33:34

of the country, that it doesn't bring a

33:36

religious revival right, that that

33:38

doesn't follow September eleven. Um.

33:43

Now it is kind of there's a couple of things

33:45

that are interesting here. Um.

33:47

One of them is that, uh, the

33:49

apocalyptic Christian believers, they do have

33:51

kind of this this in with the Bush

33:54

administration. We know that at one point

33:56

a bunch of apocalyptic like Christian

33:58

representatives, like people who were kind of heading

34:00

churches and stuff that believe there's

34:02

this belief among certain Christians that you need

34:05

to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem and

34:07

bring about the end of days and all this stuff. There's

34:09

a bunch of ship that has to happen in Palestine in

34:11

order for the apocalypse to come, and they're trying

34:13

to get US presidents to make it happen. This is

34:16

why Trump made some of the calls

34:18

that he made, was to deliberately like give

34:20

those people a win um, which is why

34:23

some of the ship that happened in Jerusalem during the Trump

34:25

administration um was able

34:27

to happen. All of that stuff is

34:29

stuff that they went to George Bush. They had a two hour

34:31

meeting with him and Elliot Abrams and a bunch of

34:33

his staff where these representatives

34:36

of kind of like the Pentecostal movement tried

34:38

to get him to carry out this wishless policy

34:40

of acts around Israel and Iraq to

34:43

help them bring about the rapture. And

34:45

the Bush administration didn't really do

34:47

any of that. They have to take the meeting right, they bring

34:49

these guys in, they don't give them what they want.

34:51

It's not until Trump that a lot of these guys

34:53

get what they want. And what you what

34:56

happens here because you've got this

34:58

this death cult Christi group

35:00

who see this as a crusade and who want

35:03

to war with Islam, and they're constantly

35:05

frustrated by the fact that even though he's supposed

35:07

to be their guy, Bush doesn't go

35:09

all the way for them, right, And this is part

35:12

of why his military adventurism gets

35:14

criticized effectively by

35:16

guys like Trump who win the evangelical

35:18

right, because the evangelicals

35:20

say, like, well, if we're not going to have a holy war, then

35:22

like, what was this stuff? We just wasted a bunch of

35:24

of money and a bunch of treasure and a bunch of young men

35:27

for nothing over there. Um.

35:29

And that's part of like what Trump wins

35:31

on now, these two factions, these neo

35:34

cons, the guys who wind up, by the way, the

35:36

guys who are sort of on the civic religion

35:38

side of the response to nine eleven are all the

35:40

people who wind up running the Lincoln

35:42

project right when you're talking about the Republicans

35:44

on that side of thing. And then the part

35:46

the folks who break off the evangelicals,

35:49

the people who want to holy war, that's who

35:51

winds up making the core of Trump's support.

35:54

Um and yeah, and

35:56

that's uh, I think mostly where

35:58

I'm going to leave us for today on nine

36:00

twelve. Next week we'll have another special episode

36:03

about Glenn Beck's nine twelve project that

36:05

will be kind of the finishing of this. But I want to end,

36:08

because we're talking about why I did

36:10

this, and why I started by talking about jokes about

36:12

nine eleven is because I think understanding

36:15

understanding the

36:18

attack on the towers as like an attack

36:20

on what had effectively

36:22

become a god to a lot of Americans,

36:24

even if they didn't realize it, right, the sanctity

36:27

of this kind of neoliberal capitalist order,

36:29

and it's it's it's um,

36:32

it's historic inevitability.

36:34

Right. The fact that

36:36

that's what was going on, that

36:39

that that was so dear to people, that justified

36:41

so much violence, twenty years of war,

36:43

of bombing's, millions of deaths is

36:46

part of why I think there's a

36:48

value in joking about nine eleven,

36:50

which is not to say that what happened wasn't terrible.

