By Ande Jacobson
Like so many of us, I remember exactly where I was 25 years ago today when the twin towers were attacked on 9/11/2001. I was at work during a week I spent in the greater Washington, D.C. metro area. Although we were mostly cutoff from the outside world while at work, we were just outside the beltway, and within less than 10 minutes after the first plane hit everyone at our location knew that it happened. When I was able to contact my manager back in my home location later that morning, he told me that my colleague and I were not authorized to drive across the country to return home. We were to stay at our location until we could fly home. We were scheduled to fly back on Friday that week, but our journey got complicated, and our stay was slightly extended. We were lucky. We were safe, and although we weren’t able to return home until Sunday, we had a comfortable place to stay, food to eat, and work to do. The story of our attempts to get home is a bit jumbled, but in the grand scheme of things it is unimportant now compared to the trauma others suffered that week and in the weeks and months that followed.
Unfortunately, the destruction of the country got a huge boost in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That destruction began in earnest in the 1980s when the Movement Conservatives found a home and came into the mainstream. After 9/11, the government’s reaction to it pushed the country to react through fear and loathing of others that as time has gone on has made us far more vulnerable to losing everything the United States used to stand for.
At the founding, the country, despite its many shortcomings, was built by and for immigrants. Given all of humankind originated on the African continent, we are all immigrants although the indigenous peoples predate the nation’s founders by several millennia. Immigration, despite its earlier restrictions, used to be the greatest strength of the United States of America.
Since the founding, the country as a whole had been moving in a positive direction valuing everyone’s rights as laid out in the Bill of Rights as paramount, no matter a person’s citizenship status. Those rights legally applied to all persons as they should. Immigration too had become less restrictive with exclusionary quotas finally being abolished in 1968. The draw of making a better life in the United States was strong, and the laws had been changing to make that a realistic goal for those brave individuals who desired to make it a reality. We have never had open borders, but we used to welcome those who wished to make a life here through a much more friendly process than we have now.
After 9/11, fear drove the leaders at that time to begin the descent into eliminating our rights by slowly moving the country toward becoming a police state. Congress passed the Patriot Act by an overwhelming majority despite a prescient warning from one lone senator who saw beyond the current overreaction. Robert Reich reminded his readers of those dangers by posting a video of that senator’s remarks during the legislative debate before the Patriot Act was passed. If only Congress had paid more attention to Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) then, we now might not be so close to becoming that police state in his warning.
Yes, the attacks were terrible, and we needed to respond appropriately to them, but what our leaders did at the time has not made us safer. In fact, we are now in greater danger from the very government that is supposed to represent and work for us all than we are from any foreign adversary.
Beyond our domestic troubles, now, Instead of being a positive world leader working to make life better for humankind, our current regime has lashed out at the world, shunning our longtime allies, hurting them with tariffs, and waging unprovoked wars on smaller nations out of greed and cruel intent.
The daily chaos being orchestrated by the current regime is dangerous, and I’m tired.
- I’m tired of people latching onto lies and half-truths to justify engaging in abject cruelty toward others as ICE does on a daily basis.
- I’m tired of our national leaders making life more difficult for the vast majority of Americans.
- I’m tired of the boundless corruption that has infected our political system and the highest level of our judiciary.
- I’m tired of immigrants being vilified when we are all immigrants if you go back far enough.
- I’m tired of racism, misogyny, and bigotry running amok to punish the majority of people in this country and the world.
- I’m tired of having to fight for the rights that are guaranteed by our Constitution.
- I’m tired of any group being persecuted or vilified for merely existing.
- I’m tired of the massive greed of a few very lucky, morbidly wealthy individuals ruining the quality of life for the rest of the country.
- I’m tired of watching what used to be mere fodder for dystopian science fiction becoming reality.
We can do so much better.
We cannot afford to forget our past. By remembering it, we must learn from it.
In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, there was a short window when people came together to help one another across political, social, and economic boundaries. We saw one another as people. The developed world rallied together to provide aid and comfort to us all. It’s the only time in the history of NATO when Article 5 was invoked, and our allies came to our aid working together for a time.
If only we could have sustained the good will and comradery of that tragedy to learn to come together even without the trauma of violence. Without scapegoating. Without defining others as enemies.
Earlier this year, I wrote an essay on how it’s difficult to be an American these days. It is. It’s exhausting, but that doesn’t mean that we can ignore what’s happening. It doesn’t mean that we can ignore our past. For us to get past this moment, we have to come together again much like we did right after 9/11.
It would be great if we could sustain a feeling of good will and comradery across all of our boundaries, and stop the hate mongering. Stop the corruption. Stop the greed. We can, but it will take work. Let’s finally learn the lesson we tend to forget from the trauma that happened 25 years ago.
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