On the 20th Anniversary of 9/11, the Kids Aren’t Alright, but They May Still Save Us All
We were told to “never forget,” but we forgot almost everything except the fear and the inevitable rage that follows it.
“The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now — with somebody — and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.” — Hunter S. Thompson, “Fear and Loathing in America,” ESPN Page 2.
Pretty much any time I think of the terrorist attacks on New York City, Washington D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001, I think of the above quote from Hunter Thompson. At the time, he wrote a column of middling quality for ESPN’s website. Yet, as he was wont to do when all Hell broke loose, he had just the words a panicked America needed to read. Not what we wanted to, mind you. What we needed to. Each subsequent year, I hope it’s the one that finally proves him wrong. It never is. Now, with two full decades and a once-per-century pandemic between the present moment and that strange Tuesday, I almost yearn for the simplicity of the fear and sense of massive loss that followed in the immediate aftermath. We, and by “we” I do mean America, seem to have fallen so much further in the past 20…
