Utah Gov. Spencer Cox wondered aloud during Friday’s 9/11 remembrance ceremony whether the United States of America could still come together in unity if the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks happened today, 25 years later.
He is not so sure it could.
Amid corrosive distrust, radicalism and deteriorating institutions, the question is not if a similar tragedy would descend into a tribal tit-for-tat between political parties, but whether it would take a week, or an hour, Cox said.
Following the one-year mark of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University on Thursday, the 25th anniversary of 9/11 has confronted Cox with the disappointing depth of American polarization.
Conspiracism and contempt have become increasingly mainstream as some conservatives, like Tucker Carlson, cast doubt on the official narrative of the crises, and some progressives, like Hasan Piker, openly mock them.
As he reflected on the state of the nation, the “Disagree Better” governor said “Never Forget” must move beyond simply remembering 9/11. It must also include renewing the sense of shared purpose that defined its aftermath.
“It has to mean something more than just a memory,” Cox told victims’ families and veterans who filled the state Capitol Rotunda. “I don’t know how to get that back, but I feel strongly that we have to; that we have to find a way.”
Cox confided how he had lost his friend and classmate, Brady Howell, at the Pentagon. But for roughly one-third of the country who are too young to have any recollection of the event, 9/11 feels like “history” a quarter-century later.
This puts a special responsibility on those who lived that day to tell their story, Cox said. And, maybe more importantly, to convey what it was like to see people from across the continent pull together in common empathy.
From a ‘state of shock’ to handing out shoes
Daniel Rosen started the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, early. His 2-year-old had woken him up so he decided to commute from his home in Queens to the 7 World Trade Center in Manhattan about 45 minutes before he normally would.
He crossed the plaza between the north and south tower at 8 a.m., then took the elevator up to the 24th floor where he worked for the IRS. He hadn’t been there long when he felt a rumble and saw papers fluttering down from high above.
Craning his neck, he saw a gaping hole 70 floors up. Maybe a bomb? Then a second plane hit. Then sirens filled the air. Then individuals jumping from the smoking skyscrapers began to fly past his window to the pavement below.
“Shock. It’s shock. Definitely in a state of shock,” Rosen, now a resident of Eden, Utah, told the Deseret News.
At that point, the silent conclusion was terrorism as they thought back to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Rosen said. He and a coworker descended two dozen flights of stairs, then went to the coworker’s nearby apartment.
That’s where Rosen stood, staring out the window, when the towers collapsed, blacking out the sky with a thundering rush of dust and debris. As it cleared, he watched as ash-covered workers ran through the glass-strewn streets.
Some of the women, he noticed, were barefoot, high heels abandoned in their panic. They promptly cleared out his co-worker’s shoes and spent the next few hours handing them out, first washing the blackened feet with a hose.
As he later traversed the Brooklyn Bridge, Rosen learned a colleague who was on his way to meet him, never made it to the office. Rubble from the first impact had hit him right where Rosen would have been if he had not gotten up early.
Of course, Rosen can never forget these things. But he worries memory won’t matter without universally held facts.
Rosen has observed algorithms boost online interpretations of 9/11 that diverge from its extensive documentation and direct experience. These internet explanations nearly always twist reality to place the blame for 9/11 on America itself.
“When you see that second plane go into the tower and feel the heat on your face ... that’s truth,” Rosen said.
How can we best remember 9/11?
Other speakers at Friday’s event, where Rosen sat flanked by uniformed service members, also balanced their reverence with a grim diagnosis of a population as vulnerable to external and internal attacks as ever.
Retired Gen. Brian Tarbet, the former head of the Utah National Guard, delivered a stark message: the 9/11 realization that the U.S. may be engaged in an existential “clash of civilizations” is as relevant now as it was then.
While public opinion long ago turned against the protracted, and expensive, interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, Tarbet said this “long war” against terrorist ideologies is still “worth the struggle” because U.S. freedom is under threat.
“We need to be more cold-eyed as we look at the world around us and know that this is far from over,” he said.
Norm Wahlstrom, a retired Kaysville physician who lost his mother and sister on Flight 11 when it hit the north tower, is more concerned about the way Americans are treating each other than how America acts on the global stage.
Losing his loved ones was “heartbreaking,” but he is still moved to tears by the “heartwarming” experience of how America “truly seemed like the United States of America, not red and blue, not divisive the way it is now.”
On Friday morning, speaking to the students he takes to school as a bus driver, Wahlstrom acknowledged they did not know what his family had suffered. But he said there was still something they could do to commemorate 9/11.
“Let this be a day of service for you,” was the piece of advice that Wahlstrom imparted.
Earlier this month, Cox and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore encouraged 1,000,000 pledges of kind deeds ahead of Sept. 11. If Americans want to revive the unity of 25 years ago, though, Cox said there must be an even deeper change.
“It’s part of what all of this means, to hold strong convictions, without losing sight of our shared humanity,” Cox said. “We can vote differently, but we do not have to treat the people on the other side as our enemies.”
