It Would Take Another 9/11 Event to Unite Our Country

After spending the day with my family today and remembering this infamous date in our American history, I’ve come to the conclusion that we haven’t been as united as a nation since that infamous date. 21 years ago today, we lost 2977 United States citizens to two planes crashing into and bringing down the Twin Towers. It was fucking scary, I remember it like it was yesterday.

I lived in Pocatello Idaho at the time. I had quit my retail management job with Footlocker at the beginning of that year and decided to enroll in college for the first time. I enjoyed it for the most part during that first year in 2001. I was doing well in classes and worked at a small motel during the weekend days and a couple of nights a week from midnight until about 8 am.

One Tuesday morning on September 11th, I was setting up the morning routine at the front desk of the Pine Ridge Inn. I made the morning coffee for the lobby and put out the doughnuts that our little hotel restaurant had made early that morning. Minus the one for the tired counter-help who needed the sugar rush and coffee to attend his morning class before finally being able to sleep.

I had our lobby TV off, which was pretty much the norm for the earlier morning. I would only watch the lobby television after 2 am, once I locked the front doors and finished wrapping up whatever homework I had to work on during my shift. It was a dead time of evening, and I’d always tune in to Good Times reruns around 3 am. It was DY-NO-MITE!

This fateful morning though, one of my regulars who stayed by the month came wheeling into the lobby. It was around 7 am and he burst in and asked me to turn on the TV, that there was a huge emergency happening in New York. I quickly flipped it on and saw that one of the Twin Towers was on fire. It seemed a plane had crashed into it and I can recall the news people speculating that it may have been accidental or possibly intentional.

No more than five or ten minutes later, we saw a second plane crash into the second building live on the air. Or perhaps they showed it right after it happened. I remember seeing the large plane coming right at the building and the explosion. That’s when most people realized that we were under attack. This was such a helpless, fearful feeling for all of us.

We sat glued to the TV until I had to leave work. I was headed to the one class I had at Idaho State University that morning after working overnight. Upon arrival, everybody was sitting there in the lecture hall talking about it and they were scared to death.

The professor finally suggested that we all go home and watch this with our families. That was a somber drive back to my little basement apartment, where I stayed glued to the TV for days. I had no idea how this was all going to play out and again, it was such a helpless feeling.

After learning about the crash at the Pentagon and the 4th plane that crashed in Pennsylvania after the passengers tried to gain control of it from the hijackers, I felt even more afraid. How many planes were going to crash into other targets here on September 11th, 2001? 4 more? 40? I had never been so worried about the state of my country in my entire life.

We learned more in the coming days, weeks, and months after the attack. Americans were devastated, yet we seemed more together than I had ever recalled in years past. In the days following 9/11, George W. Bush’s approval rating soared from a pretty high 55% to an unheard of 90%, the highest approval rating ever.

He talked forcefully and assuredly that we would make these motherfuckers pay. We’d find them, catch them, and bring them to justice. I wasn’t at all a George W. Bush fan, but I believed in our president under whose watch this happened. We were going to get revenge for the worst terrorist attack ever on US soil.

Any closeness or banding together we all felt as a nation was short-lived. I think back to how we all felt 21 years ago today, and our country felt far more unified than where we are today. While I worried the most about foreign attacks from the Middle East, that’s now the furthest thing from my mind here in 2022.

I feel that America is going to attack itself. Brothers killing brothers, because we cannot get along. We’ve learned jack-shit from the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001. We’re too angry at each other, at politicians, at the media, and other factors to even think of treating each other as allies rather than enemies. It’s sickening and needs to stop.

But it won’t. I have a terrible feeling that the strife and discord that many or most of us feel isn’t going to come to an end any time soon. As much as I hate to say it, I feel that the only thing that could help Americans band together and become one nation again is another attack on our country by another foreign country. Or if we engaged in another war with a foreign enemy.

Then and only then would we start thinking of ourselves as Americans instead of Democrats versus Republicans. It would take something as horrific or even worse than 9/11 to force us to team up and grow closer as an actually united nation to go to war and defeat evil. I find this scenario unlikely.

Why would another nation that thinks of us as the enemy (and believe me, we have more enemies now than ever) butt into our political scene at the moment? We’re doing a fine enough job slowly ruining our country by being such assholes toward each other daily. I’m sure more than a few nations likely have a football-style pool going as to when the United States finally engages in a civil war with itself.

I’m convinced that they’re sitting back and biding their time. If I had to choose which first-world, civilized country is most likely to destroy itself next due to its own civil war, we’re at the top of that list. Anger, stubbornness, vitriol, and hate are consuming us daily. It truly needs to improve for us to be great again.

Yet it’s not improving. It’s only getting worse. I worry daily about the things that are coming next. This November vote is one of the most important in US history. We HAVE to do better. We have to start working together toward common ground solutions. We have to elect better leaders across the board. I’m not all that optimistic and I hate feeling this way.

On September 11th, 2022, I’m remembering the original September 11th. The one from 21 years ago. The scariness of four terrorist groups hijacking and crashing four planes, killing almost 3000 people in total. 10,000 children losing parents. New York City losing two skyscrapers. People losing faith in humanity. I don’t have a patriotic feeling today on 9/11.

As terrifying as that date was back then, it would take another foreign attack even more horrific and despicable to unite us all again. However, it may not be another terrorist attack from foreign enemies to surpass the tragedy of that infamous day 21 years ago.

It’s most likely going to come in the form of a civil war that brings far more casualties than on September 11th, 2001. I feel that the people who still blindly support Donald Trump and all of his wrongdoing will eventually attack anyone in this country who opposes Trumpism and the religious fanaticism that’s ruining our nation. I hope to God I’m wrong, but I doubt it.