According to Wikipedia — for whatever that’s worth — during the September 11th attacks of 2001, 2,977 people died, 19 hijackers committed murder/suicide, and more than 6,000 others were injured. Here in New York, I don’t believe those numbers factor in the myriad fatalities that were the result of working and living in the immediate area consumed by the toxic, carcinogenic fumes.
It was a horrific day, carried out with unimaginable malice. In the aftermath, the nation fleetingly seemed to come together — putting aside our differences in the face of the jarring uncertainties of the new era we collectively found ourselves in. It didn’t last, of course, and shit quickly went off the rails in due course. But, for an all-too-brief moment there, there was at least a flicker of unity spurred on by the unspeakable.
Nineteen years later, 192,000 (as of today) Americans are dead as the result of the COVID-19 pandemic, a creeping plague that may lack the terrifying spectacle of 9/11, but the impact of which comes with a far greater cost. No, it’s not a grim competition, and the circumstances are entirely different, but here within the throes — notice I didn’t say in the wake of? — this new attack, there is absolutely ZERO semblance of any sense of unity among the American people of the variety inspired by September 11th.
And I don’t know that we’ll ever get it back.
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