Twenty years ago, the nation was in a much different place. It had just been savagely attacked by nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists, who after highjacking four airplanes, flew two of them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon, murdering almost 3,000 Americans. Only an act of courage by a group of passengers on the fourth plane prevented further substantial loss of life.
In the days and weeks that followed 9/11, the people of this country came together as one. Not since World War II had the country been this united. Republicans and Democrats stood on the steps of the Capitol on the evening of the 11th and sang "God Bless America" together. George Bush threw out the first pitch in game three of the World Series at Yankee Stadium - a strike down the middle of the plate! Political pundits on Cable News channels gave their rhetoric the rest it so badly needed.
We knew who the bad guys were and we were determined not to let them win. Evil may have taken some of our loved ones away from us, but it would not take away from us that which made us truly unique: our values, our principles and our way of life. Imperfect though we may have been, we were still the envy of the free world; a shining city upon a hill, to quote Ronald Reagan. Battered but not defeated; bruised but still standing; grieving but forever resolute.
A lot has changed since then. Now the terrorists are domestic and their chief enabler is the Republican Party. The assault upon the Capitol on January 6 was the worst attack ever carried out since the British sacked the building in 1814. Not only isn't the country united, it has virtually fractured in two. Roughly 40 percent of the population believes the current administration is illegitimate and that the 2020 election was rigged. More than 140 members of Congress voted to overturn the results of that election; some even spoke at a rally which took place shortly before the assault. The chief protagonist in this malevolent movement is the former president, whose hostile takeover of this party is now complete. From his residences in Florida and New Jersey, he continues to stir the pot and whip his base up into a frenzy.
GOP legislatures, taking their cue from him, have passed, or are poised to pass, voter suppression laws that will make it easier for them to retain their grip on power or, should an election not go their way, toss out the results. An "audit" that is currently being conducted in Arizona by the most bizarre conspiracy-minded individuals ever assembled, is almost certain to be replicated in other states. The intent could not be clearer: to undermine the credibility of our elections and foment still more unrest among a segment of the population that is a tinderbox ready to ignite. On September 18, approximately one thousand of these people plan on showing up in Washington to protest the arrest and incarceration of the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol.
All across America, friendships have ended bitterly; family bonds have been strained beyond repair; churches, which once preached the good news of the Gospel, have now become cauldrons of hate; and businesses, which have been the life-blood of the largest economy the world has ever known, are refusing to serve people who voted for the "wrong" candidate. Osama bin Laden had nothing on Trump.
And while all this is going on, the worst global pandemic in over a century continues to wreak havoc on our healthcare system and our economy. Eight months after several vaccines were approved by the FDA for emergency use authorization, only 53 percent of the American public has taken advantage of them. Astonishingly, almost half the population is refusing to get vaccinated. The holdouts, like the election deniers, cling to the most baseless conspiracy theories imaginable; and no matter what evidence is presented to them, they continue to resist.
The consequences of this reckless behavior cannot be overstated. Unless the nation reaches herd immunity - believed to be roughly 80 percent - we will never be able to return to business as usual. While positivity rates in predominantly Blue states are considerably lower than they are in Red states, most experts believe that with the Delta variant now the dominant strain of the virus, we are in for a rough fall and winter. ICU beds in some parts of the country are already in short supply. Republican governors who refuse to impose vaccine and in-door mask mandates are literally playing with fire. With schools back in session, many children, whose only crime is that their parents are idiots, will die needlessly.
President Biden's executive order requiring all federal workers to be fully vaccinated and all private companies with a hundred employees or more to either have their employees fully vaccinated or tested once a week will help, but frankly this should've been done a month ago. It also remains to be seen if the order will survive what is certain to be a litany of legal challenges. At the very least it signals that Biden, like the majority of us, is fed up with being held hostage by this group.
As if all that weren't bad enough, a ticking time bomb now threatens our very existence as a species on this planet. As we speak, parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York are still recovering from the remnants of Hurricane Ida. The storm devastated southeast Louisiana and then, once inland, tracked northeast where it joined with a low pressure system to dump record amounts of rain over a wide area of land over short period of time. Whole neighborhoods were flooded out, tornadoes ravaged communities, and more than 50 people died, many drowning in their own homes.
Out west, forest fires continue to threaten thousands of acres of land, including the resort town of Lake Tahoe. A prolonged drought is responsible for the Colorado River shrinking by 20 percent. The river is the primary source of water for more than 40 million inhabitants of Colorado, Arizona and southern California. If it were to dry up, the ramifications for the Southwest United States would be profound.
Over the last decade, extreme weather has cost the nation tens of billions of dollars in structural damage and put a severe strain on the farming industry. The infrastructure to deal with these events simply isn't there, as witnessed by the damage caused by rising flood waters in New York City, North Jersey and suburban Philly. If this is now the new normal, as some meteorologists believe it is, we are fucked.
Global warming is not some futuristic threat that our grandchildren will have to contend with; it is happening right now under our very noses. Continuing to ignore it, as we have, is no longer an option. If dramatic steps are not taken, and soon, water may one day become so scarce that it will be more expensive than oil.
I am deeply concerned about what I'm seeing here. Our politics are all but crippled. The polarization that has infected our institutions has metastasized into the general population. Politicians are more concerned about primary challenges from their base than they are about solving problems. Hence, they have a built-in incentive to do nothing. This was not what the Founders envisioned 240 years ago when they wrote the Constitution, yet it has become standard operating procedure over the last twenty years.
The courage and political resolve that the nation showed after the 9/11 attacks now seem like a distant memory. In its place, tribalism has taken over. We have turned patriotism into a punch line and allowed a charlatan to tear us apart. Instead of reaching for our better angels, like Lincoln called us to do, we have succumb to our worst demons. The enemy, to paraphrase Oliver Hazard Perry, is us.
If we are fortunate, we may yet dodge the bullet that is headed our way. I fear, though, we may well wind up getting what we sadly deserve.
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