This Just In — Twenty-five years ago tomorrow at about 9:30 in the morning, I was answering an email I had received from my uncle. He lived in Phoenix and as a morning person, I knew he was up.
I disregarded the subject of his email (something about his website, whose hosting I provided) and sent back a terse message that we talked about for years to come.
”Turn on your television,” I told him.
He did so and we watched, along with the world, as the scenes in New York and Washington DC unfolded. We learned later that day about a plane that may have impacted my family in Chicago having crashed in Pennsylvania.
I was thinking about this and the rarity of our collective trauma being played out on national television … a phenomenon existing in my lifetime and not really before.
Watching the towers be struck by commercial jets was something so surreal that most of us felt as though we were watching a movie. A scary movie.
One of my first thoughts after knowing my own family was accounted for was that since the country was obviously under attack, the trauma would be even more unspeakable if the target was the capitol building or the White House. We’d all seen Independence Day (the movie) at that point. We didn’t have to imagine that that would look Iike.
Imagination. That’s what the Bush administration lacked in preventing such an attack. This was the finding of the nonpartisan 9/11 Commission in its debrief of the cause of America’s vulnerability and the corrections needed to prevent a repeat.
It’s rare in our culture that we have events that transcend politics and sear into our collective mind, as President Roosevelt described it, “a date which will live in infamy.”
December 7th was such a date, as was November 22nd, September 11th and January 6th.
All of these dates represent attacks on all of us. All of them. Whether through bombardment and mass murder, assasination of our leader or the lethal attempted coup, these were attacks on every American and our way of life.
We are still in the wake of January 6th. Preventing its recurrence is a matter of domestic political will. It’s vital that we remain active and attentive politically. It’s our essential protection against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
And yes, we have domestic enemies. Facing that fact is our only way out. To choose just one example, among MANY, yesterday the President of the United States offered to send $5,000 to every American adult if the GOP retains control of Congress in the upcoming midterm election.
While he calls this a “dividend” and compares it to a company’s profit sharing, Trump is offering to buy votes and this is spectacularly illegal. We’ve become accustomed to the president doing illegal things, but we need to slap ourselves out of that and we need to do that without delay.
The path forward runs right through the voting booth. Check your registration. Be ready. Get out to vote as soon as possible, holding hope in our hearts. “Hope,” said the late Gloria Steinem, “is a form of planning.”
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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