Susan Sontag and the toxic legacy of 9/11
The wound that never heals
In 2022 and 2023, I published articles on the anniversary of 9/11/2001, deconstructing the war and surveillance state that rose to public visibility in the following two decades. The anti-democratic ethos it embodies was medicalized, expanded and further institutionalized during Covid. In 2024, the resultant authoritarian state has nearly suffocated the remnants of American democracy.
My previous articles examining how this happened and it’s consequences are linked below.
Today, in the final weeks of another multi-billion dollar presidential election carnival, voters are offered a choice between “lite” and “full” versions of the new authoritarianism.
Both candidates and their deposed predecessor, Joe Biden, appeared today at a ceremony to mark the anniversary of 9/11 and to offer the public what Susan Sontag described as “nihilism for the masses.”
This slide into nihilism cannot be reversed by elections. Democratic self-governance requires an engaged, informed and active citizenry that rejects the inherently totalitarian logic of politics as performative, top down spectacle.
Susan Sontag was right
After the twin towers in Manhattan were reduced to rubble Tuesday, September 11, 2001, the New Yorker commissioned a group of their top writers to pen brief essays about the event. Most of these epistles have passed into oblivion with little notice, but the briefest essay among them by Susan Sontag caused a disproportionate eruption of outrage in both official government circles and the media organs dedicated to amplifying their messages. It is
The toxic legacy of 9/11
Amid heavy criticism from normally compliant media organs charged with amplifying official regime propaganda, the 22nd anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001 was cursorily honored by President Joe Biden this afternoon during a two hour fueling stopover in Alaska on his return to Washington, DC from a G-20 summit in Vietnam.
THE SEEDS OF CITIZEN DRIVEN DEMOCRACY
Documenting a nascent revolution in citizen’s democracy.