September 11, 2025
It’s been 24 years since the day we lost our innocence. Even as the second plane was crashing into the World Trade Center many of us still found it unbelievable that the first one hit. That doesn’t happen except in the movies! Impossible! Our incredulity was completely rational: nothing like this ever happened. Sure, there was an attempt to blow up the same buildings in 1993, but it failed and became a punchline: the perps got caught when they showed up to get their truck rental deposit back.
Man, how things have changed! If, God forbid, anything like 9/11 happened today we’d still be horrified. But we wouldn’t be at a loss for even knowing how to feel like we were that September morning in 2001. Now, a quarter Century on, we’d know. Maybe we learned how to feel about an incomprehensible tragedy on that day. Or maybe we learned how when COVID-19 hit this City so hard in 2020 that morgues were above capacity and there was talk of digging a mass grave in Central Park.
So much shit has happened since 9/11 that ‘shit happens’ could be our official motto. The Iraq War that was sold as easy and necessary because of deadly WMDs turned out to be neither easy or necessary. No WMDs were ever found. But photos of Iraqis being tortured by sadists wearing the uniform of our country did turn up. Shit happens.
The racist tendencies that White America preferred to keep discreetly out of sight were thrust into the spotlight when a slumlord slash conman unfurled an ugly American flag. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. […] They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” Rather than reject him for being abhorrent the bottom dwellers rose to the surface and showed their strength in numbers by electing him President.
When that same man lost re-election 4 years later by millions of votes, he refused to do the right thing. What followed was another day like 9/11. A mob of lunatics was storming the Capitol while Congress was certifying the outcome. Wtf was the first reaction many Americans had to the horrifying images on TV that afternoon. We kept waiting for order to be restored, for the leader of the insurrection to direct his goons to stand down. But instead, the assault dragged on all afternoon. The bigmouth who’d just had his term limited by American voters sat on his tiny hands and did nothing to stop the mayhem. Shit happens.
Just an hour ago news came across that Charlie Kirk, a young political activist, was shot and killed while addressing a rally on a college campus in Utah. It’s the latest political shooting this year, but neither the first or probably the last. We know how to feel: thoughts and prayers, calls for fewer or more guns, some political grandstanding and we move on. Shit happens. There were 2 wild shootings in Midtown in the last 10 months – an insurance executive was brazenly gunned down on the street at dawn, and a guy carrying what looked like an assault rifle waltzed into an office building on Park where he killed 4 people just like that. Oh well, shit happens.
So tomorrow morning, while we reminisce and shed bitter tears for those we lost that day 24 years ago, let’s remember something else: it hasn’t always been this crazy. But for half the people in this town, everybody under 30, that’s not the truth. For them, it has always been this crazy.
Sad.
