New York Magazine has a really interesting piece up right now: “What If 9/11 Never Happened?”
They assembled a varied list of contributors — columnists, political advisers, public figures, even graphic novelists — to pontificate on what the world might be like had the terrorist attacks that day never happened. All of the speculations are very, very fascinating, and, perhaps not unsurprisingly, more than a little depressing.
My two — I hesitate to call them “favorites,” so I’ll go with the two I thought were the best, perhaps the most thought-provoking, are actually the first and last entries. Andrew Sullivan, former editor of the New Republic, contributed a series of alternate history blog posts relating very plausibly how a different, more deadly terrorist attack might have affected a different world.
The other highlight is by the aforementioned “graphic novelists” Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris, cocreators of the excellent comic book series Ex Machina. Theirs is probably the most striking too, consisting of one panel of art and one caption.
If you’ve got some free time I recommend reading the whole thing. If you don’t, then just read the ones I pointed out. It’s worth it.
JAB
3 Responses to “WHAT IF”
Andrew Sullivan’s fills me with a sort of … melancholy, I guess, is the word for it. And I’m not even that fond of Andrew Sullivan. I like his ‘deer-in-the-headlights’ jab at Bush, though, and the way he’s used 10/23, and that I instantly knew the phrase was a reflection of 9/11. And his point involving Tom Delay — that politicians will be partisan no matter what.
Tom DeLay? what about Al Gore (now the pseudo-martyr of the Democratic Party)? Supposedly his trump card in the election was support of Issue 1. Tom Delay was just a secondary example. I agree with the point, but seriously . . . Politicians will be politicians even if they’re Democrats.
I mentioned Tom DeLay because the ‘containment could have worked’ bit sort of jumped out at me.
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