thinking how much better the 9/11 museum and monument would look if it was social housing towers and nyc actually rebuilt instead of keeping it's trauma close to it's literal heart.
did you know that the 9/11 museum was hoping to end 2021 with a $21 million positive cash balance?
did you know it cost $500 million to build?
and as of 2014 it costs $63m to run?
idk it feels like it would be better if the land was used more as a "fuck you" to everyone who wanted to harm us than a "never forget this trauma and have it affect politics for decades" you know?
Imo this is a good thing to consider when we look at this memorial. We can "never forget" in smaller, more meaningful ways than an incredibly expensive museum like this (just look at how Germany memorializes the Holocaust). Meanwhile our nation is facing a homeless crisis that we could make a serious dent in via public and affordable housing, and yet we barely get anything in that regard, despite it being sugnificantly cheaper than large memorials or war.
can't say i will ever have much respect for nine eleven rememberers. my most significant memories of the events have been
- at the time, the tv on in the classroom showing the gruesome airstrikes the US led against kabul and so on, killing what seems now to be something like a dozen times the states' 9/11 death toll in innocent civilians as direct, petulant retribution. and
- empty streets, 20th anniversary, a memorial in front of a shuttered baseball park 18 months into a pandemic our government willingly failed to control, watching even the official numbers tally up a 9/11 worth of deaths every 2 days
if the twin towers are really the thing you care most about here there is something deeply wrong with your worldview. i've yet to meet a single person who makes a big deal out of 9/11 and gives a coherently flying fuck about human life
