May 23, 2014
For many Americans, 9/11 was the day that changed their lives. People far and wide, people immediately and distantly affected would remember the moment they heard the earsplitting crash, whether it was through a TV screen or outside their window. That day, the world lost its credibility. The message conveyed was that you might never feel safe again.
I remember 9/11 even as a first-grader trying hard to comprehend the deep lines of concern traced in my teacher’s face and feeling frustrated at my parents who tried to shield me from the shattering terror felt around the country, who refused to describe it as anything more than “a bad thing that has happened.” Still, in my naive haze of confusion, I learned that day there existed a phenomenon so debilitating that the fear of a whole nation could be made palpable, splayed across newspapers and TV sets, ingrained in the minds of children too young to understand why their parents were crying, and why the lives of millions of people in the world would be forever changed.
While 9/11 made its angry mark in my childhood, finding out about the Newtown shootings on December 14, 2012 made me fully cognizant of the visual image and visceral shock of word "terror." It is the occurrence of something completely unimaginable, an incomprehensible cruelty: 20 children between 5-10 years of age horrifically killed while sitting in class at a suburban elementary school. I still remember boarding the Amtrak after rushing to make it to all of my transit stops on time, settling into my seat, so excited for winter break, when I powered on my iPod and saw that heartbreaking photo of a hysterical mother on her phone on the homepage of the Daily Beast. The news of 20 innocent young lives lost to an unjustifiable violence was piercingly personal. It was a crushing realization that nothing — even the elementary schools we regard as sanctuaries — is impenetrable. The reality that they were violated of the simple experience of going to school and growing up that all of us had shared as children broke my heart.
Just two years after that incidence, we’ve had the Boston Marathon bombing and now the UCSB shooting. The grief is just as trenchant; the pain still inexplicable; and the damage still irreparable.
But one thing has changed. The trauma of it.
9/11 shook the world and brought us to our feet in horror-struck outrage. We vowed something so vile would never again wreak such havoc; we couldn’t imagine another occurrence of something so terrible. Something about the world "terrorism" has the power to sweep politicians to their feet, yet "mass murder" and "school shooting" flash across headlines, stir some controversy in Congress, and then expire with time. These equally terrorizing acts have become normative in the American media. Again and again, families have been broken, dreams dashed, and people everywhere, men and women who sit with you in class and who shop alongside you at grocery stores have suffered the loss of loved ones, are living with physical and emotional injuries, neglected by overcrowded, underfunded institutions.
We know all too well the causes of these attacks. We know all too well the profiles that these perpetrators share. And yet lax gun laws continue to exist at the expense of horrifying events year to year. And flawed health policies still fail to institutionalize or provide for the mentally ill. After a few weeks, we forget about the horror and loss that families endure for the rest of their lives. We are complicit in the failure of an entire system that is supposed to oversee the safety of a nation but only continues to breed sick people, inviting them to use easily accessible weapons to perpetuate murder.
Something needs to change. But more importantly, the precondition to change is the belief that change can happen, that human life far outweighs the trade-offs of policy changes that should take place, that this isn't the way things have to be.