Two Decades of Transformation — Have we learned anything?

I was 11 years old when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. I don’t remember what subject we were supposed to be studying, but I do remember our school Superintendent quietly coming into our 6th grade classroom and whispering something to our teacher. After he left the room, our politically minded instructor turned on NBC News, who was providing live “Breaking News” coverage of the events in New York City.

As young student in an isolated country school over 1,000 miles away from the unfolding disaster, it felt more like the backstory of a video game or another Hollywood fiction than something real. At the time, my best friend and I were into Red Alert, a semi-futuristic real-time strategy game that pitted the Soviet Union and Allied Forces against each other. Even though the Soviet Union had already collapsed at this time, my friend and I speculated that Russia or maybe China were behind the attacks. At the moment of the catastrophe, neither of us had ever heard of Al-Qaeda, and so their involvement never crossed our young minds. After all, we couldn’t fathom how any force other than our fictitious 21st century Soviet Union could be powerful enough to inflict such damage to New York, the metropolitan embodiment of everything that is America.

My interest in politics began with the 2000 Presidential election. Our foreign exchange student, Marie-Eve, from Quebec, watched the votes come in from the couch as I observed from the floor, separated as much by ideology as physical space. It’s difficult to say how much of the past twenty years would have changed had this election followed Marie’s hopes instead of mine, but it’s safe to say things would be different. The national unity and bipartisanship that thrived after 9/11 was a beautiful manifestation of American community and Democracy in action, but at the same time, the lack of dissent and healthy debate lead us into 20 years of Middle-Eastern quagmire and a death toll that far exceeded the event that initiated the offensive.

Had Vice-President Gore won, there would have been no George Bush standing on the rubble at Ground Zero, cradling a first responder and inspiring a nation with his words. There would have been no Donald Rumsfeld calling for Desert Storm Part II. No Dick Cheney in the shadows corrupting the President’s intentions. Of course, the Democratic counterparts in this hypothetical reality might have reacted similarly, there’s just no way to know. However, it is hard to imagine that a cabinet devoid of the war-mongers would have led us into a never-ending war (even with the same President).

I was always proud of how Bush himself responded to the attacks that day. He was truly an bipartisan President on September 11th, 2001. There really hasn’t been another since. Shortly thereafter, the bipartisanship turned more into groupthink, and produced such well-meaning assaults on the Constitution as the Patriot Act, the TSA, and others. During Bush’s early years, Congress ceded more and more power to the Executive with every legislative act they passed.

Suddenly, it was no longer Russians we were scared of, it was Islam. All brown people, regardless of nationality or religion, were targets of ridicule and harassment. They became suspects and enemies overnight. Buildings were locked down. Airports became impossible to traverse with dignity. American citizens were spied on by their government.

Multiple generations of young adults were sent to the desert to die. And they all did. Even if their bodies came back still breathing, not one came back as the person who left. Thousands of soldiers returned to a country that did not value their service enough to give them jobs or healthcare.

Our politics have shifted from the dangerous bipartisanship of 2001 to the extreme division of 2021. We were all Americans on 9/11. Now the only Americans are the ones who wave the flag of your primary-colored quadruped mammal of choice.

Media’s transformation into the fractured and untrustworthy morass of today started twenty years ago as well. After 9/11, Americans were conditioned to pay attention to the “breaking news” banners even when that breaking news consisted of something inconsequential. Viewership of 24/7 “news” networks exploded. These networks struggled to keep true news on all day. It was cheaper and more entertaining to instead of people on to talk about the news, rather than to report the news. Truth and opinion started to become conflated.

The internet was just getting its start when the planes first struck. While the North and South towers fell in a city where internet was merely a luxury, One World Trade Center rose from the rubble into a world with pocket-sized supercomputers and entertainment devices that communicated wirelessly, almost like magic. Though the WTC was rebuilt, its rebirth was to a city that was more symbolic of American power than functionally wielding it as it had years ago.

China’s assent from third world country to economic powerhouse took place within this vicennia. The decaying American empire, too consumed with its futile attempts to tame its desert pets, barely noticed as China crept in. With over 1 billion more citizens than the United States, and a more focused government, China rose at an unprecedented pace. Only in recent years has the growing threat in Southeast Asia finally been recognized.

In the years post-9/11, at least three major pandemic-wannabes pounded at the gates of our healthcare system. SARS (Coronavirus part 1) hit in 2002-2003 in China, but never significantly spread past its borders. The Ebola outbreak did make it to the United States in 2014, but it was quickly contained through the efforts of the CDC. Swine flu, or H1N1, was another illness that did widely spread in the US and was declared a pandemic, but a speedy vaccination effort and other public health mitigations stopped it from ever reaching the catastrophic levels achieved in mere months by SARS 2 (COVID-19) in 2020 and beyond. At the height of the pandemic in late 2020 and early 2021, nearly twice as many Americans died EACH DAY of COVID-19 than died in the 9/11 attacks.

Our years of never-ending war were certainly one of the harder things to come to terms with in the decades following the WTC attacks. We entered Iraq to take out a tyrant, and created something worse in ISIS. We fought and coached and spent billions trying to build a nation in Afghanistan, only to watch it fall back into the hands of the Taliban before we could get the last American over the peaks of the Hindu Kush.

As uncertain as things were this time twenty years ago, now, in the midst of COVID-19, post-Trump politics, economic disaster, and climate catastrophe, the future is less clear than ever. In some ways, 2001 was a simpler time.

We had unity.

We had national pride.

And we only had one day of disaster.

In 2001, 2,996 people lost their lives in the attacks on 9/11.

In 2021, 2,418 people lost their lives to COVID-19 in 24 hours prior to 9/11.

We are experiencing 9/11 every day.

Where are the cries for justice?

Where is the national unity?

Where is the bipartisanship?

After 9/11 we made many changes to our lives to be sure it never happened again. We gave up many of our freedoms. We spent a lot of money for revenge. On the 20th anniversary, we’re now faced with a similar decision. For many, vaccinations and masks and social distancing are unsatisfactory encroachments on civil liberties. They are no different than the TSA, except for this:

The TSA has prevented zero terrorist attacks, but the COVID vaccines have already saved countless lives.

Get yours today, so that we can leave COVID in the 9/11 vicennium and start fresh tomorrow.