September 11 Is Worth Remembering

For those of us who are getting quite old, the rapidity of time’s passage is frightening.  It is over 20 years since the 9/11 attacks shook the country to its core.  What is worth remembering isn’t the attacks themselves, as horrific as they were.  The response of the nation, the sense of unified outrage, sadness and determination were a tremendous moment.  But how quickly that has dissipated, to be replaced by levels of insanity in public policy and hostility and division among Americans never experienced in my lifetime.  How we get away from the current milieu eludes me.  What I know we need to do will never happen.  We need to largely shut down social media, particularly for young people.  We need to mandate that any organization which purports to inform the public conform to certain disclosure and reporting standards that ensure compliance with the public’s supreme right to hear the facts, all the facts, and not reporters’ or editors’ opinions or ideology.  We need to eliminate the ability of wealthy people and organizations to influence, actually buy, inflections and policy.  We need to force legislators to read what they vote on and we need to eliminate administrative agencies rule-making authority.  Direct democracy should be used more widely, given available technology.  We need universal national service for young people.  We have to stop being a frivolous, goofball society and have some serious purpose for our collective life.  Don’t count on any of that happening.