The Daily Escape:
This mass includes parts of five floors of the North Tower of NYCâs World Trade Center that compacted on 9/11/2001 during the buildingâs collapse. iPhone photo by Wrongo taken at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, September 2016.
The above is among Wrongoâs favorite pieces at the 9/11 Memorial Museum. It is a charred and pitted lump of fused concrete, melted steel, carbonized furniture and other, less recognizable elements. It weighs between 12 and 15 tons and is four feet high. If you ever thought that humans who were in the Twin Towers when they collapsed might have survived, consider this pancake.
The 9/11 Memorialâs email today asked this question:
âDid you know that over 100 million Americans have been born since September 11, 2001?â
Although Wrongo has a grandson who was born later that week and whoâs now turning 22, Wrongo had no idea that roughly 30% of Americans have no memory of this event that profoundly shaped America in the past 22 years.
What do those of us who do remember 9/11 want to tell those who canât remember it? Maybe that thereâs too much fear in America, and all of that fear is grinding us down. The visible scars of 9/11 are gone, but more than ever, America lives in persistent fear.
We distrust Russia. We worry about inflation. We worry that our budget deficit will bankrupt us. We fear for our kidsâ safety while theyâre in school. We worry that if we lose our job we wonât find another one. Some of us worry that weâll never find the job weâre looking for. Some of us think the rest of us are Communists. The Lefties think the Righties are fascists, and weâre still afraid that ISIS will attack us on our streets. We fear the mob outside our gates trying to get in. We fear the immigrants already inside the gates.We think most of the news we see is fake. Many of us distrust our public school teachers.
Hell, we don’t trust our government!
Succumbing to so much fear has enabled the growth of internal threats that could end our democracy:
- Weâre so angry that weâve lost much of our social cohesion
- We arenât willing to deal with income inequality
- Weâre seeing overt racism grow before our eyes
- We see clear threats to the right to vote, or whether our votes will even count if we cast them
So todayâs wakeup call is for America, particularly for those Americans born after 9/11. Donât forget the heroes and the victims of 9/11, but please, learn to stop letting fear drive you as much as it drives those of us who are old enough to remember 9/11.
Hereâs a 9/11 tune: The October 20, 2001 âConcert for New Yorkâ canât be beat. It was a highly visible and early part of NYCâs healing process.
One of the many highlights of that 4+ hour show was Billy Joelâs medley of âMiami 2017 (seen the lights go out on Broadway)â and his âNew York State of Mindâ. Joel wrote âMiami 2017â in 1975, at the height of the NYC fiscal crisis. It describes an apocalyptic fantasy of a ruined NY that got a new, emotional second life after 9/11, when he performed it during the Concert for New York:Â
Check out the audience reaction to Joelâs songs. That doesnât look like fear. Thatâs where we all need to be today in 2023. It isnât hyperbole to say that the city began its psychological recovery that night in Madison Square Garden. Please visit the 9/11 Memorial and Museum if you havenât been there yet.
