There's some uncomfortable truth in what you reveal, Curt.

As a simple example, 9/11 affected the East and West coasts differently.

Moreover, many East Coasters even forget that Washington DC also had a building slammed into. And that a plane went down in PA.

So, there is definitely an issue of "what is important to me is important to all".

On the flip side, most of America never understood - and still don't understand -- the "paranoia" of Russia as a result of WWII. Look up Stalingrad and think about 9/11. We pale in comparison.

The last real tragedy on this nation of any serious magnitude was the Civil War. At that time, the war was being conducted by the two largest armies on the planet. That fact escapes people, but when you want to understand the enmity between the old South and the North, you need look upon the fact that the South was the battlefield for most of that war. That type of experience will last generations.

In that sense, 9/11 is an excellent time to remember: how much it moves us and, still, how much smaller it is than any number of other calamities people and nations have endured.

And that ground zero in NYC still sits, 8 years later, as a big hole in the ground.

Some perspective on that? It's just a few months short of the time between launching Alan Shepard in a sub-orbital lob to Neil Armstrong stepping on the Moon.

We are a nation that has lost it's way. We overly concern ourselves with the trivial, like shouts of "you lie" in a joint Session of Congress, when so much real work sits by the wayside.

It's time to use 9/11 to remind us to get moving again. Time is running out.

9/11 is a story of towers falling and the people inside being killed, but a large part of that story are the heroes who went into those buildings in an effort to reduce the lives lost, and who lost their own. Who were these people?

New York Yankees! New York Mets! They were blue collar men and women working well-paid union jobs who went to work as professionals to save white collar workers, paid salaries far in excess of theirs. How ironic the Right would hold their heroism hostage without acknowledging who they really were. And how sad that we recreate history to suit our ideologies, rather then to honor these people for being the great Americans that they were.

Thank you for this, Curt. Your eloquence far outshines anything I can say in response.

I've often thought, as have others, that bin Laden couldn't in his wildest dreams have imagined the impact those planes slamming into buildings and into American soil would have on our society, on our economy, on our psyche. It was an impact rippling far beyond the devastation and the loss of lives.

The hatred we felt, the vengeance we sought (badly), the overriding fear that clutches us still--it has changed us, possibly forever.

Holding an anti-government Tea-Party Rally the day after commemorating 9/11 tells me that what happened on that day did not draw us together, did not make us a better people--in fact, it managed to do just the opposite.

The collateral damage is hatred. I don't know how to fight against it, I only know it's growing and threatening to consume us all.

Fine writing, Curt.

As someone who lived on 15th Street and 8th Avenue on September 11, 2001, however, I have to disagree about the act of memorializing the people who lost their lives on that day. (I do agree, btw, that conflating their deaths with war is obscene and outrageous.)

What happened in New York was unique, devastating, and unforgettable, especially for those of us who were within smelling distance of ground zero.

New York City as a place is jam-packed with historic memorials, museums, statues, plaques, engravings, cornerstones, flagpoles, cemeteries, art exhibits, parades, and multiple names for streets, parks, and buildings honoring dead people (not all of them famous) or long-ago events.

Immediately after 9/11, some parts of Manhattan (like Union Square and a brick wall of Saint Vincent's Hospital) were plastered with laser printouts displaying photographs of missing people and mini bios describing who they were, where they worked (like Cantor Fitzgerald), and that their families missed them. These 8-1/2-by-11 pages were taped to every conceivable vertical surface by the families of the missing. It was a beautiful, spontaneous, and profoundly sad outpouring of desperation and grief. These ad hoc memorials remained for about a week, maybe two. Life goes on.

I don't think you can or should expect people to blow off 9/11 memorials for just the "big anniversaries."

I do think you can and should keep a wary and cynical eye on politicians who mean to exploit it.

Curt, you have threaded a very tricky discussion here with aplomb - and with a mastery of the language.

The horror of the losses on that day are palpable, yet we cannot pretend to know the impact this had on the families of the victims or even for those in NYC who lived through the attack and its aftermath.

Yet, the politicization of this tragedy - the use of this tragedy to sell us on the need to commit more murder and mayhem in response - is a despicable act that will haunt us all for a long time to come. As ramona points out above, we responded to a craven, soulless act by surrendering our own soul, and the consequences of that are seen in the increased anger and hatred that informs so much of the body politic today.

I cannot help but think of a young child standing at a funeral memorial honoring her father, a fireman who died after entering a building ablaze with jet fuel. Somehow, jingoistic chants of "USA! USA! USA!" would provide little consolation or even contextual sympathy to the abject grief that child is experiencing.

I thank everyone who commented here and added their own insight, especially ClosetLuddite, Ramona and SleepinJeezus, for pointing out the corrosive legacy of that day is the nesting hatred we allowed to infect us. And it has, truly, poisoned our public interchange.

Readytoblowagasket: I didn't intend to diminish the weight of loss and tragedy borne by those who survive the innocents killed that day. In a way, they are all of us, but especially, overwhelmingly, those who knew and loved the people murdered, their families and friends, and even acquaintances and co-workers.

One other point: It's easy to nitpick in hindsight about what should have been done or not done by public officials and emergency personnel before and after 9/11. But it is impossible, I think, to fault in any way, the firefighters and police, the paramedics and all the rest, who ran into and up those towers of ash. In the History Channel's astonishing 102 Minutes That Changed America amateur video shows a thin, fragile line of firefighters, slung with hopelessly insufficient fire hoses and oxygen tanks, pacing up to the last WTC tower standing. The camera pans up to the impossibly tall building, its top obscured by thick smoke from the inferno that would soon collapse it. As much as 9/11 still haunts, their astounding heroism - grim and determined - inspires. That's true of first-responders everywhere, in NYC that day, and in the scorched hills above me now.

I now live on the west coast but I was 90 miles or so from the Twin Towers and the attack was excruciating. I lost no one that I knew in any of the three plane impacts. But we all lost our naive insulation from the bloodiness of oil that day and the awful, sheer horror was as palpable for me and everyone around me as were the incredible acts of bravery. I will never forget my youngest arriving home from high school and after school job remarking that the objects falling from the flames in the television coverage were not building parts but actual humans jumping.

We need to disconnect this tragedy and horror from that of the war on the Constitution which followed it.