Provo a ricordare con le parole di altri. Tre scrittori che amo e che mostrano con due riflessioni ed un esperimento mentale la portata della caduta delle Twin Towers e lo stato mentale dei nostri anni zero.

\ «New York è cambiata in maniera drammatica dopo l’11 settembre: abbiamo assaporato la cenere e la morte e questo ha cambiato rapidamente la società. Allo stesso tempo però è diventata un’esperienza filosofica appartenente al mondo intero, non più ai singoli individui. Gli avvenimenti attuali come le guerre o i problemi ambientali sono galattici, non hanno più a che fare con la quotidianità delle persone. Siamo incastrati tra macro e micro e ci buttiamo su fb, sul mondo virtuale in cui troviamo rifugio. Chronic City riguarda questo iperrealismo: di chi non vuole leggere della guerra sui giornali e non vuole pensare all’infinità grandezza della realtà, vivendo in una sit-com come il protagonista. Noi (anche io sono fra questi) siamo gli idioti che guardano la vita attraverso la cultura pop, restando in un piccolo universo con cui riusciamo a confrontarci e rifugiandoci a fare la spesa in uno store online» Jonathan Lethem

/ «Volevo dimostrare che la nostra reazione a quella tragedia è stata peggiore della tragedia stessa», teorizza. «Fin dall’ inizio l’ ho considerato un evento minore, trasformato in qualcosa di macroscopico dall’ amministrazione Bush per cinici motivi politici. Come se il corpo avesse reagito alla malattia, creando un danno autoimmunitario ancora più grave della malattia stessa» Jonathan Franzen

| « Are some things still worth dying for? Is the American idea* one such thing? Are you up for a thought experiment? What if we chose to regard the 2,973 innocents killed in the atrocities of 9/11 not as victims but as democratic martyrs, “sacrifices on the altar of freedom”?* In other words, what if we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability to terrorism is part of the price of the American idea? And, thus, that ours is a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices in order to preserve our democratic way of life—sacrifices not just of our soldiers and money but of our personal safety and comfort?

In still other words, what if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?

Is this thought experiment monstrous? Would it be monstrous to refer to the 40,000-plus domestic highway deaths we accept each year because the mobility and autonomy of the car are evidently worth that high price? Is monstrousness why no serious public figure now will speak of the delusory trade-off of liberty for safety that Ben Franklin warned about more than 200 years ago? What exactly has changed between Franklin’s time and ours? Why now can we not have a serious national conversation about sacrifice, the inevitability of sacrifice—either of (a) some portion of safety or (b) some portion of the rights and protections that make the American idea so incalculably precious?

In the absence of such a conversation, can we trust our elected leaders to value and protect the American idea as they act to secure the homeland? What are the effects on the American idea of Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Patriot Acts I and II, warrantless surveillance, Executive Order 13233, corporate contractors performing military functions, the Military Commissions Act, NSPD 51, etc., etc.? Assume for a moment that some of these measures really have helped make our persons and property safer—are they worth it? Where and when was the public debate on whether they’re worth it? Was there no such debate because we’re not capable of having or demanding one? Why not? Have we actually become so selfish and scared that we don’t even want to consider whether some things trump safety? What kind of future does that augur? » David Foster Wallace