Remembering Sept. 11 — and Facing Today’s Divisions
By Sasha Paulsen
Summary: Published on the 24th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, this reflection by Sasha Paulsen honors those who died, those who served and the unity that followed one of the darkest days in American history. Paulsen draws a parallel between the external assault of 2001 and what she sees as today’s internal threats to democracy. She warns of attacks on truth, science and civil society that are pulling the nation apart rather than bringing it together. Yet amid the uncertainty, she finds hope in voices urging Americans to stay engaged and continue the long fight to uphold the country’s founding ideals.
Remembering Sept. 11 — and Facing Today’s Divisions
By Sasha Paulsen
NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — Today people are pausing to remember Sept. 11, 2001, the day the unthinkable happened and the United States was attacked in a planned assault by al-Qaida that killed thousands of Americans and changed our country.
My mother had a habit of calling me to report the news that I had missed – generally crackpot stories she heard on late-night radio talk shows. A staunch Democrat, it generally involved something dreadful that Republicans had done and that I had omitted mentioning in my newspaper stories about food, wine and the arts.
But on Sept. 11 she was calling to say that terrorists had hijacked planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York City. “Right,” I said. “Thanks for letting me know.” Then I hung up and turned on the television and realized that, for once, she’d got the story right.
My children were still young. Two years earlier, we had visited New York City, and a friend had taken us to the top of the Twin Towers. We rode the elevator, and the operator joked with my son that he was a jailbird in the making – Sam had wanted to press all the buttons and got quite a few. On Sept. 11, as we watched the towers fall, Ariel and Sam remembered the woman in the elevator. “I hope she wasn’t working,” Sam said.
Today our country is under attack again, but it’s not global terrorists. It’s coming from within this country, from the government that is the foundation of our republic. It’s not swift, coordinated strikes on one deadly morning. It’s every day, often many times a day, day after day, attacks on universities, science, medical knowledge, a free press, U.S. cities, judges, public servants, comedians, entertainers, immigrants, people of color, people of different sexual orientations, people expressing different opinions. Its attacks on knowledge, history and the arts, on civility, humanity and the constitutional foundation of this country. It is attacks on the truth.
I read the headlines each day with the same stupefied incredulity with which we watched the two airplanes crash into the Twin Towers, saw the wreckage of the attack on the Pentagon and that of the United Flight 93, when the passengers and the crew fought back. It all begs the same question: How could this be happening?
But while the attacks of al-Qaida brought the citizens of the United States together in 2001, the events in 2025 are, by design, driving Americans farther apart, fostering fear and hatred, creating enemies and insuperable barriers.
How did this happen? Why? If our republic survives — and I believe it will — I am sure intellectuals (if they survive) will spend years in universities (if they survive) analyzing the forces that overtook the United States of America in 2025 and very nearly destroyed it.
This is not to insist that our country is not in need of improvement. I write this as one who spent the morning trying (without success) to talk to someone at the IRS to ask why they had doubled my tax bill with no explanation. Meanwhile I was on hold, thinking of those who pay no taxes.
There must be a way to survive these days. I know people who have decided not to read the news and others who can’t stop, people who believe what is happening will never touch them and others who feel guilty if they are not in a perpetual state of despair.
Somewhere in between these stances lies hope. And oddly enough for a lifelong Democrat, I found a vestige of it in an essay written by a former Republican congressman, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. Its title is, “We Are Not the Generation That Lets This Die.”
He writes about the temptation to check out, “but I won’t, and I hope you won’t, either.”
“Because we are part of a much longer story. A story that stretches back 250 years. And in every chapter, there has been a moment when Americans were asked to stand up and defend the ideals of this country, even when those ideals felt far away or under attack. This is our moment.”
What keeps him going, he writes, “is the same thing that pulled Americans forward through every crisis: the conviction that this country is still worth the fight.”
Also, the idea that one day his son will ask him, “What did you do?”
“So take breaks when you need them,” he writes. “Step back when it gets heavy. But don’t disappear. Don’t quit. Stay in the fight. Vote. Speak up. Push back against extremism on the left and the right. Don’t let cynicism do the work of those trying to dismantle this republic.
“We are not the generation that lets this die. We are not the ones who hand over our future because it got uncomfortable. Not on my watch. Not for my son. Not for yours.”
Twenty-four years ago Americans – and much of the world – came together to show a unified front in the face of evil. In our small town of Napa, people created a memorial to the pain suffered by strangers on the other side of the country, as did others all across this land. This year, again, people gather at the memorials. There is extraordinary power when people come together — and extraordinary hope.
“Because the flame still burns,” Kiinziger writes. “And I refuse to be the one who lets it go out.”
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Sasha Paulsen is a Napa Valley-based novelist and journalist.
Great article, Sasha
Great essay, Sasha!