9/11: We Haven’t Learned the Lesson
I was woken up by a phone call from my housemate, who told me to stay inside with the kids and lock the doors. When I asked why, he said that planes had flown into the Twin Towers in New York and crashed into the Pentagon. We lived on Fort Meade, roughly 5 minutes from the NSA building. So I stayed inside, cuddled my babies and cried as I watched way too much news.
That’s my 9/11 story, and you’ll probably see a flood of them all over every social media feed today.
Do I sound callous? Sure.
Don’t get me wrong: What happened 22 years ago was a monumental tragedy in our history.
The problem? We haven’t learned a damn thing.
Oh, sure, there was this huge influx of unity, community and camaraderie for a while there. And let’s not forget the record number of enlistments into the military.
“Twenty years ago, on September 11, 2001, the United States came under attack. In response, 181,510 Americans enlisted in the ranks of active duty service, and 72,908 joined the enlisted reserves in the year following Sept. 11. Many of these brave service members claimed that it was 9/11 that inspired them to enlist.”
Why 9/11 Inspired These Service Members to Join the Military, Danielle DeSimone, September 7, 2021
254,418. The last time we’d seen such a flood was after Pearl Harbor, but that was only 134,000 (link).
I remember thinking this was the moment, our moment, and we’d finally be the country we claimed we were.
But then the hate crimes started.
And the return of the anti-immigrant rhetoric. (As if we didn’t have a direct hand in the creation of the Taliban.)
That hope I’d held fluttered away and died.
We Don’t Learn
One of the hardest parts of any remembrance in the United States is that we don’t really learn anything from our tragedies.
And I’m not even talking about school shootings.
No, we’re really good at the whole ‘We’re Americans!” things. Until we’re not.
Until we fall back into familiar toxic behaviors, tearing off the layer of us-ness to reveal the ichor of othering. Not all of us, of course, but enough of us that the enemy shifts ever so slightly from ‘those ragheads’ to ‘those deviants’, whether that means other religions, the LGBTQIA+ community (actively anti-trans), or just the ‘wrong’ color.
(Don’t even get me started on how we veterans are treated in this country by the party that swears they hold us in high regard.)
We have cemented our status as a country where white supremacy, evangelical Christianity and their Republican Jesus* rule.
Not without a fight, but that’s a whole other article.
While children go to bed hungry, people die from lack of affordable, accessible healthcare, other people are drowning in student loan debt and more, government at all levels are focusing on, and using taxpayer money, to further their social media-centric hatorade.
So, how do we fix this?
You know the drill.
Email/Call your representatives on all levels of government
Educate yourself on the candidates and don’t just vote party line
Vote every election
Encourage your circle of friends and family to do the same
Support non-politician candidates, especially in uncontested races.
Do work in your community.
Doesn’t have to be big. I’m not asking you to run, because I know my mental health couldn’t handle ridiculous level of bullshit now associated with running for any office. But what you do really does, good or bad, cause a ripple.
That’s my 9/11 thoughts. That’s it.
Thank you for succinctly writing how I felt today witnessing the flags at half mast and remembering why.