A Callous America Remembers 9/11
Our national identity is eroding. Americans hate each other. We no longer identify with one another. I remember during and after 9/11 feeling a sense of unity. I felt connected to my fellow American. There was harmony in our understanding that every life had value. We mourned the dead, we comforted the families, we cried together, and we picked each other up when we were down. We were Americans and we loved one another, even as we disagreed about how to address terrorism, there was respect. There was understanding that everyone was on the same side. On that terrible day in 2001, we watched in horror and suspended grief as planes crash into buildings. We who lived it, have seared on our minds the images of people jumping to their deaths to escape the heat of burning buildings.
We heard the harrowing tales from those who had loved ones on United Airlines Flight 93. The passengers having learned of the tragic events unfolding in the country stormed the cockpit and attempted to take over the flight. If you recall these patriots knew they would likely die. Tomas Burnett Jr., a passenger and hero of Flight 93 told his wife, “I know we are all going to die. There are three of us who are going to do something about it.” Another Patriot, Todd Beamer, was heard saying, “Are you guys Ready? Let’s roll.” Minutes later the plane crashed into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania killing everyone on board, and hurting no one on the ground.
We lost 2,977 lives on Sept 11, 2001 and those lives meant something.
Today we have lost 195,000 lives to Coronavirus and as a nation we feel nothing. It breaks my heart.
On more occasions that I can count, I have found myself wondering what it would be like if Coronavirus had not hit our country so severely. What if we had known it was airborne earlier? We could have invoked the defense production act and made enough masks and PPE for everyone in February. We could have prepared our schools, our workplaces, ourselves for a lock down. We could have made sure that the most vulnerable among us, had disinfectant wipes and masks. Just masking alone, enforced earlier would have saved lives, jobs and small businesses. I feel fortunate. I have a job, I have a home, I have money for food. But this is not the case for many of my fellow Americans, and I am not sure that we care enough about one another to do anything. We are no longer the country who mourned on 9/11/2001. We are instead a callous nation.
Though one could argue many factors have led to the Callousness of America, nothing has made us more callous than the leadership of Donald Trump. This becomes blatantly apparent with the Bob Woodward Tapes.
On February 7th to Bob Woodward on recorded audio, the president said, “It goes through air bob, that’s always tougher than the touch, you don’t have to touch things, right? But you breathe the air, you just breathe the air and that is how its passed, and so that is a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. Its also more deadly, than your, you know, your even most strenuous flus. This is more deadly. This is five per-you know, this is 5 percent versus 1 percent and less than 1 percent, you know. So this is deadly stuff.”
But on February 28, speaking to an unmasked audience indoors in South Carolina the president said, “Coronavirus is the Democrats’ new Hoax”.
Later on March 19th Trump told Woodward, “I wanted to always play it down, I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic.”
During this time the president repeatedly told the American people that Coronavirus would “magically disappear”. He told Americans almost daily that the mortality rate was less than the flu. We were issued guidance to not wear masks when this administration knew the virus was airborne. Somehow Fauci and Birx went along with this. Were they tainted by Trump, or have they always been as corrupt as Trump is?
The politicization of masking has destroyed this nation unnecessarily. He knew it was more deadly than the flu, he knew that masking could save us- but instead he chooses to give the illusion of normalcy to avoid a dip in the market. To make this convincing he told the states that they would be responsible for themselves. All the while, he had knowledge the states did not have. Then he would callously tweet, “Liberate Michigan”, “Liberate Virginia”, “Liberate Minnesota”, encouraging democratic states to open that had not met CDC guidelines for reopening. Did he want to drive up the numbers in states run by Democrats?
Trump said after the Woodward revelations that, the release of these tapes is nothing more than a “Political Hit Job.” What about all his supporters who attended his rallies, who did not know Corona was airborne, and believed that this was no more dangerous than the flu; who chose to go mask-less? And what about Herman Cain, the GOP senator that died after attending Trump’s Tulsa Rally? Where is the remorse? Even when deaths happen around him and because of his actions, he is unfazed, and would rather have you believe that this is a “Political Hit Job”.
Make no mistake, Trump is the perpetrator, he is the “Political Hit Job” and I am tired of taking these hits. With every lie, another hit. With every mask-less event, another hit. With every accusation launched at our states, another hit. With every effort to blame-shift, another hit.
Here is another hit, Corona is not over. Not even close. The Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation released new data a couple of days ago. It is expected that 410,451 deaths will be recorded in the US by January 1st. That is another 215,000 lives. The institute warns that we will lose 3,000 people a day! That is more lives lost every day, then was lost in 9/11.
Today I feel alone. I do not feel united. I feel afraid. Covid happened to us and we could not agree on masks, on lock-downs or damn near anything, so now 195,000 people are dead. Let me repeat that 195,000 people are dead. They were mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, co- workers, husbands and wives.
The president said in an interview with Chris Wallace on July 19, 2020 “It is what it is”, referring to our death count. There is still no sense from this president that as a nation we have failed, there is no remorse for the lives lost. We are a nation taking our cue from a soulless president and becoming a callous nation as a result.
If you feel unimportant and undervalued you are not alone. As it stands today, if you die tomorrow you will be nothing more than another digit to the days count. You will not be remembered by a mourning nation suffering together, because emotion about loss is not encouraged in Donald Trump’s America and that is not normal for us. We are human and when we deny our suffering, we erode our souls. It is no wonder that Americas depression rates have soured. I remember in the early days we watched in horror as Italy’s numbers rose each day. We cried for them- but when we suffer a worse fate, we get angry and we fight one another. This is not our national identity, this is Trump. Name calling, Funeral skipping, Lying about Coronavirus, Callous Trump.
We have lost more people to Covid than any country in the world. We will more than double those losses in the next three months. I cannot help but think, that if the patriots of 9.11.2001 had anything to say about it, we would have done this differently. We would have protected each other. We would have found unity amid the turmoil.
This 9/11 let us remember not only the lives lost, but the fighting spirit of America.
Let’s bring the lessons of 9/11/2001 into this moment. The president wants us to forget, he wants us to move on. We do not need to take our cues from this heartless president. We can mourn our dead, even if the administration wants to ignore them. We can begin to build monuments in memory of those lost by Coronavirus. We can hold vigils for the lives lost. We can wear masks as a sign of respect to our dead.
This September 11, 2020, let us once again be patriots who will fight for each other, love each other, and protect one another. We can choose to rewrite the messages of this administration and recognize and honor the value of our lives again.