Another 9/11

As I write this, it is about the same time that the first reports came out of New York on September 11, 2001 that the first of two planes crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and later another crashed into the Pentagon and still another crash landed in a field in Pennsylvania. I was walking to work through Hickory Hill Park that morning. It was a beautiful, cool morning and I remember arriving to work in a quiet, contemplative mood. Within half an hour, that would change. Now, 17 years later, I now know just how much all of it has changed and now is worth questioning--Are we "the land of the free and the home of the brave?"

Americans, it has been said, are a people of boundless optimism and I'd like to think that, deep down, we still are. However, on that day and all the days that have come after, we have seemingly descended into two clearly demarcated camps. One that embraces us joining the greater world community more fully and one that wants to partition ourselves off from those who are not American. I won't say that it is not understandable because the images of that day live on and the unspeakable horror of the events that unfolded are more a part of the mindscape of many Americans than say, Pearl Harbor, D-Day, the planting the flag at Iwo Jima or the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Perhaps it is a matter of time that we will regain our boundless optimism, but I fear, we never will. I also fear that we will continue the kind of politics that are so wildly dividing us, that we will begin to see the enemy everywhere. That is one of the lessons of 9/11. We enacted the PATRIOT Act not too shortly after 9/11 essentially allowing more and more surveillance of our lives. We have steadfastly refused to reduce the arming of Americans making it that much more likely that innocent people will die by the gun. We have passed law after law and policy after policy to allow us to pick and choose who gets to be in America and what religions that they can practice. And yes, we have jailed 1/4 of the world's jailed population. That is not boundless optimism at work. That is the work of mistrust and hopeless fear.

Perhaps the single greatest tragedy of 9/11/2001 was the loss of personal freedom and the increase of mistrust and fear. Perhaps on both sides of the divide that is something we share in common. Thankfully, there are people coming of age that were not born or were very young when the events of 9/11 unfolded. They have lived a lifetime of America at war. It is my hope that they will sicken of the constant state of warfare and seek to join different coalition of the willing to stop the wars and work on the root causes.