After the 9/11 attacks, it didn't feel like America.

[Crowman2009]

by Kristin Schrader, Detroit Free Press

I'm scrolling through my Facebook feed and seeing post after post: “I miss 9/12." I think I get what they're saying, that they miss that feeling of unity, the way Americans rallied together after the 9/11 attacks.

But I remember feeling very different on 9/12. And I hope never to feel that way again.

There were no airplanes in the sky. Not one. It was the spookiest thing in the world. And we really didn’t know what was happening yet. We didn’t know if that was a first wave, and that maybe the next attack would be in a hospital, or whatever. Nothing like this had ever happened in America.

The television was nothing but news, and it was all heartbreaking: Videos of people jumping to their deaths. People crying into cameras holding photos of their family members.

We still thought maybe people would be pulled from the wreckage, or that survivors might have gotten to a medical facility somehow. The most painful memory I have of that time is weeks of flyers. Walls and walls of flyers, while people desperately clung to the hope that their mother or best friend defied the odds. Police and firefighters in uniforms, traders in suits, with "husband, fiancé, beloved" underneath their picture.

I remember being grief-stricken for the city that symbolizes what makes America great, up all night with immigrants and people whose families were there before it was America at all. A city that's crowded and noisy and greedy and dirty, and where a lot of our best rose to the top.

Even if you weren't in New York, you had no idea what to do. Should you go to work? Should you build a basement shelter? Was there going to be class the next day? Americans are usually all about confidence, about getting onto the next thing. It was the most un-American way I’ve ever felt.

And very soon after 9/12, it started to become important to put an American flag magnet on your car. If your business had a fleet, you got them for the trucks, and if you didn’t have one, people wondered what your problem was.

People you had known for years got looked at funny because their skin was darker, or they spoke with an accent. It would be silly to suggest they had never been regarded differently before, but now more people seemed to feel justified.

We went from being culturally American to insisting on songs, and art, and popular culture that celebrated our Americanism in a certain way, one more exclusive and delivered through a singular, more Nashville lens. That's always been part of our identity, but now that particular part was elevated above all others.

The America of dissent and of creativity and of being unique became more suspect. You had to be unequivocally proud to be American, where at least you knew you were free. When were most of us not free? We had been free to fight wars among ourselves and invent medical miracles and go to the moon. Now, we fetishized guns, and our young men and women joined the military. They had to. That’s what you do when your country is attacked.

What I remember about 9/12 is that we were terrified. That's what terrorist attacks do. They disrupt what you know and make you question everyday things that you’ve done your whole life.

I don’t long for a past that was perfect. Not all Americans have or had the same rights as others. We are guilty of assuming that if we can achieve something, so can everybody else, regardless of how they were raised or what part of the country they are in. We wish we were better than we are, but we’re pretty good. We have endless potential.

I’m intrigued by the people who think 9/12 "united" us. Did we need uniting? We were OK. We were trying. You know what seemed pretty great? 9/10. But honestly, I don’t remember a single thing about that.

Kristin Schrader lives in Superior Twp. and is the director of marketing and communications for the Coffee Quality Institute, a non-profit that works internationally to improve the quality of coffee and the lives of people who produce it.

https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/contributors/2019/09/12/9-11-attacks-i-miss-9-12/2299440001/

[roody]

1. I was not terrified and I did not feel any special unity.

I also live on the other side of the country. There was a great myth making machine in place.

[2naSalit]

2. I had that feeling almost a year before that

and only had a temporary respite from that feeling during Obama's administration. It got exponentially worse on 11/7/16 and has been at red alert ever since.

[dhol82]

3. I was in NYC. It was a jittery time.

Basically waiting for something to possibly happen. Looking over your shoulder just in case.
My mother, who went through WWII in a slave labor camp, kept plaintively asking me if war was beginning.
After a few months I actually went to my internist and asked for some happy pills.
It was not a good time.
Still remember walking past St. Vincent’s Hospital, which had initially prepped for major casualties that never came, being plastered with the pictures. So ineffably sad.

[Skittles]

4. I remember hoping they would find big pockets in the rubble with lots of survivors

it was never to be

I also remember the horrible gut feeling that Bush INC would use 9/11 as an excuse to start wars

it was to be

[PufPuf23]

5. Seven days after 9/11 the Anthax Attacks began (9/18/01)

Four weeks after 9/11 we invaded Afghanistan (10/7/01).

Seven weeks after 9/11 the U Patriot Act was signed (10/26/01).

In March 2003 we invaded Iraq after our leadership lied to us and the World (3/19/03).

But what was destabilizing to me was the mangled election of all 2000 that illegitimately installed GWB Cheney et al with little fanfare.

I don't recall we were particularly of one mind, save for it was ok to bully the anti-war peep and racism was mainstreamed then expanded.

Lies from the MSM have been rampant ever since.

[agincourt]

6. Did not see no unity except for the local paper

Our Lincoln paper did some nice articles on immigrants. Otherwise I saw no flags until the bombs started dropping, I had one out on the 11th. I remember gas lines, vicious crap on AM radio, Dirtbags Falwell and Robertson trying to blame it on gays, Ann Coulter trying to get liberals killed, I don't remember anything particularly helpful in the following weeks, in the end it just seemed a boost for the awful GOP. That's how I remember it, an ugly never should have happened event that just gave the dirtbag Republican party more power, except for the courage of New Yorkers(Ghouliani and DJT excluded) and the bringers down of the fourth plane, there was nothing that really gave me hope. Ass kissing of that rotten Bush, finger pointing about patriotism, nothing to make anyone feel great about. Seemed like I was living in a failed state with a kleptocracy that cannot and/or will not prevent disasters, just has a ruling junta to exploit them. Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" resonated with me though that was more about disaster capitalism. Yellow Ribbon magnets up the wazoo, sheep trying to show their patriotism, more religious fanaticism. I waited for the GOP to get a reckoning, looked like we were going there in 2006 and 2008, but just like the Taliban in Afghanistan, they are a big rotten thing that no one will throw out.