I Was Not Attacked on 9/11

All day, I’ve been hearing about how “we” were attacked five years ago today. I wasn’t attacked personally, and neither was anyone else in my office or my family. I don’t know anyone who was at the World Trade Center that day. I don’t know that I was a target of the maniacs who flew those jets into those buildings. I don’t have any idea what the maniacs thought they were going to accomplish.

It doesn’t feel right to me to say that “we” were attacked when I speak of the destruction of the WTC. I feel sorry for the victims and their families, but I am not one of them and ought not to pretend to share meaningfully in their grief or sense of victimization. There is no adequate reason for me to declare a special affinity with the WTC victims as opposed to all the other victims of war and calamity around the world. Physical proximity seems an unsatisfactory basis (at the time I lived about 25 miles or so from the WTC). Also, that most of the victims were subjects of the same governments that prey on me is not enough to permit me to claim a special affinity with them. Everyone in the world is subject to some government or other.

So I avoid saying that “we” were attacked. Some take the attack very personally as if it happened to them even though they did not suffer the slightest inconvenience as a consequence of the events of that day (leaving aside the governmental response). There is something unseemly about glomming onto the victims and wallowing in vicarious victimhood. Let us instead empathize with the victims and grieve for them just as we mourn every senseless death around the world.