The Internet is full-to-bursting this morning with remembrances of 9/11 and a wide array of answers to the question, "What did it mean to us?" I read a number of them and stopped after this essay by Lucian K. Truscott IV who says, basically, that we lost the War on Truth…
The legacy 9/11 has left us is that there is no common set of facts we can agree on about anything: Not about the COVID pandemic and masks and vaccines; not about the climate change that has killed hundreds and left town after town burned to the ground or under water and destroyed by tornadoes and hurricanes. We cannot agree that votes counted amount to elections won or lost. We cannot even agree on the common good of vaccines that will save us, that science is worth studying, that learned experts are worth listening to.
I think we lost a certain amount of that before the planes hit the World Trade Center but 9/11 certainly turned the partisan divides into impenetrable walls.
Anyway, this is not a remembrance of 9/11. My experiences were no more special or worth recounting than yours or anyone's. Maybe one thing we can agree on is that it was horrible and that it changed the world in many ways, few of them for the better. And I think I'll do myself and maybe you a favor by not dwelling on it today. The posts on this blog this weekend will not be about that. If you need that, you have an entire World Wide Web of it just one click away.