Seven days ago marked the 23rd anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
Every year, Sept. 11 is filled with the words “never forget” or that we “always remember.” I don’t remember. I wasn’t alive. I was born just over a year after the attacks. Now, I know those phrases aren’t entirely literal, they’re ways to memorialize those we lost on that day.
How do I remember 9/11 when my existence came after it happened? For me and my generation, 9/11 and our America is different than those who were alive to watch. This generation is solely based in a post-9/11 America, where the consequences of the Sept. 11 terror attacks are all we’ve known.
Most of us weren’t alive to watch the towers fall. Most of us weren’t there to put together that what happened wasn’t an accident. Most of my generation’s understanding of 9/11, outside of those who lost someone that day, came from that one day of the year when our teachers would put aside any lesson plans and have a conversation about it and teach us what happened.
Every year on that day, we’d see one of my teachers recalling how odd it was that no planes were in the sky that day.
We don’t have the connection they did. According to a Pew Research Center article from Hannah Hartig and Carroll Doherty, U.S. adult’s connection to the event was profound.
“The impacts of the Sept. 11 attacks were deeply felt and slow to dissipate. By the following August, half of U.S. adults said the country ‘had changed in a major way’ – a number that actually increased, to 61%, 10 years after the event.”
Pew’s study also found that in the days following 9/11, 71% of those surveyed said they were depressed, 49% had trouble concentrating and 33% had trouble sleeping.
Most of Generation Z, kids born between 1997 and 2012, lack that emotional connection to the events. I’d argue that any emotional connection to 9/11 comes at the opposite end of sadness: humor.
Growing up alongside social media’s rise granted a lot of looks into dark and edgy humor. 9/11 was often the base of shock humor in early meme communities.
These shocking and edgy meme videos had the mere mention of a plane with the punchline being 9/11.
It’s not my job to dictate what’s funny or not. Older generations would likely be appalled. To our generation, the 9/11 jokes became a mainstay in generational humor.
Outside of our generation’s connection and reaction to 9/11, the understanding we have about America is what happened after 9/11.
The patriotic fervor that sprung from the attacks, which according to the United Service Organization, had “181,510 Americans enlisted in the ranks of active duty service, and 72,908 joined the enlisted reserves in the year following Sept. 11” was completely missed by our generation.
That America attached itself to the pride and patriotism in the war on terrorism. They found solace and respect in “America’s Mayor” with Rudy Giuliani’s response to 9/11. They held up New York’s first responders as the nation’s heroes.
As history progressed, the things a wounded nation used as a crutch have not held up.
The war on terror progressed into the Iraq War and Afghanistan War. Wars that are now recognized as ones built on lies of weapons of mass destruction and the progress we made with nation-building. Giuliani is now disbarred for election fraud lies and faces sexual assault and harassment allegations.
Five years ago, New York first responders had to lobby Congress behind comedian Jon Stewart for an extension of the Victims Compensation Fund, a bill that provides money to those who became sick or were injured in connection with 9/11. The VCF, at the time, was becoming depleted and the claims made by those who needed it were becoming reduced.
Living in a country that had its foundations shaken by terror and the murder of 2,977 people, while now seeing a larger picture of the consequences of it, leaves me conflicted. I’m an American who feels sorrow for those who died and the families left behind on 9/11. With that, I’m angry about the wars that left more Americans dead alongside politicians who dragged out getting 9/11 first responders their aid for political gain.
Not to say that the previous generation isn’t upset about these too, but it’s what our generation has only known. There was no before. Nothing to compare from now to then. We didn’t experience it in full, if at all.
Even within our generation’s experience, there are smaller facets I can’t comprehend. There’s an entire generation of Middle Eastern Americans who had to endure racism regarding 9/11 and still experience it to this day.
There’s always been a gap between generations. Something that one generation just can’t comprehend or have never experienced. I am starting to think that Sept. 11 has become this micro-gap between Millennials and Gen Z.
All this generation knows about 9/11 has been from what we’ve been taught by our families, our teachers and the news. Their America, the one that saw the attacks and responded with blinding patriotism, is much different than our America. We grew up in an America on the heels of wars we didn’t understand, American heroes being forgotten and a wave of humor based on a national tragedy we were disconnected from. That’s seemingly the America we know.