Every now, and then throughout our collective American history we see how united we can be. In the last 70 years or so I'd say WW2, and the immediate days after 9/11 showed who we really were. I wasn't around for the Pearl Harbor WW2 unity. However I was certainly about for the 9/11 unity. We'd learned from before not to or try not to target people. We would not do to Muslim Americans what we did to the Japanese Americans,...mostly.
I can tell you there was a really sincere sense of national unity the likes I've never experienced before or since. I recall sitting by the East River several days after the attack. The radio station I worked for was at the South Street river's edge. The air thick with the smell of burnt plastic, and rotten meat.
That scent stayed around till the next spring. Strange no one mentions that hardly. It stayed that smell all fall winter into the spring. Burnt plastic, and a faint scent of death.
So I'm by the river, and this Wall Street guy sat next to me. We talked about where we were what we did what we saw.
There were fears of more attacks. Perhaps some manner of dirty bomb. It's what we expected back then.
My Wall Street friend said how he was arranging to send his wife, and kids to his parents in the mid-west. He hoped they'd be safe there, but he didn't know.
I said I was a stone cold New Yorker, and would stick around. I offered my hope that indeed his children would make it out okay no matter what happened here.
We sat silently there for some time.
A lot of that went on all over the City. Indeed the country. We were all collectively in danger in the unknown, and were standing together facing it down. It was a good feeling. I hoped it would continue. I remember media folks commenting the same.
"...Everything is different now it will never go back to the divisive way it was."
This was often said on TV, and radio in those first days. Of course it changed back. Partly human nature. Partly manipulation of our raw feelings by the then administration. This to get us into a long planned war with a Iraq. A country that had nothing to do with the attacks. Afghanistan was almost an afterthought. It became an underfunded sideshow of the war. With the results we now see.
Back in the City. I remember saying "...when the cops shot down an unarmed Black guy you'll know we're back to normal." It took three days. Normal.
Now on this morning that launched a 20 Year's War. A war we lost. Lost, and betrayed a whole population into a dark age.
On this jagged anniversary we remember. We recall what happened what could have been, and what finally came.
Our dream of unity, and peace between us faded then disappeared. How I wish that sense of common purpose, and mutual trust could return. How we as Americans long for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment