On Sept. 10, 2001, I was working in the newly refurbished Chelsea Market on 9th Avenue and 115th Street in Manhattan.
asserted
I → work → Manhattan
In another life, the building was the Nabisco factory where the Oreo was invented, and where my wife’s grandfather had baked Mallomars and Fig Newtons decades earlier.
asserted
grandfather → invent → Mallomars
The building was now a trendy tech-hub of loft spaces with exposed-brick walls upstairs and an artisan bakery downstairs.
asserted
building → expose → walls
Oprah Winfrey’s television venture and a modeling agency were rumored to be our neighbors.
asserted
venture → rumor → ?
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The building sat at the intersection of gentrifying Chelsea, the Meatpacking District, and West Village.
asserted
building → sit → Chelsea
At night, you might be propositioned by hulking transvestite prostitutes or walk past affluent young couples holding Starbucks lattes pushing a stroller.
uncertain
you → proposition → stroller
One block south, a person would hit a cobblestone road anchored by a seedy sex club.
asserted
person → hit → club
There’s a lot of nostalgia about New York, but the neighborhood is far more pleasant now.
asserted
neighborhood → ’ → York
We could probably see the Twin Towers from the break room at the Major League Baseball online office where I worked, not that anyone ever seemed to notice.
uncertain
anyone → see → office
The Twin Towers were for tourists to marvel at and locals to use as a compass.
asserted
locals → marvel → compass
In post-9/11 cultural depictions, the buildings were romanticized.
asserted
buildings → romanticize → depictions
But, in my memory, a lot of New Yorkers thought they were unsightly.
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they → think → Yorkers
But you know what they say?
asserted
they → know → what
You don’t know what you’ve got until 10 jihadi hijackers try to incinerate your city.
asserted
hijackers → know → city
As it was, I wasn’t in the office when the planes hit.
asserted
planes → hit → office
Being a sports journalist meant working nights and weekends.
asserted
Being → mean → nights
Though I was geographically close to the most traumatic event in modern American history, I watched the surreal carnage unfold on my television like most of my fellow citizens.
asserted
carnage → watch → citizens
The most harrowing personal moment of the week came when I learned from my wife that one of the children in her early-education school had lost their firefighter dad in the towers.
asserted
one → come → towers
In about a month or so, I went back to downtown New York covered in white dust.
asserted
I → go → dust
I felt a bond with every person who walked by.
asserted
who → feel → person
Those who were around on Sept. 11 aren’t beneficiaries of any secret knowledge denied by previous generations.
asserted
who → deny → generations
But they were likely the last generation, for a few months — or maybe only a few weeks — to collectively and intensely feel American.
asserted
they → feel → months
Patriotism spiked dramatically following the Sept. 11 attacks, with most polls finding that 90% of people were extremely or very proud to be Americans.
asserted
% → spike → people
It is difficult to imagine a comparable sentiment materializing if we were attacked again.
asserted
we → imagine → ?
It is almost surely the case that a large contingent of the Left, especially among the young — and a not insignificant faction of the young Right — would blame the president or the United States or Israel.
asserted
contingent → blame → president
Twitter’s launch was still five years away when the Towers fell.
asserted
Towers → fall → ?
You can imagine how a 9/11 event today would send millions immediately into conspiratorial wormholes.
asserted
event → imagine → wormholes
Most polls show around 40% of Generation Z, the generation that didn’t experience Sept. 11, are “extremely” or “very” proud to be American.
asserted
that → show → Sept.
By comparison, roughly 60% of Millennials, 70% of Gen X, and over 80% of Baby Boomers feel strongly patriotic.
asserted
% → feel → Boomers
Only 25 years after 9/11, the mayor of New York is a man named Zohran Mamdani, who detests the foundational ideas of the nation, gins up violence against his Jewish constituents, and justifies and rationalizes terror.
asserted
who → name → terror
Young New Yorkers overwhelmingly voted for him.
asserted
Yorkers → vote → him
Mamdani and other ideological allies are widely celebrated in mainstream left-wing circles as the future of the Democratic Party.
asserted
Mamdani → celebrate → Party
The only people dancing on Sept. 11 were in places like the West Bank.
asserted
people → dance → Bank
Palestinian terror groups, the originators of modern hijacking, helped make 9/11 possible.
asserted
9/11 → help → hijacking
Yet, “democratic” socialists, a growing concern on the American Left, place Palestinianism at the center of their agenda.
asserted
socialists → grow → agenda
Today the Democratic Party bigwigs have no compunction endorsing candidates like Michigan’s Abdul el Sayed, who blames the United States for “creating” terrorism, rationalizes the actions of would-be Hezbollah child murderers, and pals around with a popular socialist online personality who believes we deserved 9/11.
asserted
we → have → 9/11
Or, Dr. Adam Hamawy, almost certain to represent New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District next session, who not only reportedly volunteered with an al Qaeda-tied group in Bosnia, but was a good friend and defender of Omar “Blind Sheikh” Abdel Rahman who tried to bring down the Towers in 1993.
uncertain
who → represent → 1993
There is simply no way that any of us on 9/12 — I don’t care how liberal you were — would have believed this is where we were headed.
asserted
we → be → 9/12
The day of the attack, President George W. Bush, who comported himself with exceptional poise in those early days, told us that “terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America.”
asserted
they → comport → America
The American foundation appeared sturdy before Sept. 11.
asserted
foundation → appear → Sept.
…and 39 more, not listed.
The Aporia
