9/11

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On 9/11/2001, I went into work like normal. I worked at a Newspaper, improving their Internet presence. My office was in the Press building. When a friend came in and said, "A plane has hit the Twin Towers". And I thought, "another silly pilot flew into it while in fog or something, like happened to the Empire State Building in 1945."... but I went down to the Newsroom to see the hubbub and read/watch what was coming across the wire.

More

The TV's were on (watching for other reports), the editors were furiously at work writing outlines of stories and re-laying out the paper around the news. We were shifting from evening to morning paper -- but at the time, we were still laying out for the afternoon, so this enabled us to be the first paper in area to get out. Though of course others were working on special editions, this was a small piece of history.

Based on the size of the hole, that didn't look like a Cessna had done it. And the wire seemed to imply it was large passenger plane, on a clear morning. Well, that's more concerning. Thoughts of, "La Guardia and Newark are both close to downtown, but the approaches are wrong to fly into a building".

And while watching, the second plane flew into towers, and another 500+ people lives ended, and the newsroom went deathly silent. I muttered terrorism. The story, and the history of the world, had just changed. People looked at me, as the thought sunk in. One plane might be an accident, two was an attack. People went back to work, reading, watching, compiling, writing, and laying out. All while trying to digest what was happening. Reports of other planes started coming in, and while I wrote a tech column for the paper (not news), I was still doing what I could to proof and help.

The Editor in Chief, wrote the Headline, "Terrorist Attack" on two lines (filling the top of the page). But it didn't line up right (word sizes were wrong). He was a good guy and wouldn't take offense, so I reached over his shoulder and without a word deleted the "ist", and it became Terror Attack -- which caused everything to fit nicely. He looked over his shoulder at me, and nodded, and that was the headline they ran with.

Then while watching TV, the first tower went down.

You could have heard a pin drop. One of the editors said, "What happened, where did it go?" She couldn't digest what she had seen. I replied, catastrophic failure, it collapsed. The other is coming down as well. (I tend to get dry and analytical when on overload). Another few hundred people had just died. Someone sobbed, another quietly wailed "No". Seasoned reporters, who had written about all sorts of tragedies and horrors were having a tough time processing watching so many lives extinguished for completely unknown and unfathomable reasons. What could these people have done to deserve their fate?

As the morning wore on, there was lots more to digest. The Pentagon got hit, that information was always less clear, another plane had gone down in Pennsylvania -- actually only a few hours from us by car. We drove there later and saw the empty field and scarred earth (before it became a memorial). And later hearing the recordings and last acts of those brave folks was both tragic and inspiring. Their last message to humanity was a combination of "I love you" to those they cared about, about "Never give up", while recognition sets in there's nothing you can do to save your own life, but maybe you can save others.

All the planes in the nation (or heading to it) were told to land. Fighters were scrambled. And emotional overload continued for days, as stories of people you knew were directly affected by losing a loved one, or missing. The tales of the first responders and their widowed spouses and children without a parent trickled in. About people trying to do the right thing, and a few surviving miraculously, and others dying trying to do right by the world.

I started school there (Downtown) a year and a half later. My hotel overlooked the hole that they were digging out, where the buildings had once stood, while rebuilding the path station. And going to class, I walked by the construction site, that was to become a memorial. Life has to go on, you need to overcome and rebuild. But 9/11 was still often discussed, and hearing stories of friends and classmates, that lost people they knew. One was stuck in the train-tunnel under the river for hours, and had to walk out -- because the first plane had hit, and they stopped the train that was on it's way the PATH station (underneath the towers).

I also remember a few years before that, we had visited NYC, and done the Empire State building, plays and a few other touristy things while there. And we talked about going downtown to the Twin Towers (Windows on the World)... but at the time, we had a full plate and said, "maybe next time". Every day that I walked by the construction site while going to school, I remembered that that time would never come. "Next time", is never guaranteed.

Imaginary Unity

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Some of the unity we had in the aftermath of 9/11. E.g. how the left was dividing us before the bodies had been buried and the smoke had been cleared.

One of the more enduring lies about 9/11 is that, "in its immediate aftermath, Americans were unified"... usually followed by some variant of, "then Bush divided us by lying to the public in order to invade Iraq" as a pawn of the Neocons. This is one of the left's lies/revisionism.

The truth is that just weeks after the attack (before the smoke had cleared and ground zero had been cleaned up):

  • Thousands of protesters were marching in the streets of NYC, blaming the attacks on President Bush.
  • They had never dropped their lie that he (or the Supreme Court) had stolen the election from Al Gore, and this just magnified it. (It didn't slow until he won resounding re-election against John Kerry, but then it shifted to blaming Bush/allies for telling the truth about his Swift-boat heroism).
  • The Universities were holding β€œteach-ins,” with faculty arguing that America had this coming for its colonialism, capitalism, and racism!
  • Everyone could hear mumblings from many of their leftist friends about all the things wrong that had contributed, from this was revenge for the Crusades (seriously) or meddling in the middle east, or various other excuses to fit their narrative that America is always wrong.

There were 3 basic leftist conspiracies:

  1. Bush had known the attacks were coming (from our ally Saudi Arabia) and that he'd let it happen as an excuse to go to war (and collaborated or protected the Saud's)
  2. The Mossad was behind everything because Israel and Jews!
  3. The oil companies were behind everything because Dick Cheney and Halliburton (this materialized more over the next year, but the seeds were started early)

If you doubt any of this, just Susan Sontag, Ward Churchill, Amiri Baraka or Victor Davis Hanson's collection "An Autumn of War" from this time: that they were reflecting the zeitgeist of the divisive left, not creating it.

πŸ—’οΈ NOTE:
Much of this section was inspired and/or borrowed from a friend Mark Goldblatt

The idea that Trump is newly divisive, or that Social Media is the cause of our division is clueless revisionism. Leftists have always done this, and always will. They did this on 9/11, they did this on Reagan's election (he as Hitler, he had conspired with Iran to hold the hostages until his election, etc), and a bunch on Nixon as well. The left's undermining of America and trying to divide us gained power in the 1960's with them being puppets ("useful idiots") in the Vietnam War, and has only continued to try to tear us apart by destroying civility and perpetually rewriting our history. Social media and the Internet / Web / Blogs (citizen journalism) increases the division, but only because those who remember the actual history, have more of a voice, and can argue our outrage the revisionists.

Ongoing

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NYT Tweet on 9/11/2019 that blames the airplanes for flying into the tower, and killing all those people.

This revisioning and division never stops. The New York Times tweeted on 09/11/2019 that, "18 years have passes since airplanes took aim, and brought down the World Trade Center." It's not just a stupid gaffe, it reflects a long history of intentional revisionism by the New York Times. Under twitter blowback, they removed the tweet (without apology or a firing of the person responsible). [1]

My quip is that even if they avoided the truth of saying Islamic Radicalism, because that truth, like most truths, is considered offensive in leftist circles -- they could have just broadened the cause to collectivism/tribalism/self-righteousness, I'd be fine. But of course, any of those might encourage the editorial staff into self-reflection, and they couldn't have that.


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