9/11, 2008, and September dread

There is always a sense of things coming to an end as autumn arrives. Leaves fall, plants die from the frost and cold, crickets call to each other with desperation, and birds migrate south. Harvests are collected, the last bounties of the growing season before all food becomes trucked from across the country or preserved. There are also all kinds of festivals and holidays, including Halloween and Thanksgiving.  Tom Rush sang a wonderful son about the approach of autumn as well. But September, the first month of fall, has also come with events that seem to leave a deep mark on the American mind.

In two days, we'll be observing the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Anyone over a certain age today, perhaps 30 or so, will remember where they were when the planes hit the World Trade Center. If you are like most people, you initially thought that the first plane hitting the building might have been a pilot error or some other sort of accident. When the second plane hit, it was quite clear that it wasn't an accident, but an intentional attack. Whether or not Al-Qaeda could pull something off like that again is anyone's guess. I would say it would not be nearly as likely now, given increased security and working to cut off their funding and operations. If America is exhausted from twenty years of war, it stands to reason that terrorists and their allies might be as well, the recent Taliban victory not withstanding. At the same time, though, it is still in the back of everyone's minds. How many people are going to avoid crowded stadiums, shopping areas, and other venues on the off chance that something might actually happen?

September 2008 was also not so fun, too, with Lehman Brothers going bankrupt as well. It showed exactly how hollow the financial industry really is, and how dumb so many of the concepts and ideas that grew up in the financial sector in the late 90s and early 2000s were. Lend money to people whose credit should have been a red flag? Hey, no problem, because we need to make sure we're making our money work to the utmost. Prices increases because of more competition in the market because of more money being lent, and the risk goes even higher. The economy falters and the whole thing falls apart. I guess the real shocker is that anyone thought the system could actually keep going the way it was, rather than expecting the house of cards to fall apart sooner or later.

Now, we're entering a September on the heels of a lost war that showed the limits of American military, diplomatic, and economic power. Nation building is nothing but a euphemism for colonizing a nation and bringing it into the folds of the empire. We've now seen that limit, just as the Romans did when the tribes around them were stronger and they were no longer capable of propping the Empire up through conquest. Imperial overreach describes the moment when spending to expand passes the limits and ability of the empire to remain healthy if that venture fails. Spain and England found this out, and now it's our turn. People may wave the flag and thank the troops, but are those gestures now without meaning? What do veterans of the last twenty years think about what has happened? Maybe the rapid fall of Kabul and the botched evacuation can be laid at Biden's feet, but three great Western powers felt like they could beat Afghanistan into submission and failed.

Last, we expected the pandemic to be gone by now. Vaccines were rolled out at the end of 2020 and were thought to be what would put us back on the road to normal. Maybe they don't work as well as expected, maybe they don't work as well with the mutations, and maybe people who didn't want to take them have been enough of a reservoir that it was able to rebound. And now Joe Biden is trying to mandate vaccines and penalize employers who don't go through with the plan. How well is that going to play out when half the country doesn't trust the other half? The pandemic has become endemic, and nothing is going to get rid of it now. All the measures in the world aren't going to get rid of it now, and restrictions and mandates are going to further divide people and cause civic trust and the economy to crumble just a little bit more.

The metaphor of seasons works for civilizations, too. Ours was born in the spring after the fall of the Roman empire, where the dark ages were anything but, being a time of vibrant renewal. It matured in the summer of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, and is now in its autumn. People sense now that we are in that time when the limits of what we could do with fossil fuels, the financial system, social safety nets, government or the lack of, science, everything, are being made obvious. We have always lived with faith in progress as a new human covenant, but that is failing as well. The limits of technology have been reached and it is not going to be a panacea. Even if some pockets continue to leave well, living in a state of collapse will be the rule for everyone who isn't living on residual wealth.

Last, the end of summer is a time to prepare. In a normal world, this means you cut some wood, check the gutters and clean them out, put some insulation in, and so on. In this early autumn of our civilization, how can we prepare for the winter that is going to follow? How do we navigate such uncharted territory? What template can you use when everything you've known becomes less reliable, more expensive, or not even available at all? Whether or not we are grasshoppers or ants will likely be revealed soon as the seasons change.