9/11 at 20: Not Just Another Anniversary

Tim O’Brien writes…

There are anniversaries and then there are anniversaries. The one that’s coming up is the latter.

On September 11, 2021, the country will mark 20 years since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that not only shook a nation, but changed it. The event created a new term that defines the era in which we are currently living, the “post 9/11 world.”

If you are too young to remember where you were that day or the significance of it, you fall into one group. The other group is people who vividly remember where they were that day, what happened and what it meant.

Twenty years is the time-span of a generation. People who will turn 20 after September 11 and younger weren’t alive when the attacks happened. With each new generation, a historical event either fades into forgottenness or it falls into a new perspective with academic detachment that often loses the true power and the impact of the event itself. Sometimes history gets rewritten.

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