Back when Rudy Giuliani was a hero.
We’re old enough to remember November 22, 1963 and it still brings a lump to our throat. Since that day in Dallas, only 9/11/01 ranks with that. Maybe Princess Diana’s death and the 01/07/21 storming of the Capitol. Charlie Kirk?
At my desk in WI Revenue Building, I wrote this 25 years ago: “We are all Israelis now.” Like the besieged Jews, for perhaps the first time Americans knew what it was like to live among enemies. The attack on Pearl Harbor, after all, had occurred in the middle of the Pacific Ocean against our armed military — not against civilians.
What follows is a sampling of some of the remembrances that made an impact today.
‘I just feel sick to my stomach’
Live with Regis and Cathy Lee. You can hear the audience gasp.
‘We’re going to take back the airplane’
From The Free Press:
No doubt [the Flight 93 terrorists] believed that by keeping the passengers at the rear of the aircraft, they would have the freedom and the secrecy they needed to steer the plane toward its intended target in Washington, D.C. But they fundamentally misunderstood the United States and its citizens.
Instead of protecting the hijackers, relocating the passengers to the rear of the plane gave those onboard Flight 93 the space and opportunity to engage in one of the most extraordinary acts of civic engagement in American history. … Faced with circumstances that almost certainly meant death, they chose their course of action by voting. One of their last acts on Earth paid homage to the principles of democracy.
After deciding on the course of action, the passengers waited to implement their plan until they were flying over a rural area. ….At 9:55 a.m., an Airfone operator who was on the line with Todd Beamer, an account manager who lived in New Jersey, heard what was likely the passenger’s final exchange. She reported hearing Beamer say, “Are you guys ready? Okay! Let’s roll.”
‘Will that make sense?’
David Letterman in a very sincere remarks (you can see him trying to compose himself):
“Pardon me, but I just need to hear myself talk for a few minutes. We’ve lost 5,000 fellow New Yorkers and (sigh) you can feel it, you can see it; it’s terribly sad.”
“If you are depressed, or angry and full of grief … If you’re not sure what to do, all you had to do is watch the mayor, watch how this guy behaved, watch how this guy conducted himself; watch what this guy did; listen to what this guy did. Rudolph Giuliani is the personification of courage. [applause] …
“The firefighters and the police who are lost are going to be missed by this city for a very very long time. … My hope for myself not only in New York but everywhere is that we never take these people for granted.” [applause] …
“We’re told [the perpetrators] were zealots fueled by religious fervor. If you live to a thousand years old will that make any sense? Will that make any goddamn sense?”
Can we stand prosperity?
We remember the unity that followed, too, but 25 years later, I wonder if we can admit the unity of late September 2001 was cheap. … Standing together when a building has just fallen on your neighbors requires no virtue at all. The unity worth something is the kind that survives disagreement, that holds when nothing is burning and we still can’t stand each other’s politics. We have always struggled with that one, and 25 years later we are further from it than we were on September 10th.
We now have an algorithm in our lives and a class of people across party lines who make their living widening the gap between us because the algorithm rewards the clicks generated by angst, animosity, and contrarianism. You can find these malcontented souls driven by algorithmic profit in both parties, and inside every faction of both, and the only thing they reliably have in common is that peace between us would put them out of work.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Most heartbreaking are the recorded messages the victims in the towers and in the airplanes made to their loved ones. (“It doesn’t look good.”) We do have a common purpose in America yet this day; just looking for the means to find it.
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