36:52

Three three thousand and change innocent people

36:55

were murdered um in a in a truly

36:57

horrific way. If you actually sit down and watch the footage

37:00

the people falling out of the buildings, it's

37:02

a nightmare. If you think about stuff like Flight ninety three,

37:04

it's it's really stirring. You have these people

37:06

who one moment they're heading to like

37:09

see their families, or go on a work trip or

37:11

something you're on a plane experience. I'm sure everybody

37:13

has, where you're just like trying to get from A to

37:15

B and in the space of like a few minutes,

37:17

they have to all decide they're going to charge

37:20

a bunch of terrorists, fight in hand

37:22

to hand combat, and then pilot a plane

37:24

into the ground in order to stop it from killing

37:26

other people. That's that's powerful

37:28

stuff. Um. What

37:30

what I think is important is de sacralizing

37:33

it, because there's nothing sacred about

37:35

mass murder um, and there's nothing

37:38

there's we shouldn't see what happened

37:40

there is anything but what it is, which is a tragic

37:43

um, a tragic act of violence against

37:46

innocent people. But taking it as

37:48

like an attack on our

37:51

soul, as an attack on like

37:54

our our collective god. Um,

37:57

when you start to do that again, it kind

37:59

of justifies any sort of violence,

38:02

like there's nothing, there's nothing that's

38:04

off the table, And in in the first few

38:06

years after nine eleven, there was nothing off the table.

38:09

Um, And we're never getting

38:11

back to the world

38:13

that we had before, which is ultimately

38:15

like what all that violence was about, right, all

38:17

of everything terrible that was on in the wake of nine

38:19

eleven was justified, even if people

38:22

didn't say it in the desire to get

38:24

back to where we were in the nineties right

38:26

in their heads and their sense of security. I'm not talking about

38:28

anything is like courses, economic projections.

38:31

I'm talking about in the sense of like optimism

38:33

and basic security. And

38:35

I think one of the people who got this best in the

38:37

immediate wake of the attack was Hunter

38:40

S. Thompson, who you know, was still alive

38:42

at that point for a couple of years, and he wrote a column.

38:44

I think it was for ESPN dot com because

38:47

that's who he was writing for in those days. His

38:49

career was well past its peak. Um,

38:52

but he wrote probably the best thing anyone

38:55

wrote a week after nine eleven, and I'm going

38:57

to read you the end of that. Now, we're

39:00

war now, according to President Bush, and I

39:02

take him at his word. He also says this war

39:04

might last for a very long time. Generals

39:07

and military scholars that will tell you that eight

39:09

or ten years is actually not such a long

39:11

time in the span of human history, which

39:13

is no doubt true. But history also tells

39:15

us that ten years of martial law and a wartime

39:17

economy are going to feel like a lifetime to people

39:19

who are in their twenties today, the poor

39:21

bastards of what will forever be known as Generation

39:24

Z are doomed to be the first generation

39:26

of Americans who will grow up with the lower standard

39:28

of living than their parents enjoyed. This

39:31

is extremely heavy news, and it will take

39:33

a while for it to sink in. The twenty

39:35

two babies born in New York City while the World

39:37

Trade Center burned, will never know what they missed.

39:39

The last half of the twentieth century will seem

39:41

like a wild party for rich kids compared

39:44

to what's coming now. The party's over,

39:46

folks. Yeah, that is kind of the feeling

39:50

growing up in the early two thousand's and not

39:53

not knowing, not never actually experiencing

39:55

the nineties. And yea, in some ways,

39:58

you know, nine eleven feel

40:00

it is very similar to me as something like Pearl Harbor,

40:02

Like they're both things that happened,

40:05

I guess before I was around, and

40:07

it just they created the world

40:09

that already existed in like it never it

40:12

never like it, you

40:14

know, it never changed the world

40:16

I was in. It just became

40:19

the world that I was in. For me, nine

40:21

eleven is my first memory, Like

40:24

that is the first thing I remember and

40:28

yeah, we got exactly the world that you

40:30

would expect from your

40:33

first ever reading nine eleven. Yeah

40:35

it's um, I

40:37

mean again for me, I think the thing

40:39

I identify most is that little clip I played from

40:41

South Park where one of the kids is like, do you remember

40:43

when everything didn't suck? It's not really

40:49

um? So yeah, go

40:51

out, um, tell a tasteful joke

40:53

about nine eleven, and uh, try

40:56

not to worship the state. It doesn't end well.

41:10

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41:12

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41:14

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41:16

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41:21

You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated

41:23

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41:26

slash sources. Thanks for listening.