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Having lived through 9-11 in NYC and now the pandemic and social unrest here are some thoughts (thread): 9-11 was tragic and brutal. It hit home to me because my old man help build the Twin Towers, and when I was a kid, took me to see the nearly completed version.
Years later, as a senior writer at the Wall Street Journal, it became another touchstone: I worked across the street; my gym was in the Trade Center, my professional life enveloped downtown Manhattan and then it was destroyed. A doctor's appointment saved me from being on
Ground Zero when the planes hit but I was just a few blocks north and lived in the East Village. I vividly recall that awful smell of burnt wiring and dust that permeated the air as far north as 42nd street, not to mention the roar of what sounded like F-15's circling Manhattan
in the moments following the attack.Yes it was brutal, and costly in terms of lives and sickness well after the event. And yet, oddly, it was somehow better than what we are facing now. We were unified. The tragedy brought New York and the country together. The pandemic has done
the opposite. We have been reduced to warring factions. Most of us express our outrage at everything on our key boards. Others take to the streets. We're united in our disunity. Yes you can blame Trump's divisive nature. Or you can blame deBlasio for disarming police when we need
order the most. Or even Cuomo for letting the feckless mayor get away with it. Or, maybe, we should blame ourselves for not rising to the occasion, for not pointing out that while police need to treat US ALL with respect, that fixing policing does not mean we need a revolution
that defunds what allows us to lead normal lives. Yes we needed to "flatten the curve" of the virus, but that doesnt mean we need to stop life in its tracks, destroy livelihoods and kill an economy that when functioning will produce a vaccine and a treatment for a deadly disease.
Maybe we also need to stop arguing, in the streets and on social media, and start talking responsibly about solutions, and ignore - not cancel but ignore-those who believe its time to blow up the system, and these people exist on both the right & left sides of the policy debate.
