Today marks the 24th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
24 years.
Most children born that year, and the four years following it, are in their early 20's. Perhaps on college campuses as we speak, or in the work force as they begin their adulthood adventures.
I am sure many have children, despite the declining birth rate. Experiencing the joys and anxieties associated with raising an infant. The struggle to balance work and home life, day care expenses, and the challenge of leaving their care free young adult lives behind in lieu of responsibilities, bills, and budgets.
The wars that were inspired by that horrific day are behind us, although the threat of war is still prevalent, the wrath of those who would destroy our "way of life" still widespread.
I have posted a number of times under the label of Nine Eleven, twice in the first year, then for the first and second anniversary. But only a few times more since then, in 2016 and last year. Perhaps there are others that I haven't been able to identify, but I am less than happy that I have allowed this anniversary to be pushed out of view, at least my view, so often.
Here are links to the five posts I refer to.
In reading them now, I am struck with the lack of progress we have made, as a country, in regards to our relationships with the rest of the world. In fact, disappointed would be a better word, especially considering the current administration's apparent desire to eliminate all the soft power programs that provided food, medicine and monies to assist those in the world with less.
Those efforts, which helped cement the opinion that America was a great nation, willing to help the less fortunate, are being replaced with, at best, an isolationist attitude, at worst with the very clear message that we only care about ourselves. America first.
Certainly it is true that telling everyone what to do, how to run their country, who to elect, what their values should be, was a mistake, even if it was meant to help.
But a 360 degree shift is not the answer either.
When we end programs that save children's lives, provide medicine and food to reduce poverty and disease, food, by the way, grown by American farmers who are also suffering with this change in philosophy, we diminish the connection we have developed with those whose only crime was to be born in a country not America. In essence we tell them, too bad, no longer interested in sharing our blessings.
And, we provide an opening for other countries, China in particular, to fill that void and establish their country, their belief system as one which aides those without resources.
Even worse, along with two of the worst bullies on the planet at this time, Putin and Netanyahu, who are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of women and children, our president seems aligned, if not with all their actions, the actual methodology they represent; might makes right.
Not that America hasn't endorsed this motto often, but now it has taken a whole new meaning with Trump's threats to Greenland and Canada, his obvious disdain for all leaders of our traditional allies/democratic nations, his love affairs with Putin, Orban, and Jung Un, each a dictator in his own right, and even the outright attack on a Venezuelan ship in international waters, judge, jury and executioner.
We seemed to have learned nothing.
As is Israel with their attempts to eliminate every Hamas leader from the face of the planet, women and children as collateral damage be damned, America seems on a headlong path to eliminate friends who have stood by us, reduce the population of countries that historically depended on our largess, and create even more enemies in the world.
Or maybe the plan is to make new friends among our old enemies by moving away from democracy towards a version of performative democracy like in Russia and Hungary, or outright autocracy like in South Korea.
As I have said a number of times, the decline is real, it is only a matter of how far and to what degree.
And how long, hopefully, it might take us to recover.
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