A fork in the timeline: 9/11

Twenty-five years ago today, I was sitting in a history class called "The History of US Foreign Relations," at Wesleyan University in roughly a two-hour drive from New York City. A classmate's phone rang (or perhaps she got an text message...I don't remember) and she ran out of the room crying because there'd been a terrorist attack in New York City and her family member was missing. I went back to my dorm room and saw video of the burning World Trade Center on my computer. It was 9/11/2001 and a day I will never forget.

In my mind, 9/11 was the day that the timeline forked both for me and the country of my birth. Before 9/11, I was an American patriot and my homeland was the greatest country on Earth. After 9/11, things were much different. The changes to me and the country didn't happen all at once, they took decades, but nothing was ever the same.

In the short-term, the days shortly after the attack, I started to notice the cracks in the Matrix. The reaction of the liberal art students on my campus stood in stark contrast to the reaction I saw on TV and off campus. While Wesleyan students held memorials for those lost, they generally blamed US foreign policy for the attacks. According to them, the 9/11 attacks were predictable blowback and largely America's own fault for its long history of overseas wars.

For those that weren't around during that time, commercial air traffic came to a halt. When flights resumed, tickets were incredibly cheap because many people were scared to fly. Always the contrarian, I was not afraid and snapped up an inexpensive $99 roundtrip first-class ticket between Hartford and Seattle that would give me a day to see the city during fall break.

The airports after 9/11 were unlike anything I'd experienced before or after. Soldiers in uniforms, body armor and holding big guns were everywhere. Security lines were long and everyone was extremely nice to each other and patient.

Arriving in Seattle, my first time off campus since the attacks, I was surprised to see nationalist, pro-USA rallies on the streets. People were dressed in red, white and blue, waving flags and chanting, "U-S-A, U-S-A." They made me feel very uncomfortable and the whole situation felt very surreal. The problem wasn't that they loved and supported their country - that is normal and to be expected. It was that I got the sense they didn't know why they were out there chanting or even what they were supporting. There was no self-reflection or critical thought, just a base, biological urge generated by fear and anger to support one's group when it was under attack.

The following year, in the summer of 2002, I visited China for the first time, spending roughly three weeks in Hong Kong and a week in Beijing. While I had a mobile phone at the time, mobile data was very rare at the time as was wi-fi or internet of any kind for one's laptop. Because of that, I was largely disconnected from the world during that trip. I remember returning home after the trip to see that suddenly the US political elites were talking about possibly invading Iraq as payback for 9/11. I remember thinking that it seemed weird to invade an apparently unrelated country as a response to 9/11.

The rest is history. The US political elite successfully harnessed the goodwill and nationalism generated amongst the American people and its allies by the 9/11 attacks, along with their fear and anger and embarked on a multiple-decade string of wars. These wars indebted the country to the tune of $40 trillion and cost millions of lives. At the same time, the politicians created a massive surveillance state, and curtailed many of the freedoms people in the country had once enjoyed.

I, myself, moved to China permanently in May 2007...first to Guangzhou before finally settling in Hong Kong, attracted by the energy and excitement I found in a country which was focused on building its future and a better life, not on overseas wars and foreign entanglements. I watched from afar as the political situation in the US became increasingly disjointed and chaotic.

When future historians do an autopsy on the US experiment, they'll point to two or three dates that were turning points that pushed the country into terminal decline. I am confident they will list September 11th, 2001, as one of those dates. Had 9/11 never happened or had US leaders decided to channel the fear, anger and raw nationalism to more constructive ends, the USA, the world and my life would look very different.