A Day in Infamy

After reading The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town", the images that defined 9/11 came back to me with a new significance. Reading from the accounts of people who stood in dis-belief in front of the rubble that had once been the highest part of the New York Skyline. As John Updike says in his part of the essay, " there persisted the notion, as on television, this was not quite real..." The immensity of this event was greater than the feat of creating the towers; what was once majestic  shock and awe was now the manifestation of terror and death. Watching the towers fall was not just the loss of some big buildings, it was the loss of people, people with families, people who had done nothing wrong but go to work that morning. As John and many others watched the towers fall they watched the largest massacre every to be carried out in American history. The phone calls made by those trapped in the tower and airplane were what gave reality to many such as myself. I listen to the calls from loved ones, knowing that this is the last they will ever speak to each other, a different side of culture was demonstrated. The true passions and loves of so many uniting all at once. On that day every Americans heart was beating together, we were together truly one nation, indivisible.

But then came the after shook, the uncontrollable result of the most traumatic nation event in American history. People stood in the streets, sat in their homes, and stayed motionless at their desks; the nation was shell shocked. No one had an explanation for the events that had transpired. Politicians stood up and gave warming speeches, ensuring everyone that nothing was out of place, that whatever had just happened wasn't quite real. But for many this was not enough; thirty, forty, fifty years ago maybe people would have been okay with this explanation. But society was educated, they were not about to believe that this loss was nothing for civilians to worry about. The people needed answers. How could this great superpower of a nation be threatened by anyone, who would dare try to fight with us. This was not something that was allowed to happen in America. The answer that arose was the devastating fact that America was losing its hold, and we the people are now going to suffer with her.