19 Years Later, Our View through a Mask

I am sitting on a bench at Pier C in Hoboken, N.J., gazing at the Freedom Tower across the Hudson River, reflecting a bit during that fraught time when the planes hit the World Trade Center 19 years ago.

There, masked, I think of an impeached President running amok. We’re in grave danger.

We have not honored the dead.

What we’ve done is give in to our worst impulses, to let ourselves be divided by a madman. I don’t use that term easily. Look it up. It fits.

Last night I watched a clip of the President of the United States in Michigan, swaying his body to and fro, getting that smug look he gets when he’s about to unleash lies that he knows his audience will relish and lap up like starving cats who’ve just been given a bowl of fresh milk.

The exhilaration he gets from power isn’t so much from the office itself, but the knowledge that he has commanded the rapt attention of people who are some combination of these: lost, excluded, misguided religious zealots, blatantly hateful of people of color, just fine with people of color unless you claim systemic racism exists, ignorant, uneducated, sexist, spellbound.

On this 19th anniversary of 9/11, we are watching our fellow citizens ignore what they clearly know is wrong. Excuse things away they have to know…