Wasted unity

The thing I noticed more than anything else in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks was the unity.

For as long as I’d been alive, my country had been full of factions arguing with each other. After 9-11, there was a shared sense of hurt and anger. We had felt invulnerable; we weren’t. But we knew who we were. Our differences seemed trivial in the face of what we now recognized that we had in common.

Now, 25 years later, we’ve squandered that sense of unity. The nation now is more divided than it has ever been.

There was a sense after 9-11 that we knew who hated us and that we knew we hated them. Hate had not been a huge part of the national discourse in the 1980s and 1990s. But now it was.

In 2026, hate is an established part of the national discourse, but now we hate each other. We hate other Americans. We know who the enemy is, just as we thought we did in 9-11, but now that enemy is other people who think differently from us. Our politicians have normalized the idea that the other side is evil, and our social media has inflamed us to believe we — the people who think the same way we do — are justified and right.

The rhetoric of both the left and the right is focused on the awful things that will happen if the other side retains — or regains — power. We no longer think about what we can accomplish, we think about what we can prevent and who we can punish.

That moment of unity in September of 2001 was purchased with the death of thousands and the coming of two long and painful wars. It was expensive. And we wasted it.