Putting 9/11 in Perspective

9/11 Memorial in Manhattan

Here we go again. It's 9/11 season and lest we forget, lots of people are busy making sure we don't. The reading of the names, the memorial services, the airing of the historic footage, the candlelight vigils, the platitudinous speeches, the special photo essays in newspapers and magazines, the brief moments of silence: we've been there, done that. But this is the 20th Anniversary so who knows, there might be more. Confetti? Noisemakers? A giant cake perhaps?

No, I am not making light of the terrible thing that happened on that day in 2001. I was living in Washington, D.C. at the time, had just dropped my 14-year-old son off at school and was happily expecting the arrival of a friend from California when I got the news and everything changed. Life went dark. The friend couldn't come, my son was stuck at school, and the beautiful towers I loved so dearly in the city of my birth fell. The country sobbed in unison. I made a pilgrimage to the hole in the ground a few weeks later and cried some more.

But -- we don't read the names of all the young soldiers we lost in Vietnam. We don't still honor those killed in all the other wars, military plane crashes and worst of all, from friendly fire. Why do we still do this? Why are those people who went to work or boarded an airplane and died that day (with the obvious exception of the fearless firefighters who gave their lives in service to others) considered heroes?

Let's move on. We now have bigger fish to fry, like Joe Biden thinking he is The King of America. "I have the power," he said repeatedly in a speech to the nation yesterday regarding his Covid vaccine mandates. What he didn't say but was probably thinking was, "If only I could remember where I put it."