|
It is again, September.
When summer departs, autumn approaches, and the skies above New York, clear of smoke, heat, and haze, are so often so perfectly blue.
And I am reminded of the first four lines of "Try to Remember," which has always been bittersweet, even poignant.
But never more so than after that obscenely beautiful Tuesday morning 20 years ago.
"Try to remember
the kind of September
when life was slow
and oh so mellow..." —Jim V., New York
|
After the 9/11 attacks occurred 20 years ago, the last thing on Americans' minds was our partisan differences. That's not to suggest that we didn't have very real ideological disagreements—we did, of course—but at that moment in time, they instinctively faded to the background as we united first and foremost as Americans against a common threat. Fast-forward two decades, and we're in a very different place. Hyperpartisanship combined with technologies that allow hate, disinformation, and conspiracies to spread far and wide in an instant have allowed dangerous strains of political extremism to fester here at home. It seems impossible now to unite against a common threat, as the bonds of trust among our fellow Americans have been broken. But our challenges—a still-raging pandemic, ever-costlier natural disasters, economic strife, racial unrest, and foreign threats, to name a few—remain no less daunting now than they were then, and they require our attention and cooperation. To competently address them, we need independent, unifying servant-leaders who tell the truth, stay above the partisan fray, and offer common-sense solutions that not only help the American people, but also strengthen faith and confidence in our democracy. Otherwise, dysfunction will continue to fuel the homegrown extremism that currently threatens our nation. Amid our shock and overwhelming grief on 9/11, we found a way to move forward as one. We can do it again. Now, as then, we must. God bless America. —Miles Taylor
