generalspeaking

"Nothing Can Break Us"

"It's an honour to join in your memories, to recall and to reflect, but above all to reaffirm the true spirit of 9/11 -- love, compassion, sacrifice -- and to enshrine it forever in the heart of our nation."
"Like the great well and bedrock that embrace us today, nothing can ever break us. Nothing can change who we are as Americans."
U.S. President Barack Obama

The president is speaking of Americans' entrepreneurial spirit, of necessity. Under the guise of lauding Americans' indomitable passion for democracy, human rights and goodness of spirit; though all of that is also present in the American psyche. He is speaking on the occasion of the grand opening of "a sacred place of healing and of hope", a museum dedicated to the thousands of victims of the World Trade Center bombing.

New York's dedication ceremonies at the inauguration of the National September 11 Memorial Museum saw political figures, celebrities and relatives of those who perished on that fateful day in 2011 in attendance. The sacred place that it is will shortly open to the public. The museum is not a government-paid-for or local government institution. It is a private enterprise. And isn't private enterprise what America is all about?

There are people who represent the families of many of the bereaved whose loves ones' remains have not yet been identified and released to them for burial, and which very well never may be. But those remains are located in the basement of the museum building. Not at the request of the families, nor even in consultation with them. They refused to take part in the dedication ceremonies, and they are insisting that the remains of their loved ones be taken out of the building basement.

They have taken umbrage that the museum commemorating the death of almost three thousand Americans, scheduled to open to the public on May 21, is not a public venue, but a private one. Private venues such as this, are geared to making money, to providing a hefty profit for their investors and share-holders. What event in recent memory is more geared to instill in Americans defiant pride along with sad regret than this one?

For an investor it would represent a safe bet that this will be a highlight attraction for tourists wishing to walk within its "sacred" corridors, to see its memorable and carefully-gathered memorabilia, items that signify what occurred, why it did, and what resulted. A noble sanctuary for the memory of those who involuntarily gave their all. A conspiracy that beggars the imagination, but which beggared a city of its pride and its hope for a short while.

Videos of the skyscrapers in their dreadful collapse, and the horrors of watching as people leap in hopeless abandon of their lives from the collapsing towers. Damaged fire trucks. Personal  items retrieved from the cinders and wreckage of what was once the industrial-commercial pride of the city. To honour those who responded at risk of their own lives to rush into the flaming horror, "who have served with honour in more than a decade of war", surely it should have behooved public funds to erect such a monument to grief?

Instead, private enterprise will exact a hefty entrance fee from all those who seek to enter to mortify their spirits and give thanks that the atrocity did not happen to them personally, to their loved ones. And to honour those to whom fate apportioned that duty, to absorb the scorching hatred of another portion of humanity that preferred to destroy rather than to befriend, to live in peace.

Labels: 9/11, Culture, Economics, Tragedy, United States

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, May 17, 2014