September 11th

Today, as I'm sure everyone is aware, marks the fifth anniversary of 9/11. By a strange quirk of fate, I have managed to be in the USA for three out of those possible five anniversaries, being here as a tourist in '02, and studying here in '05 (I was doing the GRE in Tokyo in 2004, and I can't remember what I was doing in 2003. So there). It feels odd to be in New York today, which in itself is rather strange, as it didn't last year, but this time round is a bit different.

For one thing, the five-year mark gives a sense - perhaps a false one, but the effect remains - of completing a cycle, of somehow ending the first phase of the aftermath. I suppose this feeling is reflected in the wall-to-wall coverage that the milestone is getting on U.S. TV right now. I don't wish to downplay the enormity of what happened on that horrible day, and I can respect a nation's wish to honour its dead, but the day-long blanket coverage (starting at 5 a.m. on one channel I saw) rather recalls the grief-fest that overtook the U.K. after Diana's death in 1997. It's probably just me, but I can't help but feel that a tone of quiet reflection would have been a more fitting memorial than a day-long media junket. Oh well. I guess my personal tastes just tend towards the understated, that's all. Maybe it's for that same reason that I never visited Ground Zero itself and always thought turning it into a tourist site was really tacky.

At the other end of the scale, of course, we have the certifiably bat-shit crazy bunch. You know the ones, the tinfoil-hat brigade who think that the CIA, or the Bush Clan, or the Illuminati, or the Jews, or Tom and Jerry crashed the planes into the WTC, or used explosives to bring them down, or any of a dozen or so quarter-baked theories concocted from the flimsiest of supposition and downright lies. This wouldn't usually bother me; I would normally be inclined to class such whackjobs with UFO nuts and those who think we never went to the moon or that the NSA controls the weather.

But damned if this stuff doesn't seem to keep popping up and affecting people I know. A certain somewhat flakey Miyagi couple who shall remain nameless originally tipped me off on this strain of thought - if it can be so called - by showing me a video doing the rounds on the net a few years ago. I thought it was crap then, and still do now that I've dug around a bit and learned for a fact it's total nonsense...but the idea just won't die. On the pole in a shot from October last year you can see their sticker; there are flyers up on all the lamp-posts round Columbia right now, the secretary in the Law school was watching that same video a couple of months back, and there was even some loony in a "9/11 is a lie" t-shirt on campus today. I don't know why this sort of stuff bugs me, but it does. It's not my fight, and yet...