Looking back at Sept. 11, and peering ahead to Nov. 5
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Twenty-three years ago today, America, as I once knew it, began to end.
In September 2001, I was 24, fresh out of college and taking my first steps forward into adult life. Though my personal footing was unsteady at times, the soil in which my feet were planted – the United States – seemed both unshakeable and ascendant.
Optimism was everywhere at that time, and everything was 'New.'
Though Wall Street was still adjusting to the recent bursting of the dot-com bubble, the Cristal kept flowing, as visions of the vaunted 'New Economy' persisted, and the Information Age continued to gather pace.
A decade after America's triumph over the Soviet Union, it seemed that Communism was dead, and a 'New World Order' touting promises of beneficent interdependence, peace and prosperity, was coalescing under the umbrella of the Pax Americana.
A 'New American Century' beckoned, as the United States – reigning supreme ideologically, politically, militarily, economically and culturally – surpassed superpower status to become the world's lone (and history's only) hyperpower.
But, the heady, halcyon days of the 1990s, which by and large had carried over into the summer of 2001, evaporated in an instant at 8:46:40 a.m. Eastern on the morning of Sept. 11.
At that moment, Islamist hijackers hurled American Airlines Flight 11 into floors 93-99 of One World Trade Center – the North Tower – plunging a metaphorical dagger into the heart of America and tearing open a wound from which we have never recovered.
LOOKING BACK
I was first alerted to trouble in New York by my sister-in-law, who called that Tuesday morning to tell me that a few minutes prior a plane had crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. With that, I headed immediately downstairs to turn on the television. As I made my way to the family room, I recalled reading years earlier of a similar tragedy in New York – the 1945 crash of a B-25 into the Empire State Building during heavy fog; before reaching the TV, I had just enough time to wonder how such a thing could happen in 2001, when radar was ubiquitous.
As the screen flared to life, my jaw dropped, and everything changed: both buildings were ablaze.
In the 90 seconds it had taken me to get from my bedroom to the family room, another band of Islamists had steered United Airlines Flight 175 into floors 77-85 of Two World Trade Center – the South Tower.
With that, it was clear: A terrorist attack, unimaginable in scale, was unfolding in the heart of our nation's greatest city. Immediately, I was incensed.
Having been reared in the rural wilds of northern Missouri, the frenetic jungles of Manhattan were as foreign to me as anything possibly could be; but as an American, New York was my city – satanic lunatics were savaging my city.
And I wasn't alone in that sentiment. Every American, it seemed – from Boston Brahmins in the East, to tech titans in the West, to Montana ranchers and Iowa farm ladies in between – every American felt the same: New York was their city – our city – and there would be hell to pay for attacking it.
My anger was surpassed only by my sense of bewilderment. My mind reeled as the morning's tragedies multiplied, and deepened: at 9:37 a.m. Eastern, American Airlines Flight 77 was driven into the Pentagon; at 9:59, the South Tower collapsed; at 10:02, United Airlines Flight 93 plowed into a field outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania; at 10:28, the North Tower crumbled.
My powers of understanding couldn't keep up with it all. Indeed, it took me a couple of hours to begin to realize that what was happening was as big, or bigger, than Pearl Harbor. Even then, I was unable to truly grasp the magnitude of what was unfolding.
That ended when the images of "the jumpers" began to filter out – the final moments, captured on film, of scores of hapless victims (more than 200, in all) who were forced out of the windows of the World Trade Center towers by the searing heat. Seeing that, for the first time, I understood the meaning of 'horror.'
After phoning college friends in New York, Boston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Toronto to ensure they were alive and well, I made plans to attend a special Mass being held at my local parish that evening for the souls of those who were lost.
At that point, some were speculating that 10,000 or more could be dead in New York alone. The final toll of the 9/11 attacks, not including the murderers who perpetrated them, was 2,958 dead – a figure that seemed mercifully light compared to the tally that was first feared, but one that was unbearable, nonetheless.
