Today is, rightly, a solemn day. 19 years later, it still resonates, humbles, saddens, stirs. This year though, it also feels different. This year’s emotions, strangely, include some form of what I think is longing. Longing for the sense of shared, collective grief and shock that drove a unified determination to do whatever was necessary for as long as necessary to ensure, as best we can, the loss of 2,977 American lives never happens again.
So far in 2020, we have experienced the equivalent of 65 (Sixty-five) 9/11’s of American dead. In the worst week so far, we nearly averaged one 9/11 each day. And, yet, the feeling of the country could not be more different than 19 years ago. We are not unified, we have no common sense of shared… well, no sense of a shared anything, really. I was told yesterday that there were only 11,000 people who died from Covid-19 because the CDC “finally told the truth that 94% had died from something else.” We literally don’t even have a shared sense of whether we have lost 11,000 American lives of nearly 200,000.
And then there are those who feel the biggest loss is economic. Those who argue vehemently that the economic cost of safety measures has been too high. A recent survey showed 57% of Republicans think the number of deaths is “acceptable.” That is the equivalent of 57% of Republicans believing after 9/11 that 2,977 deaths is an “acceptable” number to sacrifice for our freedom. Of course, nobody thought that then.
No shared, collective grief, shock, sadness, and therefore no shared determination to do whatever is necessary to ensure we lose as few Americans as possible. In fact, a large minority proudly refuse to do even the simplest of acts in order to ensure we lose as few Americans as possible – the exact opposite of 9-11. And nearly all of them claim to be patriotic Americans.
This crisis, now 65X worse than 9/11 and growing, shows a completely different America than the country we all lived in 19 years ago. This is Trump’s America. And I am feeling a longing for the America we were 19 years ago. A better America than we are today.
(371 Words)
Patrick On Politics 