9-11, Fifteen Years Later

(author’s note- In recognition of Sunday’s fifteenth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I am reposting this essay from September 11, 2015, for your consideration and reflection.)

9-11, Fourteen Years Later

9-11

Once upon a time, when the world was young (and so were we), we naively believed that, by and large, we were safe from the ills that plague the Middle East. We told ourselves, “Yeah, it’s pretty screwed up over there, but we are here, thank God, and all of that bad stuff is all over there…so why worry?”…

…Then a jet airliner flew right into one of the twin towers at New York’s World Trade Center…

Our immediate reaction was, “That must be one screwed up pilot…How could he possibly have not seen that building on such a clear day?”…

…Then, a second jet airliner flew right into the other tower at New York’s World Trade Center…

…and then, we knew that these collisions were no accident…

…Then, a third jet airliner flew into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and a fourth plane, bound for the United States Capitol dome, crashed into the fields of rural Pennsylvania…

…and then, we knew that we were at war…

For an all-too-brief while, our country- the United States of America, which had a long-standing tradition of uniting during times of war, pulled together and resolved to do whatever it took, in order to stop the sinister ideology that prompted such dastardly deeds. For a brief moment, we forgot our ideologies, we forgot our partisan affiliations, we forgot our creeds, and our races, and all of our identity groups, and everything else that seeks to separate us, and we united behind the effort to get the sons of bitches who did this to us…

But then, partisan politics and advocacy journalism, on the part of the mainstream media, began creeping in and thus dividing us into partisan blocs, pitting liberals against conservatives, pitting Democrats against Republicans, pitting the poor and middle classes against the rich, pitting blacks against whites, non-believers against believers, gays against straights, etc., etc., ad nauseam…until we were united no more…

Seven autumns later, these divisions- with complicit help from a mainstream media, bound and determined to do whatever it took to make history by ensuring the election of the nation’s first black president- saw the election of a very different kind of president- a president who did not believe in American exceptionalism, a president who seemed to be above such childish notions of patriotism and “the American Way”, a president who derided Americans who “cling to their guns and religion”, a president who, in reality, had nothing but contempt for Americans and all that America has done, over the many decades, to preserve equality and freedom throughout the world. This new kind of president traveled the world, apologizing for all of his country’s transgressions and telling all of the world that we are no better than they, and for this they awarded him a Nobel Prize for Peace- for having done nothing more than being elected and disrespecting his own country…

This new kind of president- one whose psychological makeup and ideology is vastly different from all of his forty-three predecessors, did everything he possibly could to tear down this country, to further divide this country, to set Americans against Americans, thus fulfilling his 2008 election night promise to “fundamentally transform the United States of America” by changing us from a country leading the world towards a better tomorrow, to a country “leading from behind” in a concerted, determined effort to enable all of the world’s many problems to visit our shores and infect our national psyche. Due to this one man, and his nefarious agenda, race relations are worse today than they have been in sixty years. Due to this one man, we are far less safe today than we were, even on the sunny morning of September 11, 2001. Due to this one man, and an imbecilic Secretary of State, he has struck a deal (a deal whose details have not been fully disclosed) with the most evil regime on earth, Iran- one that will assure their acquisition of nuclear weapons and inter-continental ballistic missiles with which to deliver these weapons on the shores of a nation they call “the Great Satan”, the United States of America. This one man, who would have us believe that unsubstantiated claims of man-made climate change pose a greater threat to our national security, than radical Islam, illegal immigration, and a nuclear Iran, combined

What have we, as a nation, learned since that sunny Tuesday morning, fourteen years ago?…

Apparently? …not a damned thing…

 

-Drew Nickell, 11 September 2015

©2015 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”

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