MEMPHIS, Tenn. — For the last 19 years, September 11th has been a somber day in America. The jet planes that brought down the World Trade Center, pierced a hole in the Pentagon – and slammed to the ground in Pennsylvania – still leave a deep wound in our collective hearts. The only silver lining from the 9/11 attacks was how the country mostly became united against a common enemy. Politics didn’t matter. We rallied behind the president because we knew he cared.
Of course, the unity didn’t last. It started to fray in 2005 with the horrible government response in New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina. And while there were brief moments of oneness after the election of Barack Obama, America has been a nation on edge pretty much since then.
But unlike 9/11, we are not fighting a foreign enemy. We’re fighting ourselves. We’re doing our foreign adversary’s work for them. And the problem is, we have no national leader at the moment to unite us. So we must do the work ourselves – to not allow our divisions to overcome us.
Let’s remember the nearly 3,000 innocent lives taken 19 years ago– as we also remember the more than 190,000 lives taken this year by the coronavirus. And as our vigilance against terrorism continues, so too must our vigilance to protect each other from this deadly virus. Division won’t do it. Unity will. And that’s my point of view.