I read today that a quarter of Texans were born after 9/11. Many college students can’t remember that day because they were too young. My wife and I lived in a different city, a different state and had no children on that day 16 years ago. The date itself is receding into history.
Yet it’s not. I avoid photos and video footage of that day’s events, which we saw replayed ad nauseam in the days and weeks of autumn 2001. It’s still too horrific and raw. Seeing it makes me recoil as it brings me back to the emotions of that day in a split second.
It also invokes what happened afterward and ever since. To the days when collective shock and mourning gave way to the drumbeat of war – a war that still has no foreseeable end. And the changes that day’s events brought to people. It changed some people, even people who were lucky enough not to have lost someone that day, irrevocably. For some, their reaction was to better embrace life and cherish others more fully.
For others, though, that day broke something in them. They took 9/11 as a sign that Americans can no longer afford empathy, kindness or anything that smacks of “weakness.” Suddenly, torture was an acceptable “tool,” with the ends justifying the means. Anyone who questioned the war was suspect.
It was a strange, anxious time (Did the 2004 Democratic National Convention really resemble a military rally? Yes, kids, it did.), a time that echoes now. We have a president who has threatened to kill the children of our enemies to teach them a lesson. People already raging at the world now routinely harass and threaten each other via social media. As our local leaders struggle with how to handle addiction, homelessness and the accompanying problems those bring, a vocal faction calls for locking them up or driving them out to the countryside and dumping them. It feels like a meaner time than the pre-9/11 period.
We have way too many people willing to commit terrorism against us, and we need to be vigilant against them. The world as a whole is more dangerous than it was at the new millennium’s dawn. Yet I’m convinced this country can protect itself and still uphold its ideals. During and after the recent hurricanes, we’ve seen many Americans helping each other selflessly, exhibiting the best qualities we have.
In the days directly after 9/11, many of us talked about going on with our everyday lives, or “the terrorists have won.” Sixteen years after that fateful, sad day, the United States, warts and all, still stands. But I worry that we’re continuing to lose bits of the openness, kindness and humanity. America’s just another place without the generosity and grace that has helped build us up. I pray we don’t lose our best qualities as a nation as we move forward.