On 9/11 we didn't just lose 2,977 people. We lost our minds.

Nobody knew it at the time, but within days the CIA started disappearing people and illegally torturing them. When I think about what was done in our name, I shudder.

Our reaction to 9/11 included invading a random country that our president had a personal grudge against, and committing grievous crimes against humanity.

To this day there are real color photos of people being raped and tortured on Wikipedia. They document what we did in Iraq.

Eighteen terrorists in their 20s (and one in his 30s) did not take away so much of our our humanity from us.

We are the ones who did that.

The torture, the retributive killings, the deeply confused notion of revenge when we lashed out at Iraq. Those were choices we made.

I remember on 9/11 my high school math teacher Mr Crane told us to try to concentrate on math that day.

I remember the school changed the name of french fries to "freedom fries."

When I got bullied because of my politics, the principal asked me if I had considered shutting up.

You can't get to the terrible, horrible, no good, place we're at today in American history without 9/11.

Bush's choice to invade Iraq meant a traditional Republican could not win the nomination in 2016. Trump won the Republican primary by falsely claiming he was against Iraq.