TRAVERSING THE 'NEW'
By day's end on Sept. 11, it was clear that the entire globe had been thrust into uncharted waters and, once again, everything was 'new.'
On Sept. 12, a New York Times reporter coined a new term as shorthand for the horrors of the previous day: '9/11'.
In an address to the nation on Sept. 16, President George W. Bush spoke of a "new kind of enemy" targeting the United States – a "new kind of evil" manifesting in the world. Such wickedness, he said, compelled America to act. Bush described the need for a "crusade," as he put it, to rout this new barbarism, and introduced a new phrase to describe the campaign of asymmetric warfare that would follow: 'war on terrorism'.
Two days later, on Sept. 18, there came another signpost of the new reality facing the United States – the first in a series of anthrax attacks which, before they ended in mid-October, had killed five Americans and sicked 17 others.
In a speech to Congress on Sept. 20, Bush delivered an ultimatum to the Taliban, the Islamist cabal ruling Afghanistan, who were sheltering 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden and his terrorist group, Al-Qaeda. In his address, the president hinted to the American people at what was to come. "Our war on terror begins with Al-Qaeda," Bush warned, "but it does not end there." Within weeks, US forces – the tip of the spear in the new Global War on Terror – were on the ground in Afghanistan, pushing toward Kabul in an ostensible effort to capture Bin Laden and the head of the Taliban regime, Mullah Omar.
Of course, we "somehow" stayed there almost 20 years. In May 2011, Bin Laden was finally taken down by US forces – in Afghanistan's neighbor to the west, Pakistan. Mullah Omar died inside Afghanistan in April 2013 – of natural causes. Meanwhile, America's presence in the country persisted for nearly a decade more until its ignominious end, courtesy of the blundering Biden-Harris regime, in August 2021.
SURVEYING THE LANDSCAPE
Several weeks after the attack, I was due to take part in a college friend's wedding in Canada; noting the comparatively short distance from Ontario to New York, I elected to drive to the wedding so that I could somehow pay my respects in person, there, afterward.
The day after the wedding, I drove from Toronto to New York, arriving in Manhattan on the evening of Oct. 31. After checking into my hotel, I met up with another college friend who was living in the city at that time. As we caught up over dinner, I explained to him that I had come to New York to see, in person, what the rest of the country had been watching from afar over the past several weeks through their television screens.
My friend agreed to walk me to the World Trade Center site – but only part way.
While still several blocks away from the ruins, he turned around and headed back to his apartment. And I understood. He had worked in the shadow of the Twin Towers, and actually saw a cascade of debris – including, he said, pieces of luggage – fly past his office window after United Flight 175 smashed into the South Tower.
I kept walking in the direction he had pointed. Several minutes later, I turned a corner and there it was: Ground Zero. I was still multiple blocks away from the site – how many, I don't know. The entire area was surrounded by police barricades, which were reinforced by an army of NYPD officers – but I could see it.
There, in the spotlights guiding the work of the 24/7 excavating team, was a mountain of jumbled iron and ash. Just visible were the remains of the outer cladding of one of the towers, identifiable by the unique pointed-arch design of what had once been its lobby windows. Though I couldn't detect the suffocating acrid smell that was said to linger around "the Pile," I could see clearly the pallid haze that hung over the site. Incredibly, more than seven weeks after the collapse, smoke was still rising from the ruins of the World Trade Center. It almost seemed like an incensing of sorts of what was now, for every American, hallowed ground. I stood there for a couple of minutes, transfixed at what I was beholding. Finally catching myself, I closed my pilgrimage with a silent prayer for the lost and the living, punctuating it with the Sign of the Cross.
On the way back to my hotel in Midtown, I found myself swept up in what can only be described as a Halloween "crawl" — a throng of boisterous New Yorkers, eager to forget their troubles, parading up the street. The revelers, many of them clad in sexually provocative costumes, seemed mostly drunk, high, or both. It was a bizarre contrast to the melancholy spectacle of Ground Zero, and a surreal way to close out the night.
