(no subject)

[proximoception]

Delillo's Underworld looks at the Cold War and its gradual unraveling as a sort of mass trauma followed by a mass convalescence. Seems like the terrorism/counterterrorism era proceeded similarly, but at four or five times the speed - though of course we're susceptible to a relapse, just as there were a couple of those during the Cold War (and I guess the whole terror age can be seen as a relapse or aftershock of the cold one).

Because it feels kind of over, at least as a mass psychological disruption. Obviously many of the things it cracked are still cracked, and some of those fractures are spreading. But people seem to speak differently about all of it, sort of how they'd speak of Vietnam.

Knee jerk reaction poll: Does that feel wrong?

Comments

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

I feel we're somewhere where we were in the late seventies in the Cold War period. People are more inured to terror, but still think it will happen, and happen big again. Fear of biological attack, e.g.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

My location may be skewing my tear-dar.

[andalus.livejournal.com]

I don't know, it feels like everyone around here (young people, mostly) treats the terror age like a bad dream they're only beginning to be able to joke about.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

There were jokes all through, but I think they did serve a different function than joking about it seems to now.

[mendaciloquent.livejournal.com]

It does feel wrong. But let me qualify that.

It doesn't feel wrong with regards to terrorism itself. I say this as someone who lived in the area and did a lot of work in NYC in the years following. The impact was still there, but at some point -- I would say at least as early as 2003 -- it took on a muted, frozen quality for those who weren't eyewitnesses or who didn't know any victims.

It does feel wrong with regard to the counterterrorism phase, or rather, the decisive step toward a security state ushered in (or, more accurately, rapidly accelerated) by 9/11. I mean, NDAA was signed only a few months ago. That particular age isn't only not-over, but has probably only just begun. Decades from now we may look to 9/11 in the same way that we look toward the Gulf of Tonkin -- not in terms of its veracity so much as the use of the event as a pretext for sweeping premeditated action.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Our native strain of fascism is definitely thriving. It's less clear to me that the actual terror that let it take over still exists. Probably as part of that general demographic panic of the aging white Christianists we're all bemused by but elsewhere I'm not detecting it so much. From what I can see, much of the 2003 ice thawed and though there's flooding in some places others seem like 1999 again.

I'm sure the security apparatus will make a more significant effort to refrighten the non-Foxed populace to keep itself fed at some point - quite soon if we're stuck with Romney. Perhaps it's just waiting for the economy to settle or enter more decisive freefall. Maybe the financial worries are masking the other kind.

[tdaschel.livejournal.com]

(discovered your LJ by partial accident / added it on purpose. your's seems both congenial and information-intensive !)

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Welcome aboard.