9/11

 It's important for me to write about what happened on 9/11 every year it comes up.  I can only explain it being because it was such a traumatic, life-altering event for all Americans that changed the way we live our lives after it occurred.

It was 7:00 am.  My best friend called me and said, "are you watching this?!!".  No, what's going on? Turn on the TV. Which channel? ANY CHANNEL!!

He was right.  I turned on the TV and it was CNN with a reporter on top of their own building with the Twin Towers behind him, one of which had been crashed into by a commercial jetliner.  Well what's going on here? He told me a jet liner had crashed into one of the Twin towers. We were listening to their reporting and discussing at the same time what we thought might be happening.

We didn't know what was happening. It seemed odd that a commercial jetliner with skilled pilots would somehow accidentally find it's way into the side of an extremely tall building.  You would see that coming from a long ways off and  you would likely rather crashing into the water nearby than just go crashing into the side of a building like that.  

The reporters were commenting the same.  How does this happen?  It was only a few minutes later, on live TV, that I saw the second jet come crashing into the second tower behind the man doing the reporting.  The man was in shock. They flatly stated that there is no guessing about it now, this is a terrorist attack, America is under attack!  

I remember being glued to the radio all day long while working, I think I was doing the telephone book delivery thing at the time.  The job afforded me the ability to simply leave the radio on all day. We heard about the other 2 crashes and "if" they were associated with these first two and then the decree that ALL aircraft flying over US airspace were to be immediately grounded. The only aircraft you saw flying for the next several months were military aircraft.  

I spent as much time on the phone with my friend as I had time for, but work duties called and I had to get going.  We all wanted to know what was going to happen because of this event and who was responsible for it?  Al Qaeda came up immediately with expert analysis.  Bush went to the site of what was left of the buildings that were now downed and made a very emotional declaration that "I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear ALL of us soon!".  

It was, of course, many years later that justice was served to Osama Bin Laden. 

The Department of Homeland Security was born out of this catastrophic event and our lives were forever changed.  An airplane crash in New York after this event happened caused wide spread panic at first, people believing we were under attack again.  It was a horrible crash that took many lives but it wasn't an attack. Airlines had to be bailed out by the federal government, the economy and stock market took a temporary nose dive but it all came back eventually.  

These were different times in America.  There may have been political division, but nothing like what we're seeing today.  They may have been moral challenges, but nothing compared to the culture rot and moral degrade we are now experiencing as social media has basically become a venue for wokeness, DEI, cancel culture, hate, anger and rage of people being spoken against one another. We are an extremely divided nation now and I have no idea - beyond God - what could possibly bring us back to what we once were.

I do believe America will have a reckoning sooner or later with the decisions that have been made concerning life and liberty.  But, as we look back upon the events of 9/11, there is still a glimmer of hope that perhaps, somehow, we can all find a way to come back together and not look at one another as our enemies.