Early the next morning, I set out for home. A few hours later, as I drove deeper into the winding hills of rural Pennsylvania, one by one the radio stations I had been sampling began to fade out. Soon, there was only one with a static-free signal – a Christian station of some sort. Opting for sermons over silence, I settled on that frequency, and listened as an Evangelical pastor began reflecting on all that had befallen America over the past two months. Two things he said in the course of his address have always stuck with me.
First, he noted how America's churches, which had been inundated by citizens seeking solace in the first few weeks after the attacks, had begun to empty once again. The pastor remarked that, clearly, the United States had not learned its lesson. Recalling the roving street party I'd encountered the previous evening, I had to agree.
Second, he reflected on the fact that recently a handful of prominent conservative pastors had been publicly excoriated for daring to suggest that the events of Sept. 11 were allowed by God as punishment for America's metastasizing wickedness – that 9/11 was an excruciating shock permitted by Providence to jolt the nation out of its stupor of sin.
Noting that the United States' unofficial new mantra – 'God Bless America' — was on everyone's lips post-9/11, he spotlighted a logical inconsistency in such thinking, which was becoming increasingly widespread among Americans.
It was absurd, the pastor pointed out, to presume that God would intervene in the life of a country to prosper it, while at the same time refusing to accept that God might intervene in the life of that same country to punish it for sinking into depravity. Where, the pastor demanded, was the logic in that?
His sentiments echoed much of what I had been hearing from many pious Catholics in my corner of the country – murmurings that 9/11 was a manifestation of Divine wrath, that perhaps it was a foreshadowing of worse events to come, and that it brought to mind in some small way the Blessed Virgin Mary's message at Akita, Japan, where in an apparition to Sr. Agnes Sasagawa on Oct. 13, 1973, she warned:
"If men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one has never seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful. The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead."
Admittedly, though they forever changed the world, the attacks of Sept. 11 were not on the scale of the chastisement prophesied by Our Lady of Akita. Even so, as I made my way back to Missouri that November morning, the fact that fire did indeed "fall from the sky" on 9/11 – arguably, as a consequence of America's sin – left me wondering.
I wonder still.
CIRCLING THE DRAIN
Today, the United States is far worse, morally, than it was even in 2001. In the 23 years since 9/11, our nation has strayed further from God than ever before.
In January, for example, a Pew Research survey revealed that the religiously-unaffiliated are now the largest faith cohort in the United States.
The 'Nones,' as they've been branded (atheists, agnostics and those who say their religion is 'nothing in particular') now comprise a stunning 28% of the population – far outstripping the number of Evangelicals (24%) and Catholics (23%) in America today.
In the first decade of the 21st century, the number of Nones – a majority of them first-generation unbelievers – swelled by more than 650,000 per year. Having tripled
their share of the US population since 1999, the Nones are a remarkable testament to the success of secularism, and an indictment of the woeful state of catechesis and evangelization in our country.
Meanwhile, the number of professing Christians in the United States is now at an all-time low – just 64% of the population, a 2022 Pew Research survey showed. Additionally, according to a 2023 Gallup study, US church membership is cratering. In 1999, 70% of Americans belonged to "a formal house of worship"; by 2024, that figure had plummeted to just 45%.
The surge in US secularism is not unfolding in isolation; in fact, it is dramatically impacting each and every American as, by its very nature, it is accelerating the country's moral decline. As America’s faith has withered, the Nones have sought new devotions to fill their inner void. Pornography, social media, and recreational drugs (of which milder forms are legal in a growing number of states) have become popular purveyors of synthetic transcendence. Meanwhile, for those who require something deeper to satisfy the hungry Self, environmentalism has become a favorite substitute for Christ. For millions of "spiritual, not religious" citizens, the Green Gospel is now a proxy faith, with Mother Earth displacing Father God, and CO2 supplanting Satan.
