I am a member of the 9/11 generation.
I’ve grown up thinking of the world in terms of before and after 9/11.
I hardly need to retell the events of that cloudless Tuesday morning on Sept. 11, 2001. Most of us remember exactly when we heard the news.
The nation seemed to change overnight when the Twin Towers tumbled to the ground, coating the surrounding city with ash and debris. Our lives were forever changed when we saw the photos of the Pentagon building gashed on its side and the single downed plane in a Pennsylvania field.
We emerged a newly burdened country, more hostile and more suspicious than before.
In the past 11 years, we’ve become more divided, less trusting and more polarized than at any time in the past quarter of a century, according to the Pew Research Center.
We remember the fear, the uncertainty and the terror. Although it is trite and clichéd to say we’ve changed, it’s painfully obvious that we have.
After all, how could such events not scar a nation? How could it not leave a country feeling vulnerable where it once felt strong?
We’ve been waging war in Afghanistan for over a decade now, but we’re no closer to stopping terror — one cannot win against the intangible. You can’t kill an idea with drone strikes.
An unattended duffel bag can shut down an entire airport and we still wander through security checkpoints barefoot.
We’re hesitant to acquaint ourselves with realities and are untrusting of the unfamiliar. We don’t have to know anything about someone’s religion or why someone wears a turban to shoot them.
That “vibrant blue sky” on that fateful September day represents the end of America’s proverbial summer, said Tina Brown of Newsweek in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” 9/11 is “ the last moment of American innocence.”
It is a metaphor that resonates. Eleven years later, we’re still talking about the weather conditions on that day.
If the period before 9/11 was truly America’s innocence, as Ms. Brown contends, I have to wonder: Were we innocent before Pearl Harbor?
Were we innocent after Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated? When former President John F. Kennedy was shot? When we became the first, and so far only, nation to use a nuclear device against another nation?
These are all events that vitally reshaped the country. We still remember the immediate aftermath, grounded flights and frightened passengers. Panicked calls and dead phone lines. The biggest newspaper headline to grace the front page since “Nixon resigns.”
But we weren’t innocent before 9/11 — we were isolated. And after 9/11 we were united only briefly to honor the victims.
America changed 11 years ago, and the attacks on 9/11 revolutionized the way we view the world. But then, we’ve had revolutions before.
While we’ve had more than our share of horrific, tragic setbacks, I remain optimistic.
As comedian Jon Stewart said in a 2007 interview with Rolling Stone, “The reason I don't worry about society is, 19 people knocked down two buildings and killed thousands. Hundreds of people ran into those buildings to save them. I'll take those odds every (expletive) day.”
Me too.
Reach the columnist at skthoma4@asu.edu or follow the columnist at @SavannahKThomas.
