On the Anniversary of 9/11, America Is Torn

When the 9/11 attacks happened, Americans stood together. Today’s politics are dominated by anger, fear and resentment.

Even on this day of commemoration for the victims of the 9/11 attacks, the United States demonstrates just how far the country has moved away from the unity it had displayed 20 years ago. Calls for solidarity will not change that. Nowadays, America is entrenched in political animosity and cultural clashes and is far away from solidarity. Former President George W. Bush is correct: American politics has become an appeal to the people’s anger, fear and resentment.

While President Joe Biden and two of his Democratic predecessors came together in New York for a memorial, and while Bush gave a remarkable speech at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump displayed a lack of dignity. Again. He slammed his successor as a fool — because of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, which he himself had initiated through his deal with the Taliban — and, on the anniversary of the national tragedy, pitied himself as the “victim of a rigged election.”*

Trump’s lack of decorum isn’t what’s most deplorable here. What is shocking is the fact that millions of Americans are still loyal to this divisive figure. America survived the attack of Islamist terrorists, but the storming of the Capitol by domestic extremists has shaken faith in its democracy. What happened to unity?

*Editor’s Note: This quotation, though accurately translated, could not be verified.