Weekly Mail September 11th Special 2017

                       September 11, 2017



16 years on, this is what comes to mind as we remember that horrible day....

A few years ago, a friend of mine who will go nameless (jr) wondered aloud if people would forget 9/11/2001 the way many forgot Pearl Harbor so many years later.  I figured no way. 

But they will. It's inevitable. Time heals, whether we want it to or not. And sure, I want the wounds to heal for those who lost family and friends that day. Absolutely, we want those kids who lost parents that day to lead happy productive lives despite the hole that was created that day. 

But to have it heal so much that we forget the pain we all felt? I don't know that is in our best interests. 

When Donald Trump won the 2016 election, it cast a pall over many people, not only Hillary Clinton supporters, but also Republicans who were disgusted that Trump was now the face of their party as well as the free world.

I understood. And I sympathized. I didn't vote for him either.

But I drew the line when people began saying that electing Trump was "worse than 9/11."

Worse than 9/11?

The principal of The Calhoun School, a snooty, $46,000 a year preK to 12 school on the Upper West Side, said “I watched soot-covered New Yorkers grimly trudging north on West End Avenue on September 11, 2001, I am more troubled now.”

David Crosby, he of Crosby Stills and Nash said "Now, okay, it isn't Pearl Harbor,it's about as bad as 9/11, or maybe worse, because the consequences are much longer-reaching."“So it's really devastatingly bad,” 

Thanks for clearing that up David.

I don't expect David Crosby to know better. He's had his issues. 

Robert De Niro? HE should know better. And yet....

"I feel like I did after 9/11," De Niro told The Hollywood Reporter on it's Awards Chatter podcast. 


Really? Because I'll tell you how I felt on 9/11/2001. I felt like I was going to die. I felt like my dad was going to die. I felt like I had to tell my sister to stay on the Upper East Side, better one of us make it home, than both of us getting killed. 

I thought about all my friends in Rockaway who were firefighters that day. Other friends who worked for Deutche Bank downtown. Did they make it out? 

There really was a point during that day where we didn't know where the next plane was going to hit. Or if it was even going to be a plane. Maybe while the rest of us were watching the sky, someone else was parking an explosive laden truck somewhere that would take out several blocks. 

We had no idea. But if you were in Manhattan that day, you saw the fire. Didn't matter if you were right there downtown, or in midtown (where I was) That day, you saw the fire. 

If you were in Washington, DC, and you were anywhere near the Pentagon, that day you saw the fire. And you worried that the White House was next. (And that plane that went down in Shanksville PA, was no doubt heading towards the White House) 

If you were home in the midwest or out on the West Coast. You saw the fire. 

On November 8, 2016, there was no fire. 

Sure, you were angry, scared, baffled. Sure, maybe you asked Why did they do this? the way people asked why did the terrorists do what they did that day, 16 years ago. 


But if you are comparing an election, even one who has given us the disaster that is the Trump administration, to a day where thousands were killed, many more injured and families were destroyed forever? There's just no comparison. 

To be sure, there are plenty of things that have happened in these past 16 years that could almost compare to what happened that day. Those people in New Orleans who lost everything up to and including their lives during Hurricane Katrina. The terrible flooding that took place in Houston after Hurricane Harvey a couple of weeks ago. As I'm writing this Hurricane Irma is wreaking havoc on Florida.  Who knows how bad the devastation is going to be there? 

Shoot almost all of us were affected by Superstorm Sandy, a little more than 11 years after 9/11. I lived through it, I was out of my house for a while, I waited on long gas lines. It was bad. It was really bad. 

But it wasn't 9/11. Not even close. 

Folks, I realize I'm using Trump's election as one example, and again I'm no way defending him, but if we keep comparing things we don't like to 9/11, we cheapen the impact of that day. I hope and I pray that we never have to live through another day like that. I wish that I could say 100 years from now, that people living at that time will understand how horrible a day that was.

But I can't. Because it seems like there are people now, just mere 16 years later who don't.


God Bless everybody we lost that day
and God Bless those they left behind

And God Bless America. 

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