More worrying than even these phenomena, the Nones may leave a permanent mark upon the United States in less than two months. Just last week, Mark Mitchell, lead pollster for Rasmussen Reports, noted:
"Donald Trump is winning among anyone who says they're a part of an organized religion. But Kamala Harris is winning big – even bigger than among Democrats – among atheists. And she's also beating Trump handily by like 20 points among people who say they're agnostic or not sure what their religion is."
"Donald Trump," Mitchell added, is "winning with every human being in America, except for people who say they rarely or never attend church. It's like some kind of weird holy war going on."
Indeed.
Literal godlessness is just one metric by which to measure America's moral decline since 9/11. There are many others.
Take abortion. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in the summer of 2022, at the state level, millions of average, ordinary, everyday Americans – more than half the population across seven states, in fact – have betrayed our unborn countrymen at the ballot box. Legions of "good-but-godless" types, including a host of faux conservatives, have weaponized their vote against our most vulnerable, actively participating in the slaughter of the nation's children – and, by extension, in the murder of America itself.
Or the sanctity of marriage. Buoyed by the "love is love" mentality then coming into vogue, in the early years of the new century LGBT activists insisted that homosexual relationships were on par with heterosexual relationships, and demanded the right to wed. In 2004, the state of Massachusetts, by order of its Supreme Judicial Court, answered the call, becoming the first state to legalize so-called same-sex marriage. This sparked a cascading effect, and by mid-2015, homosexuals could "wed" in 37 states and the District of Columbia. The die was cast that summer when the US Supreme Court imposed same-sex "marriage" on the whole country with its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. And that was the coup de grâce; with the sanctity of marriage overthrown, the normalization of homosexuality in America was essentially complete.
Or the transgender delusion. Obergefell marked a delineation point in more ways than one. Rather than mollifying LGBT activists, it emboldened them. Immediately after the ruling the "trans" tyranny erupted, and Americans responded by retreating into mass psychosis to play a collective game of make-believe. Ten years ago there were just two genders; since then, we've invented more than one hundred. Fake pronouns litter our lexicon, and newspeak is now the norm. No one left-of-center, it seems, can now answer the simple question, What is a woman? No wonder, then, that mutilated men dominate women's sports, and mutilated men are crowned "Woman of the Year."
Or education. Today, those children who manage to emerge from their mothers' wombs unscathed are assailed by an unending avalanche of LGBT propaganda the moment they set foot in our public schools. Inside the classroom, they are deliberately confused as to whether their gender aligns with their biological sex (it does, as they are one and the same); for those who succumb to such manipulation, government change agents swoop in to help them hack off their genitals and poison them with puberty blockers.
Or, again, education. Before 9/11, American schools were merely bad – lousy at sculpting students into scholars. Today, thanks to the rise of the education establishment complex, public school classrooms are nothing more than Communist training camps, churning out millions of malignant little Marxists every year. As a result, our universities are now hives for blue-haired Bolsheviks — overpriced playgrounds overrun by the anti-capitalist, anti-Semitic, anti-American foot soldiers of the Left.
All this leads me to wonder, as I first did during my cross-country drive in November 2001, what may be in store for the United States if we persist in refusing to repent. As Souls and Liberty recently noted, Scripture is filled with instances in which "Israel went astray and God responded by allowing them to reap the consequences of their actions." Indeed, "the Biblical record of Israel is an incredible demonstration of the cyclical nature of history and the cause of the rise and fall of nations. ... And, surely enough, just like with Israel, we are reaping the consequences today."
ON A KNIFE-EDGE
A tectonic crossroads – perhaps America's final fork in the road – is fast approaching. On Nov. 5, we will head to the polls to choose our next leader in what will be the most consequential election in our nation's history. When I think of this, when I ponder all that is at stake, I'm again reminded of the warning of Our Lady of Akita: If men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment ... Fire will fall from the sky ....
