I stumbled upon an interesting account of a ceremony to commemorate the 6th anniversary of the 911 attacks near my home town. Read about it here: http://redondowriter.typepad.com/sacredordinary/2007/09/never-forget-an.html. There were probably hundreds of such ceremonies around the country on that day. This is a very good example of symbolic politics and perhaps what a sociologist friend of mine calls "hegemonic discourse."

The writer and attendee at the ceremony wrote that she felt like protesting that day, but it was a non-political, solemn event. I think it is a perfect example of how these solemn events are drenched in politics. If we step back for a moment, try to withdraw from the emotion and look at the ceremony as described, we see highly politicized symbolic discourse:

• The American flag marks the memorial and the event as something pertaining to the nation, a political entity. The terrorists certainly meant it as an attack on the United States and that is how we interpreted it. That is not controversial, but it doesn't have to be that way. We choose, as Californians, to care about New York and Washington, D.C. or not to care. National unity is an ongoing political project in every nation state and 911 is a symbolic event we use to forward our national project.
• Some attendees to the event wore symbols of their service to the state. These men - veterans - were not wearing symbols of being former teachers or senate interns, but war fighters. They mark this event as having to do with a war. Legally, it could be argued, it wasn't an act of war. But we all interpreted it as one and followed our political leaders in sticking to that interpretation. That interpretation is plausible, but again not necessarily the only interpretation.
• The event was held at a war memorial (http://www.emptychair.org/), not at some church or other public space such as a fire or police department or even a 911 memorial. Read here how the event was announced in advance: a war-memorializing event to happen on the 911 anniversary. Attendees were to bring a candle to remember those who died for freedom in all of America's wars. That firmly places the events of 911 into the war context (and all of our wars as campaigns for "freedom").
• They sang patriotic songs.
• An Iraq War veteran spoke, the names of the local dead from the Iraq War were read and the father of one of the fallen spoke. Here, clearly, is the evidence that we as a country do connect 911 and Iraq despite the total collapse of our leadership's claims of a formal, logical connection. Why weren't the names of the local Korean War fallen read to connect 911 to war in general? Why not local policemen killed in the line of duty to connect 911 to the nation state or to acts of crime? Because Iraq is now - as ever - symbolically part of 911.

Those who made the argument that Iraq is all about national survival in a "post 911 world" have clearly and decisively seized the symbolic center.

By doing so at a "solemn" event they

a) show that this interpretation has been internalized by the population. The event was organized locally in a "liberal" town, so nobody can claim that a bunch of Bush supporters hijacked the ceremony.

b) further solidify this interpretation in our hearts and minds by ceremonially and solemnly re-constructing it every year on the anniversary and

c) prevent protests against this interpretation because you can't hold posters and shout or even start a decent argument at an event like this.

Since it is a solemn event, you don't make waves and argue about the form of the ceremony, at least not once it is underway. But whoever determined the form of the ceremony made a conscious or unconscious decision to include certain elements and exclude others.

Here we can observe the same mechanisms at work that we see in churches: You may or may not agree with what the words mean in an intellectual sense, but ceremonially, you read aloud what is in the church bulletin as the response text for the congretation, you sing the words in the hymnal, you bow your head while the pastor speaks in your name to the deity, you listen quietly while all kinds of things are being said up front. The ceremonial structure of the event prevents dispute or public objection to the symbolic or textual particulars and all participants leave with a general sense that all this stuff is stuff that we all stand for in some way. Piece by piece, consensus is constructed in the public sphere without argument, without convincing anybody of anything in a "cerebral" sense.

I do not know how many people attended such events all over the United States on Tuesday. That, of course, might be an indication of how meaningful - or not - the symbolic solidification of 911=war=Iraq really is.