the day america lost its virginity

or not, exactly. before 9.11 i was shopping at wal-mart, driving kids to practice, sniping with whatshername, dealing with addiction problems, trying to clarify my ontology, inflicting philosophy on students, going to the bathroom, feeding the cats, doing the dishes, driving up and down 83. after, the same. the news on tv was different though. honestly the idea that we lost our innocence or invented partisanship is pretty silly. think for a moment of what american history has actually been like, or whether you might have had a sense of vulnerability in 1778, or 1863, or during the labor strife of 1890-1910, or in 1932, or as you hired a contractor to build your fallout shelter. how vulnerable did you feel if you were an indian in 1850, a black man in 1892, a shirtwaist worker in 1910, an okie in the dust bowl, a freedom rider in mississippi, a grunt during the tet offensive? american politics was screechingly polarized in 1800, in 1856, in 1900, in 1968, in 1998, and pretty much every year between, before, and after. it can be an important event in american history without transforming each of us entirely and all of us together.