9/11

I suppose it's narcissistic to play "I remember where I was when..." but so be it. I was in class in my first year of grad school. A girl came in crying saying the WTC had been bombed. "That's too bad. Sucks." Then we came out of class and saw a crowd gathered around a television. We saw the flames shooting out of the towers, reports of jumpers. I was saddened, but mostly I was angry. "Bastards!" I then thought and kind of stormed away from the scene. I went home and flipped on the tv to see the towers crumbling. So I called mom. We both were speechless and in tears. In the back of my mind, I thought our way of life might be over. And I don't mean just a comfortable existence- being the pessimist that I am, I thought it was the beginning of our Nation's end. The Visigoths at the gates. 7 years later with no domestic attacks in the meantime would have been unthinkable at the time. We also waged the most objectively successful war in the history of mankind next to Joshua's seige of Jericho (even then, I'm not sure at the casualty rate). Somehow these things have been transformed by the Left into American self-flagellation. And to use the events of 9/11 as an eternal lesson, a testament to the fragility of our nation state and thus the torch of our ideals, is to politicizie it, in their view. And now that the terrorist threat has been greatly reduced, perhaps even longterm as the Middle Eastern world decides collectively that Jihadist ideology is just not good business, I wonder if the Left is the real longterm existential threat. We've shown we can face down our enemies. But what if the Left's notion that we are the real threat takes hold? We've almost elected a Democratic nominee whose platform consisted of "I am a good orator and will withdraw troops faster and thus lose the Iraq war sooner than any of my runningmates." Really, he won the nomination on that! 7 years after 9/11 half of our nation was ready to concede defeat. It's almost more surreal than the first September 11th. I hope mom isn't around to call when the towers of our ideals have been burned to the ground by a Leftist ideology that has hijacked a formerly respectable political party.