Fractured Unity
Reflections on the 20th anniversary of 9/11
I have been struggling with sadness a lot this week, seeking to stave it off with physical exercise and word games on my phone.
In the midst of all that has been happening in America right now, and all that is going on in my personal life, I seriously am not up for the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and all the public reflections and speeches and memories that it brings.
And my sadness is not necessarily about that day 20 years ago (my new husband and I were in Italy on our honeymoon). My grief is very much rooted in the present, in the current zeitgeist, if you will, of America in 2021.
Where Are We Now?
For a short window of time twenty years ago, I feel like there was an opportunity for America to be united. Possibly, for a short time, we were, as a country, united: in shock and horror, in a shared grief for those symbols that we all lost, in the desire to honor those who died and uplift the first responders who sacrificed so much to go help.
I’m sure there are people who will point out that the idea of unity was an illusion from the get-go, but back then, I was naïve enough to believe in it. For a day, for a week, I truly thought 9/11 was such an overarching tragedy, something that touched every life, that surely, it would overcome prejudice and hate, and unite Americans in a common goal.
I was wrong then, and things are worse now.
I live in a country broken and divided into factions, worse than it was 20 years ago. Even the tragedy of a global pandemic has not brought us closer together, but instead driven us further apart. I don’t know if it was the 2016 election, the COVID-19 pandemic, or the insurrection on January 6 — or if it goes back further — but America is broken.
Rights that we have taken for granted are under attack — and not only that, but fellow Americans will argue over who is attacking which right. The left will say voting and abortion rights need to be protected; the right will say mask and vaccine mandates are impinging on their freedoms.
People are arguing over facts. Like who won the election of 2020. I was told today (by a stranger, online) that Jan. 6 wasn’t an insurrection, “they weren’t armed.” I don’t even know how to respond to that.
The cognitive dissonance that is living in America today makes mourning the tragedy of 9/11 difficult for me.
People sacrificed their lives. We fought a fruitless 20-year war. And for what? Surely not so strangers online can tell me I’m wrong about the science behind mRNA vaccines.
We use the phrase “Never Forget” a lot on 9/11. But I think, collectively, we’ve forgotten too much about that day, how, when the the promise of unity was given to us in fire and blood and tragedy, we didn’t hold onto it. We will remember the names of the dead, the bravery of the passengers of Flight 93, where we were when the towers fell.
But we have forgotten all else.
