Twenty-five years. It didn’t dawn on me until one of my colleagues mentioned it in our editorial meeting last week. But, yes, it has been a quarter-century since Sept. 11, 2001, the line in the sand between the old world and the new, for good or ill (but mostly ill, in terms of what has come to pass since then).
I’m a lifelong eternal optimist. I’m also a realist, but one who will continually give someone the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. I believe everyone is innocent until proven guilty when it comes to life itself and daily interactions. What 9/11 did, for most folks, was shift that entire mindset in the previous sentence to the perspective we as a country have adopted at every level of society since, from your neighbor all the way to the White House, one where everyone around you is “guilty until proven innocent.” Fear, basically.
Sheesh, I mean, I get it. It’s hard to get out of bed on certain days, where you don’t want to scroll your phone or walk out the front door and into another day in a modern world of chaos and confusion, of seemingly more unknowns than knowns in the digital age of massive corporations and greed, where you and me (and you, too) feel like we’re just looked at as disposable entities in this current juncture of rampant affairs when it comes to AI and data centers.