Strange anniversary today – I thought this morning that it almost didn’t register with me, with everything else going on in the world and in my own heart and head these days. Growing up in New York feels like yesterday in some ways, although with the family members now lost, it’s kind of excruciating to recall. The memories are beautiful, beloved, and excruciating. In other ways, that youth and young adulthood in Manhattan feels a million miles away. I live far from there now, and so much time has passed. I was gone already before 2001.

At the time it felt strange to me how people across the country seemed to take the attacks so personally, even though most of them had no personal connection to New York. I was sort of confused by how & why they all seemed to feel so impacted, no matter where they were from. A lot of them even bad-mouthed New York pretty hard prior to that. They would never have associated themselves with New Yorkers on principle, before that day. Now I look back and think how unifying the reaction was. Even people who’d never been to New York, and never wanted to go there, felt tied together as Americans. I wonder how we’ll build back to a nation that feels that connected to each other again. The very unity that confused me in 2001 feels like an elusive dream in 2020.

2,977 is the number of people who died on this day in 2001. In 2020, our government’s failure has created a reality in which that many people die (actually more) every 3 days. Every. Three. Days. Where are all the “Never Forget” bumperstickers now? Where is our common outrage, our shared sorrow, our national determination? More than a thousand American families a day suffer the pain of losing a loved one. Contemplate that for a moment, please. At the time of the 2001 attacks, I worried a lot about overreactions. I still think there were excessive responses. Ironically, one of these was creation of the very Department of Homeland Security which our current government now is preventing from doing their job to defend us against both a pandemic and foreign interference in our elections.

Where my concerns in 2001 were about overreaction, I worry as much – or more – now about underreaction. Individuals tune in to local and state sources, and heaven knows what other sources of media and social media, for information about how to act to stay safe, what to do, and what not to do. Uncritical thinkers and cynics take the word of a serial fabricator whose self centeredness far, far outweighs for him the oath to protect us which he swore and yet completely fails to understand, let alone uphold. Our federal government LIES all the time now about matters large and small, including these two recent and grave threats to our national security. What Al Quaeda was trying to do in 2001 I think was to take a swipe at America as a beacon of western liberal democracy, of secular democratic (small d!!) governance. A generation of patriots followed previous generations into uniform. Not losers and not suckers, they stepped up to defend our national welfare from this offense. Now the swipes are coming from inside the house. The White House, that is. And the Senate. Who needs to bother to bomb New York (or any other iconic American city) when our national unity, our scientific reason, our moral decency, and our fragile mutual trust can all be eroded so thoroughly by inept governance at home?

Okay, I guess this anniversary did register with me. God Bless America. Vote Blue this November, fellow citizens! Vote and get all your neighbors and friends and family to understand that we’re not involved in a domestic battle of ideas this election season. Pray that we return to fights over policy one day soon. Today we’re involved in what must be understood as a shared defense of our country, our liberty, our democracy, and our national soul. #VOTEBLUE