Fifteen Years

[resqgeek]

Today is the fifteenth anniversary of one of the worst days the United States has ever experienced.  If you take even the most casual look around the internet, there is no shortage of posts recalling the events of that horrible day.  Everyone has a story of what they were doing that day, what they felt, how they reacted.  Remembering the events of that day, remembering those who died, sharing our stories, these are all important.

But on this anniversary, I’m not finding myself thinking about that day so much as the years since.  I’m thinking about the legacy of that awful day, how we, as a nation, responded, and what we’ve done since.  I remember how, in the days and weeks immediately afterwards, we came together, expressing incredible solidarity with the victims and communities impacted.  In the midst of the horror and disbelief, it was possible to find hope in the way we reached out to each other in our grief.

But that spirit of hope and unity isn’t very evident today. We have become deeply divided along many fronts.  We have given into fear, sacrificing many of the most important principles. From holding prisoners for years (even decades) without due process, to torturing prisoners, to massive electronic surveillance that has steadily eroded our privacy, we have allowed our fear to justify a steady, incremental surrender of many of the ideal we used to take pride in.  And on top of that, that same fear has led to a rising distrust of immigrants, especially those coming from certain parts of the world, or who profess certain religious beliefs.  We seem to have forgotten that this country is a nation of immigrants, that our immigrant heritage is our great strength, that our future almost certainly rests in those who continue to yearn to come here and become part of our society.

Meanwhile, we obsess over superficial shows of patriotism.  We complain when someone exercises their rights to protest by not following conventional patriotic acts, like standing for the national anthem. We are outraged when someone dares to suggest that we might have overreacted to the terrorist attacks.  We have elevated outrage to the new patriotism.

So, let’s remember the terrible events of that day. It is important to remember and to share those memories.  But it is also important to reflect on how we have responded to that day, and to consider whether, going forward, we can’t find responses that don’t compromise our ideals.  I believe that we can, and that such responses would ultimately be more productive in improving security and promoting peace both at home and abroad.