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Psychology

The Blood of the 3,000

Jeffrey Gordon reflects on 9/11, and sees that it didn’t wake us.

September 11, 2001 taught Americans – and all the rest of us – the price of our political apathy, of our indifference tinged with contempt toward the wretched condition of the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of this earth. In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, President Bush was criticized for allowing a splendid opportunity for strengthening the American soul to slip away. At this time, the critics say, we were ready to sacrifice: we would gladly have shared symbolically through our own sacrificial labors the agony of the families of the 3,000 dead. But the critics are wrong. Bush showed himself the much truer judge of the American temper when the only action he could think to require of us was for us to keep shopping.

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