9/10 was the last day of the American empire
However safe or protected you felt on Sept. 10, 2001, it was all an illusion.
Monday, Sept. 10, 2001.
I’m 17 at the time, a senior in high school.
As I passed a gas station on West 7 Mile in Detroit, headed home, the $1-a-gallon gas was tempting, but not enough to stop.
I’d fill up tomorrow, or maybe the next day.
Life was OK for me, but things looked great for America.
All our enemies were smoked, as Tony Soprano would say. It had been a decade since the Soviet Union existed, and would be another decade until China would show itself formidable.
“The United States hardly ever goes to war anymore!” Tony Soprano told wife Carmela when son AJ needed a change of scenery — perhaps military school. Carmela balked, and she was right to.
In Tony’s eyes, and ours, the America of the early 2000s was Too Big to Fuck With. This was the New American Century, and it was just getting started.
9/10 was the last day of the American empire. Even moreso than we’d understand a day later.
9/10 wasn’t just our last day with the illusion that America’s two oceans shielded it from the world’s dangers.
That illusion had survived both Pearl Harbor and the 1990s World Trade Center bombing, but as of 8:46 a.m. Tuesday it was dead forever. You’ve never woken up one day since and felt safe, not the way you did on 9/10.
No, 9/11 was also the beginning of the end of any good will and good faith Americans had in their government.
With all the decades of propaganda we’d imbibed about the seemingly all-knowing FBI and CIA, neither had enough intelligence to stop this plot. How could that be? Now we needed a Department of Homeland Security. Why?
A group of civilians on Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, who said “Let’s Roll” before charging into certain death, and prevented the marring of another American landmark, the Capitol itself, had shown more foresight and courage than our leaders. What was wrong with this picture?
The country that was Too Big to Fuck With was brought to its knees not by a rival now assured of its own destruction, but by guerrilla fighters, in the Taliban and Al Qaeda, who win by not fighting.
Luckily for the Taliban, their adversary was American generals who win by never winning. A 20-year stalemate worked in the interests of both.
Four years after America started fighting Nazis in Germany, there were no Nazis in Germany. 20 years after America starting fighting the Taliban, the Taliban is stronger. What’s wrong with this picture?
America has been run by Democrats and Republicans in the 20 years since. The 21st century is an indictment of the entire ruling class, not one party or a few presidents. They are literally incapable. All of them.
On 9/10, our toughest question was whether to take the $1-a-gallon gas, or wait.
Twenty years later the question isn’t as easy and the path forward isn’t as clear.
If America’s entire ruling class is rotten, now what? Do they not reflect the values of the public that sends them to power? Will a red or blue “wave” election really fix this?
Do you really think we can afford another two decades like we’ve just had?