Considering the state of the world after three-and-a-half years of catastrophic Biden-Harris rule, these words take on a new urgency. The wars in Ukraine and Israel-Gaza, coupled with escalating tensions between the United States and Russia, the United States and China, the United States and Iran, and the United States and North Korea, have put the world on edge, as a scan of recent headlines demonstrates:
"Are We Heading for World War Three?" (Sky News)
"The West Must Prepare for World War Three" (The Spectator)
"If You Think World War III Is Unimaginable, Read This" (Bloomberg)
"China-Russia-Iran-North Korea Axis Heightens the Risk of WWIII" (Nikkei Asia)
"Putin's Closest Ally Is Preparing for World War III" (Newsweek)
"Putin Warns Russia Could Provide Weapons to Others to Strike West" (AP)
"Russia Warns the United States of the Risks of World War Three" (Reuters)
"Russia Warns France Against Deploying Troops to Ukraine" (The Guardian)
"Poland's Army Grows as Soldiers Enlist After Vladimir Putin Threats" (Irish Star)
"Italy: Sending NATO Troops to Ukraine Means World War 3" (Anadolu Ajansi)
"Croatia to Reintroduce Military Draft as Tensions Soar" (Washington Times)
"Sweden's Call for Population to Prepare for War Sparks Panic" (France 24)
"Germany Preparing for Russia to Start World War 3" (New York Post)
"Mandatory Conscription: Germany Outlines Wartime Plans" (CNN)
"UK Has 3 Years to Prepare for War, Says Army Chief" (Financial Times)
"Putin Ally: London 'Will Be Bombed First' If WW3 Breaks Out" (The Independent)
"US on the 'Pathway' Toward Another World War, General Warns" (Fox Business)
"Could the United States and China Really Go to War?" (Brookings)
"Voters Fearful of World War III as Iran Strikes Israel" (USA Today)
"The World War III Election" (Politico)
Clearly, Donald Trump is far from alone in his repeated assessment that the United States is "closer to World War III" than ever before – people across the world share this sentiment. In February, UK pollster YouGov released the results of a survey showing that 53% of Britons believe that another world war is likely in the next five-to-ten years, with 59% of respondents saying nuclear weapons would be used in the event of a global clash. In March, YouGov conducted a similar poll in the United States, where it discovered the outlook was even more pessimistic than in Britain; the survey found that 61% of Americans believe another world war is likely in the next five-to-ten years, with 67% of respondents saying nuclear weapons would be used in the event of a global clash.
The question before US Christians, then, is Do we want this to happen? Do we want fire to "fall from the sky" in a way that utterly eclipses 9/11?
The answer, obviously, is No.
THE KEYS TO RESURRECTION
Our course of action, therefore, must be twofold.
First, we must cast our ballots accordingly on Nov. 5. The American electorate must reject the war-mongering cabal that is currently entrenched in Washington. We must send packing the puppeteers who have destabilized the United States for much of the past quarter-century. We must spurn the syndicate that, since 9/11, has repaid citizens' support with suffering – thousands of war dead, tens of thousands of traumatized military personnel, and trillions in lost treasure. We must jettison the junta that has empowered Islamist and Communist regimes worldwide, all-the-while stoking hatred for us abroad by betraying America's bedrock values.
Vote. Them. Out.
As former presidential candidates Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii have recently noted, this diabolical clique is composed of Democrats and Republicans; the architects of the policies that have undermined America since 9/11, they warn, are all on the same team. Today, this is becoming easier to see. Just days ago, for example, RINO Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming announced that both she and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney – the power behind the throne from 2001-2009 – will be voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
Whereas two decades ago it was difficult for many conservatives to see beyond the former Vice President's "right-wing" subterfuge, today the political picture is clearer. Now, it comes as no surprise that the Neocon con man is casting his lot with the Communist-Democrats. Cheney never met a war he didn't like, and a Harris-Walz administration would edge America ever-closer toward conflict, whether in Ukraine, the Middle East, or the Far East. A Trump-Vance administration, reinforced by a Kennedy-Gabbard flank, would not.
