On the twentieth anniversary of September 11th, it's time we recognize the consequences of America's need for vengeance, the effect of militarism in fostering fascism, and how the illusion of American exceptionalism led to murderous self-destruction.
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jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/the-end-of-t…
Unfortunately so much of the remembrance of 9/11 is spent on the spectacle while ignoring the tragedy of all the lives lost of those who found themselves between two warring factions and the crush of history.
We also must reckon with the consequences of American empire.
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There is no real understanding of our current crises without investigating how 9/11 was a cataclysmic event that shook America from a fantasy of world domination and exceptionalism, leading to disastrous wars and a philosophy of hatred and fear that permeated the U.S.
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For America to react to the tragedy of 9/11 through swaggering, chauvinistic violence and retribution was a denial of reckoning with our actual fear and the dying of an illusion of American dominance that had taken hold post-Cold War.
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As we obsessed over the spectacle of the attacks, as calls for vengeance and a display of military might grew, what we missed was the growing realization that the idea of American hegemony and continued status as unchallenged superpower was a self-destructive lie.
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As America had long defined itself based on the Cold War, the USSR falling created a sense that America was free to determine the course of the world, that war and strife were a thing of the past and the U.S. would define, craft, and lead the world.
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This flawed concept is arguably best encompassed by the work of neoconservative Francis Fukuyama, who believed that liberal democracy and free-market capitalism had established itself as the final stage in human civilization.
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Fukuyama's work exemplified an arrogant idea that America had not only won the Cold War, but that capitalism had so thoroughly dominated that it would more or less lead to a system of peace or at least stability.
What was missed was that capitalism is inherently unstable.
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The believe that America would determine the future took hold within the George H.W. Bush Administration, which promised a New World Order led by the U.S. that would police the world and lead to longstanding peace and prosperity.
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The first Gulf War was meant to be a test-run for this New World Order, an example of how a post-USSR world would coalesce around U.S. leadership and root out dangers and instability.
The idea was that American exceptionalism was the ideal rallying point for the world.
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The spreading of both Americanism and capitalism worldwide was done on the back of global markets and free-trade, a process that extended the gap between the wealthy and poor and created massive international forces that would eventually run roughshod over nations.
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The concept that capitalism and free-markets inevitably mean peace has been around for forever, since capitalism began.
It's never been true though as capitalism requires constant growth, conflict, and instability. It was an illusion to help people and corporations profit.
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On September 11th, it wasn't just structures that fell. It was an illusion that a post-Cold War order could continue, unabated, without further conflict.
With it felt the idea that American Exceptionalism could construct a continuously peaceful world.
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What W. Bush and his administration did was lash out as an act of violence while turning their eyes from very real simmering problems.
Instead of addressing the failures of past leaders and past systems, they sought to reinforce the order through domination.
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U.S. reaction to 9/11 was to deny the death of the illusion of American Exceptionalism and capitalism as an order, but to use the tragedy as a means of reinforcing our military dominance while profiting and forwarding geopolitical footholds of the Right.
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Expression of military power distracted from the decline and decay of America.
Instead of dealing with our very real issues and the flickering of the illusion of stability and order, we lashed out. Which is what ailing empires have done throughout history.
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And, like other ailing empires, the cruelty we wielded quickly exposed the very wide gap between our espoused principles and reality.
Torture, violence, the killing of civilians, it all served to make very clear the rot at the heart of American empire.
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The militarism we employed to lash out came home. We saw fascists and separatists don the uniforms and iconography of the Forever Wars, because this is how it works.
The war comes home. It effects the country wielding it and inflicts it from within.
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A superpower that overthrows elections, assassinates leaders, and disrespects sovereignty will breed citizens within its borders who attempt to do the same.
Again, the disorder of empire comes home. It always, always, always comes home.
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And meanwhile, the denial that helped fuel our violence post-9/11, the push to ignore our very real problems in pursuit of gestures of power, has rendered us incapable of facing the very real consequences of the system that's been constructed, leaving us to die and suffer.
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The capitalist/US-led system erected post-Cold War cannot solve the climate catastrophe.
In fact, it cannot even recognize climate catastrophe because it has CREATED the catastrophe in the first place and any solution is antithetical to its ideas and purpose.
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Meanwhile, the champions of the American Order/freemarket system have recognized it cannot continue along its current path and are advocating illiberal democracy in order to undermine the rights of voters and individual liberties.
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What we must realize now, twenty years later, is that 9/11 was the fracturing of an illusion that the system created and sold to us as a worthy, workable, world-ordering system was a lie to begin with.
It was constructed on faulty ground and never worked from the start.
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Global capitalism carried out by corporations and an elite political class was not a solution, but a means to forward power and profit.
Our lashing out, killing innocents, only delayed a very necessary and unavoidable confrontation with that disturbing but true fact.
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If we continue to substitute self-reflection and needed reform for violent denial, the chaos will only grow.
The militarism and brutality of post-9/11 will continue and the eradication of everything America was supposed to stand for will continue until nothing is left.
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