I was a freshman in high school on September 11, 2001.
My generation has lived our entire adult lives in the shadow of that event and the world it created.
I don’t know what to say about that. I don’t really know another world than this one. It feels like things are getting worse. Are they? Trying to look back at history for comparisons doesn’t help. What was life like during the McCarthy era? What did it feel like to grow up during the Cold War? I have no idea.
I grew up in a world where the right to privacy has been revoked. Anything can be considered terrorism and anybody can be a terrorist and God help you if you are accused of terrorism, because as an enemy combatant, your rights are basically null and void.
On the other hand, I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about getting nuked. I suppose the possibility is still there but it seems like a much more remote threat. Before terrorists, there were communists. Anybody could be a communist. Did your rights get stripped away if you were accused of being a communist? I don’t have the historical context to say one way or another. I imagine it wasn’t good, though.
Maybe there’s nothing different about today. Same song, different dance.
Maybe we’re all just destined to move from one crisis to another. Maybe that’s the human condition.
Cynical Idealism 