September 11

by Frank Gullo

I've always felt that those in my generation have been disaffected and emotionally disenfranchised from traditional American values.

Which makes the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon all the more terrible and powerful. One of my friends told me that the terrorist attacks were the "worst thing" he remembers in his lifetime. Another corresponded with me about the event through e-mail: "What a mess. I'm still pretty rattled -- more, I think, than I am willing to admit to myself consciously." I echoed their sentiments and realized that, for the first time, I and many of my friends have been forced to re-examine how it feels and what it means to be American.

It hasn't always been this way.

Those of us that comprise Generation X were born in the late 60s and early 70s and our first TV memories were of unwelcome soldiers coming home from Vietnam or a disgraced President forced to resign.

If we were distracted as we began formative education by the oil crisis and the Iran Hostage crisis, at least we could withdraw at home with our new Atari game systems. Of course, there were some stirrings and indications of national identity. The Challenger explosion was broadcast live as we sat upright in our classrooms and the assassination attempt of Ronald Reagan both still resonate. And all of us remember with pride the victory of the 1980 US Olympic hockey team over the Soviets.

But overall, we were too cynical for the 80s surge of patriotism that swept America in the Reagan years. We wondered about the Cold War brinkmanship, and we were dubious about our Central America foreign policy. Beyond the politics, we were pessimistic -- about the Wall Street greed beneath the surface boom in the country, about drugs and urban decay sprawling throughout our cities, and about the emergence and ravaging of AIDS. If our grandparents and parents comprised the "Greatest Generation" and the Baby Boomers, we were an unknown, a generation so unsure of its collective identity that the best we could manage was an amorphous X, suffused with the uncertainty with which we came of age.

The 90s gave us an unprecedented economic and technological boom and allowed many of us to trade in an adolescence spent playing video games for lucrative jobs in the technology industry. During that time, we had little reason to reflect about our country or being an American. The Gulf War was a television conflict with limited American casualties that we could turn off at will, and the political climate was rife with partisanship, scandal, and infighting.

And then came September 11 and the horrible events that we all have seen played out over and over on the news and in our minds. For my part, there is the inadequate sympathy I feel for all those directly affected by the terrorist attacks and a realization that this time, we can longer turn away from the day's events. The days of disaffected, cynical youth are over, and we now must re-examine who we are and what it means to be American.

Frank Gullo
September, 2001