Telling young people about 9/11

It's hard to fathom that it's been a literal quarter century since four hijacked planes killed nearly 3,000 people on American soil. 

The American young people comprised of Gen Z (as well as a good number of Millennials) don't remember a world without prolific metal detectors at airports, stadiums and arenas, nor can they comprehend something occurring in America which actually unites the citizenry. 

For my money, National Review writer Jim Geraghty's piece on 9/11 is worth your time. He essentially shares his perspective with a mythical kid on how they couldn't possibly understand the apocalyptic vibe surrounding that second Tuesday in September 2001. 

You kids born later, you’ve seen some troubles. The Great Recession. Covid. Way too many mass shootings. But thankfully, you’ve never experienced anything like autumn of 2001, where you turned on the television news and wondered what terrible thing had happened since you last tuned in. “Doomscrolling” hadn’t been invented yet, but we had the dread of the CNN “Breaking News” chyron and sound. If they were interrupting regular coverage, it meant something unexpected had happened, almost certainly bad news.

Still, looking back on that day 25 years ago, there was that silver lining of just about everybody putting their American flags out. That was the “united” part of that time. For all we knew, we were all the next target, together. Al-Qaeda didn’t give a damn about what color your skin was, or what nationality you were, or, when it came down to it, even what religion you were. We weren’t like them, so they wanted to kill us. It made all our differences look small.

I’m not so sure we’d react the same way today, if, God forbid, someone hit us like that again.

Unfortunately, Jim, I am sure we would not react that same way today. Alas. 

Come, Lord Jesus.

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