Being inoffensive, and being offended, are now the twin addictions of the culture. - Martin Amis

It used to be said, not so long ago, that every suicide gave Satan special pleasure. I don't think that's true — unless it isn't true either that the Devil is a gentleman. If the Devil has no class at all, then okay, I agree: He gets a bang out of suicide. Because suicide is a mess. As a subject for study, suicide is perhaps uniquely incoherent. And the act itself is without shape and without form. The human project implodes, contorts inward — shameful, infantile, writhing, gesturing. It's a mess in there.

For those thousands in the south tower, the second plane meant the end of everything. For us, its glint was the worldflash of a coming future. Terrorism is political communication by other means. The message of September 11 ran as follows: America, it is time you learned how implacably you are hated. United Airlines Flight 175 was an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile aimed at her innocence. That innocence, it was here being claimed, was a luxurious and anachronistic delusion.

Blood and bodies and death and power.