9/11, a quarter century on

It was an awful event at the time, and it has become clear since that 9/11 acts as some kind of dividing line between one era and the next. It's 25 years later and it feels like it's as hard as ever to navigate the aftermath.

I have been blogging long enough that my first post about 9/11 was 20 years ago, on the 5 year anniversary. I visited Ground Zero in 2007. And in 2009 I blogged about the conspiracy theories that had grown about it. 

A few nights ago I was talking politics with a friend and we reminisced about how optimistic things seemed in the late 90s when "New Labour" were elected. The stale Conservative government was swept away in a landslide led by Tony Blair. A few months prior to 9/11 and Labour had been re-elected for a new term in government. 

9/11 derailed that optimism. It blew the lid off New Labour when, a year later, the UK joined in the invasion of Iraq. That was followed by joining in the military operation in Afghanistan. It all got very messy and it feels like the ultimate outcome hasn't helped make the world much safer.

I'm now so old, I can read posts on Reddit from grown adults asking what it was like to see the Twin Towers fall, in the same way I would ask my parents about Martin Luther King or Beatlemania. Anything that happened before you were born lives in the realm of myth and make believe. But it's a small shock when you realise your own history is now pre-history for a great wodge of the population. 

The sad thing about those posts, and the replies that they elicit, is the sense of what we have lost. A feeling of hopeful change and progress got buried in the rubble of the World Trade Centre. Our governments defaulted to war mode. Culturally we embraced a threat mindset, which we are seeing now in extremis in rhetoric about being invaded. Conspiracism has thrived and mistrust is common currency.

That fear burden is one of the legacies of 9/11; the impact of terrorism is to spread terror. And it has been very effective. So many people seem perma-scared now, often of things that, rationally, have zero impact on them. 

Somehow, we need to find a way to mourn the losses of 9/11, without letting terror dominate our lives.