9/11 Remembered

 

Everything Changed

I was in Baltimore the day of the attack. It was feared Baltimore was going to be a target. There were military helicopter warships, patrolling the skies above the harbor.

We were there for a public radio conference. I went to my room to call the station and told them to stay with coverage until further notice and cancel all underwriting credits.

While I was talking with my news director I saw people on TV jump and the collapsing building. I heard his reaction. I was dumbstruck. I spent another hour on the phone calling family to tell them I was okay and ask how they were doing.

I remember wanting to be back with my family. I was safe, but unsure how we would get back. All flights were canceled. There were no cars to rent. No bus seats available. Fortunately, my boss and I were on a packed Amtrak train the next day. 

As we passed the destruction in New York, the train went silent. The full impact of the destruction and death stunned all of us. 

Earlier on that day we were discussing paradigm shifts. The Great Depression and World Wars. They came with every generation. Our conversation was interrupted by the announcement of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. Nothing has been the same since. The events of that day define paradigm shift.

2001 - Terrorist attacks kills a total of 2,751 victims confirmed to have died in the initial attacks.

2008 - Economic collapse - The Great Recession

2016 - Trump Election - Democracy under attack

2019 - Worldwide Pandemic - Failure of leadership

2020 Electoral process attacked through lies and disinformation (The Big Lie)

Jan 6 2021 - Domestic terrorists attack the capitol in order to overthrow the election.

An event that should have brought us together...instead, we're a deeply divided country.

Your COVID politics can be lethal

So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. - Ephesians 4:25

 It Makes No Sense

We have a raging pandemic. Now is the time to put political differences aside for the health and well-being of everyone. But not if you've sipped the Kool-Aid of Trump's Republican Party. Loyalty to the Trump line is of paramount importance to these people. And...The needs of the individual trump all needs, even if such assertions are against their best interests. 

I didn't have to go back too far to find precedent for the desire to die of COVID for a political cause.

One of the key takeaways from the 2016 election was the frustration of a widening group of lower middle income white Americans. Trump's message was particularly appealing to this group. There is a growing unease as the middle class is excluded as more wealth is concentrated in the upper caste. The stress is having a negative effect. Life span expectancy has dropped two years for white males.

In the book Caste, written by Isabel Wilkerson, asserts the widening gap is causing an increasing group of disaffected Americans. 

From the book: 

"Exclusion cost lives, up and down the hierarchy. The physician Jonathan M. Metzel, who has conducted research into the health of disaffected whites in middle America, has measured the life and death consequences of state decisions to withhold benefits seen as helping undeserving minority groups. In the state of Tennessee he found restrictive health policies may haver cost the lives of almost 4,600 African-Americans between 2011 and 2015, but also cost the lives of as many as 12,000 white Tennesseans, more than double the loss sustained by black residents."

"In his book, Dying of Whiteness, Metzel told of the case of a forty-one-year-old white taxi driver who was suffering from an inflamed liver. His life obviously threatened. Because the Tennessee legislature had neither taken up the Affordable Care Act nor expanded Medicaid coverage, the man was unable to get the expensive, lifesaving treatment that would have been available to him had he lived across the border in Kentucky. As he approached death, he stood by the conviction that he did not want the government involved."

"No way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens, he told Metzel." Ain't no way I would ever support Obamacare or sign up for it. I would rather die."

"And sadly, so he would." 

We see the same sad consequences playing out in red states today. Refusal to wear mask, refusal to keep social distancing, and refusal to get the vaccine. The Delta Variant is making the unvaccinated very ill. Yet, so many are sticking by their decision to refuse being vaccinated. A decision reinforced by misinformation fired by social media posts and conservative 'news' outlets. The argument might be something like, "If they make us take the vaccine, they'll be coming for our guns next!" 

Even Mitch McConnell is alarmed. He urging his constituencies to get the vaccine or risk shutting everything down again. Missing from this quote is mention of needless suffering , and needless death. I don't think they're listening.

The nation as it is currently constituted has never dealt with a yesterday or tomorrow where we were radically honest, generous, and tender with each other. - Kiese Laymon, Heavy (2018)

The Value of Shared Experience

 

                      Damir Spanic

A Shared Culture

After the events at the Capitol, the three paragraphs below gave me hope. The hope is in the shared cultural experience.

It can be argued that the riot in Washington is a shared experience, but not the kind that builds community, or builds bridges between people. The attempt there was fueled by recklessness, lies and an attempt to overturn a free and fair election.

The shared experience of The National Pastime was free of fiery rhetoric. It was more about a common bond, much like Rock n Roll was to the Boomers and the acts of generosity during the Great Depression. The simpler act described below is hope in the face of increasing isolation brought on by Social Media, partisan politics, and made worse by the pandemic.

The comfort of rituals.

Frank Miller, a retired civil engineer, needed to play catch. A former baseball player in high school and college, he wandered his house in Dallas practicing the grips for a slider, curve and cutter after reading a book about pitching. So his wife, Alice, put out a call on social media: Does anybody want to play catch with my 74-year-old husband?

The response showed them they’d tapped into something bigger than baseball. Players and strangers of all ages and talents turned out at a neighborhood park, ready to let the turbulence of recent weeks fade into the background and toss the ball around.

“Isn’t baseball beautiful?” Mr. Miller said at the end of the session. “It’s a piece of art, really.”

By Remy Tumin and Jeremiah M. Bogert, Jr. NY Times The Morning Anybody want to play catch? I know where my glove is.

When It's Over

What happens when this is all over? Will we be changed? Will we heed the lessons of a global pandemic, realize we are all connected to each other, fight for systems that keep our own selves safe by protecting the most vulnerable among us? Will we fight for a world where we could actually touch the miracle of a savior who died for the world and then rose again? Or will we only ever be able to glimpse it, but not hold on?

- Abby Norman

We Are In This Together

The pandemic has succeeded because it does not recognize all the things we have created to differentiate ourselves. To continue to believe that we are at “war” with somebody or something does little to address that we are now more than ever bound to one another and share responsibilities and obligations to one another.

- Aaron Sanchez

Think about this. The president wants us to perceive him as a wartime president. That's so he can see himself as the winner against an evil foe. He wants to be the one who led us out of the pandemic. Actually, it will be all of us working together that will take us out of this crisis. Everybody is at risk. The answer will come from an inclusive community that works together. No barriers. No us versus them. No singular hero saving us all.