If this age, this era, this time period, our generation, our society, our nation today were defined in a dictionary, what would Webster say? Do we even deserve something so concrete as a definition in a book? Things have certainly happened in our time worth mentioning in the history books. I mean, look at what happened just a few days ago. But it’s tough to come so definitively to a group of words to define our entire existence.
I’ve spent much of my own life and this entire semester trying to figure out exactly what it is I believe in and exactly how I perceive the world as it is now. I know I have no spiritual faith but do I have faith in mankind? I believe in good deed but do I see our society as a driving force of good deed? We witness and observe a lot of people and actions in our lives but we all interpret them differently.
Take the death of Osama bin Laden as a great example of this. I took that long trek to the Boston Common that night. I stood amidst the cheering and chanting crowd of college students celebrating his death. But as I looked around and took in the ambience of the mob, I didn’t feel the patriotism that everyone else was so proud to show. I felt more isolated from the American population in that moment than I ever have before. I found myself almost disgusted by the whole event. Reporters were behind me praising the “peacefulness” of this celebration. “How brilliant it is that not a single person is fighting – there’s only happiness and cheers here.”
A friend of mine put it well. She said the celebrations reminded her of being in Italy when the Italian soccer team won the World Cup. It really did feel like we had won some sort of sick game. But in reality, this isn’t a game. Quite the opposite. None of this is a game. And we surely haven’t won. In this scenario, no one wins. Everyone comes out in deficit no matter how you look at it.
Our entire generation, almost half of our entire lives, has been marked by Sept. 11 and the subsequent “War on Terror.” In and of itself, a war on terror is the greatest false hope of our time. We are unreasonably fighting against a method of warfare. Terror is invisible and intangible, yet we fight it. We wage war on it. There is no winning this. Imagine the American Revolutionaries waging war on guerilla warfare rather than for independence. In that, war never ends and the true goals are never reached. In that, we are a nation in the Commonwealth Realms, confused on why people still use guerilla warfare. I mean we declared war on it, why didn’t we win? We’re America. We always win.
This is precisely why I’m so put off by all the celebrations for bin Laden’s death. On one level, we are beyond joy for a man dying. Nothing can ever mean justice for the 9/11 attacks. Nothing. Not even the death of the mastermind. This is not justice. Murder is never something for which to rally around. On another level, it’s been nearly ten years since this nation has witnessed such strong patriotism. Obama’s election might be the closest example, but then again, that was only the one half of the nation who voted for him. On 9/11, this nation united together in pain and it took a decade to unite again. And worse, under these means.
Where has our sense of community and nationality gone? Why has “proud to be an American” become reserved for country music? I don’t doubt that we as a nation are proud to live here but we don’t really outwardly show it. I’m not writing to say that you all should be waving flags every time you walk down Commonwealth Avenue. I only mean to wonder what constitutes a surge in patriotism? Can we only define pride in our generation in relation to war? (An unnecessary war, at that?)
We were raised up thinking that our greatest journey as a nation was a manhunt. Since 9/11, we’ve been on that hunt and it is here where I began to understand the cheering and the pride at the Common the other night. That manhunt had finally ended and our great journey had been “accomplished.” It suddenly made more sense why the crowd was almost entirely college students. Because we were raised on the journey. Not those older than us, but us. We did. We were brainwashed with a theme song and countless news reports. We think it’s not only okay, but also extraordinary, to spend a decade conspiring murder.
While I and others, as Obama noted in his speech, recognize that this is by far the last step in the American recovery and reasons for great pride, I’ve come to understand my peer’s reaction. I don’t agree but I do see. I guess if I flipped open a dictionary and searched for Millennials, Webster would say, “May This Generation Rest In Peace Sept. 11, 2001 – May 1, 2011.”
Jake Haungs is a sophomore in the College of Communication and a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at jmhaungs@bu.edu.
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