The anniversary of 9/11 underscores the need to vote wisely on Nov. 5, so as to head off any new globalist-engineered war and the devastation that such a conflagration would immediately trigger. It also points to a second, more fundamental component of the fight to reclaim the United States, reminding us that, ultimately, the solution to the nation's ills is not political, but spiritual.
Naturally, when viewed from the outside, the prospect of reigniting America morally seems like a pipe dream. However, when viewed through the lens of the supernatural, a different picture begins to emerge.
As a consequence of the nation's sin, the decay of American society is now so advanced, so palpable, as to be irrefutable. Our cancerous national malaise is so pervasive, and so penetrative, that even many with little or no religious training can sense it. This presents US Christians with a remarkable opportunity.
Unraveling is often a slow process – so gradual as to be almost imperceptible to most, especially the young, until ruin has arrived.
In my youth, for example, the full repercussions of the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s were still relatively unclear. Well into the 1990s, the main costs of the unbridled pursuit of pleasure seemed to be unplanned pregnancy (typically "solved" through abortion, which went unseen by all but the mother, the abortionist, and God), and AIDS (typically afflicting practitioners of certain immoral lifestyles, which again often went unseen).
Three decades later, however, the full consequences of the Sexual Revolution are now far more discernible. In 2024, the costs are undeniable, because they are emerging ever more, everywhere, every day. What's more, it seems that among the metastasizing mountain of ramifications, one affliction eclipses all others.
For members of the Gen Z cohort, especially, the perils of unplanned pregnancy and sexually-transmitted disease have been overshadowed by what in some ways is an even greater tribulation – a crisis of identity. An entire generation of men has been emasculated and effeminized. An entire generation of women has been hypersexualized and self-aggrandized. Manhood and womanhood have been stripped of all meaning. Young men and women are wandering lost and lonely, desperate for the complementarity of the other; but oblivious as to how to find it, and incapable of fulfilling their divinely-designed roles even if they do. For any older readers who may not be able to grasp the extent of this cataclysm, I can only say: Go ask your twenty-something children or grandchildren about the crisis – they'll tell you all about it.
And therein lies the opportunity for US Christians. Because the Darkness is now so dark, a wave of conversions seems to be igniting. Recent high-profile converts, for example, include commentator Candace Owens; actor Shia LaBeouf; comedians Russell Brand and Rob Schneider; podcaster Cameron Bertuzzi; former pornographic content creator Bree Solstad; and Tammy Peterson, wife of renowned psychologist and commentator Dr. Jordan B. Peterson.
There are also growing, ground-level reports that the number of baptisms and confirmations for both adolescents and adults have begun to surge in certain Catholic parishes. A similar phenomenon seems to be occurring in Evangelical circles, as well; in May, for example, more than 12,000 people were baptized – in California, no less – over a two-day period in what was billed as the largest baptism in US history. "The baptisms come on the heels of a move of God happening in other parts of the country," CBN reported. "Florida beaches, the Texas Gulf, and rivers in the Midwest have become epicenters for mass baptisms."
In light of such reports, is seems that something, or rather someone – the Holy Spirit – may indeed be stirring. Therefore, US Christians, through relentless prayer and hard work, must seize the day and build upon such manifestations of grace, however and wherever we can.
Whatever Election Day brings, we must press forward to reclaim our country, and win the souls of our countrymen, for God.
We must galvanize the nation so that the phrase "God Bless America" becomes far more than just a political or cultural slogan – so that it is returned to its rightful state as a prayerful petition, and a national aspiration.
Sept. 11, 2001 marked the end of one America. Through God's grace, Nov. 5 could mark the beginning of another.
Writer, editor and producer Stephen Wynne has spent the past seven years covering, from a Catholic perspective, the latest developments in the Church, the nation and the world. Prior to his work in journalism, he spent eight years co-authoring “Repairing the Breach,” a book examining the war of worldviews between Christianity and Darwinism. A Show-Me State native, he holds a BA in Creative Writing from Pepperdine University and an Executive MBA from the Bloch School of Business at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
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