It has been 25 years since the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and to this day I continue to feel anger. Not just at the perpetrators, but at the way it has changed Americans.
At first, many of us thought that the first plane that hit the World Trade Center was an accident. That a non-state actor would use everyday and ubiquitous things such as airplanes in an act of terrorism was alien to the American mindset. Such was the good nature of the American public. I still remember the collective gasp when the second plane hit the second tower as the planes continued to circle and land at Washington National Airport.
All of them, of course, except one.
Charles Cooke over at National Review has the best synopsis of this week’s early commentariat so far:
Sneering types dislike the contention that the United States was attacked “for its freedom.” I do not. Irrespective, we can surely agree that the United States was attacked with its freedom. The assailants took advantage of a welcoming immigration system; turned quotidian commercial products into catastrophic weapons; and centered their attack around a pair of iconic private buildings in which civilians convened to trade with one another. They transmuted our media into a system for transmitting panic; used the selflessness of our first responders as a means by which to rack up kills; and turned the openness of our society into a liability. The architect of the attacks said, bluntly, that the difference between his band of thugs and the American people was that “these youths love death as you love life.” Indeed so. That most of those Americans assumed at first that what he had done to them had been an accident tells you everything you need to know.
This observation that we were attacked with our freedom still rings true today, made far worse with social media and the rise of psychobabble, manipulation, misinformation and disinformation, and all the other tactics we as Americans commonly employed elsewhere in the world as ‘active measures’ being turned inward and weaponized by political consultants, social media influencers, and a host of algorithms designed to infantilize us all.
We bought it. Hook, line, and sinker, Benjamin Franklin warned us about the material trade off of safety and freedom. Not only does a rising generation of voters have absolutely no idea what it is like to enter a stadium or airport without security protocols, but they have no idea how America felt during that time.
As for the surveillance state, folks are a bit late to dinner on that one. Forget the PATRIOT Act provisions and all the hyperventilation about data centers, the amount of information available to local and state law enforcement combined with what we privately give away through End User License Agreements (EULAs) is astounding:
When Denver pulled its city cameras, the privately installed ones kept running. And in Florida, so did the millions of private devices throughout the state. We installed those. Not the government: us. Doorbell cameras, home systems, HOA networks, the phone in your pocket, the watch on your wrist. When you mount a camera or other device at your home, you are not only watching your porch. You are recording the mail carrier, the neighbor walking her dog, and every car that passes.
The path from your doorbell to a police file has been rebuilt in the last two years, and we seem to have been oblivious; maybe the politicians knew and hoped we never noticed. In January 2024, after public pressure, for example, Ring shut down the tool that let police request footage through its neighborhood app. That looked like the end of it. It was not.
What you buy, where you go, when you do it, and who with are all collected by marketers before they are ever picked up on by government. Your cell phone is a rat, never mind your personal computer or your smart television. Marketers routinely buy and sell this “pattern of life” information to other marketers and third-party outsourcers. Don’t even ask about your work computer and what Microsoft Teams tells your employer without your knowledge or consent. All of this is at the fingertips of the intelligence community, third-party operators, marketing gurus, and government big-and-small and all in the name of freedom, because we live in a far more dangerous world than our forefathers.
Perhaps what I most resent is the way Americans talk about politics post-9/11. Every disagreement is existential, every distinction is in the camps of friend and enemy, politicians become “deciders” in our exceptional world, and what was once an exceptional infringement on our freedoms and social trust quickly becomes normative only to be violated with yet another emergency. Can we name of one freedom we have given up that has been surrendered back to citizens? Is it no small wonder why our politics today mostly consist of denying (or hating) the other side?
Yet we live in a terribly complex society, one where a hiccup on the other side of the world can and does impact global markets. At least insofar as we speak of commodities. For all the tears shed over Gaza, few were shed for the dead Israelis of October 7th. Fewer still can point to Sudan on a map, much less identify the Rohingya, or know where the Uyghurs build their smartphones. Fewer still mentioned 40,000 dead pro-democracy leaders in Iran with the same breathless panting they mention the human shields of Hamas.
True — we have globalized our concerns. The trumpery of bad news over good news remains. Even with the passing of Wendell Berry, one wonders whether a very small local newspaper would survive. I’m not even talking about a local newspaper for a locality, but something more fun that is focused on a zip code that talks about a garden, some plants, maybe some seeds or stuff that is being sold at a local farm or a kid’s Etsy store. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we all tried governing our own yards rather than governing the world?
That right there is what 9/11 stole from us. Sure we talked about the Soviets and Europe, but dammit we were a lot more local about ballgames and families and churches and community. All things we either spit upon today (churches) or turn into a religion (sports) or manufacture as we bounce from job opportunity to job opportunity never wondering that the family we choose (sic) might not choose us one day. We took for granted what a high-trust society looked like and never bothered to ask why we were all born on third base.
Virginia is by nature a veteran-heavy political class. From the Pentagon to Fort Belvoir, to A.P. Hill to Eustis, and Hampton Roads and Oceana AFB — there is nothing in Virginia that isn’t soaked either in the next war or our past wars. It’s not just the corps of cadets at VMI or VPI, our heroes range from John Smith to George Washington to Robert E. Lee to Douglas MacArthur. Even General George S. Patton is still revered in Fredericksburg even his accent is dying out. Not just veterans, but the host of contractors and those who work in the intelligence community, all byproducts of the War on Terrorism which will always be fought yet conveniently never won — the dream of every defense contractor.
Of course, there is much heroism and much of America to be proud of over the last 25 years, from Iraq to Afghanistan. The tireless work of law enforcement is a shield to the families they protect. For 25 years, the homeland has not seen another 9/11. Yet for 25 years, we are reminded:
In peace and prosperity governments and individuals are better minded because they are not plunged by imperious necessity to act against their will, but war takes away the easy supply of daily wants, and tames as a violent schoolmaster, assimilating most men’s characters to their conditions.
Thucydides observed the lesson 2,400 years ago. Instead, the National 9/11 Memorial in New York offers a quote from Book IX of Virgil’s Aeneid: “No day shall erase you from the memory of time.” A line offered in remembrance of two Trojan soldiers who slaughtered their enemies in their sleep only to be captured, killed, and have their heads placed upon pikes.
Have we been assimilated to our conditions? Are we being assimilated to the conditions of the times? In a post-9/11 world, I’m afraid the answer is yes. We trust one another less and are quick to hate. We are less patriotic on the whole and relish in the partisan. Politics stopped at the water’s edge once upon a time. Today our enemies wait for and influence our elections. Dialogue is now replaced by competing monologues. Devastating wit substitutes for argument. Sneering has replaced confidence. If I sound too much like William Butler Yeats complaining about the falcon no longer being able to hear the falconer, then I am guilty as charged.
This is what we forgot after 9/11. Will we ever retrieve it? Or is the past another country? One suspects the latter and fears the former.
