What America has learned since 9/11

The world is more interconnected than ever — and yet we can't master it

A September 11 memorial.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

Twenty years ago, I was in sitting on a trading floor in midtown Manhattan when the world collapsed before my eyes.

My memories of the rest of that day — indeed, of the rest of the week — are somewhat scattered. I remember dry-heaving when the first tower collapsed, thinking that it must still have been substantially occupied, and that thousands of innocent people had just perished in an instant. I remember sitting in my boss's living room uptown, where I'd walked, since I couldn't get home to Brooklyn yet, watching the television and listening to the idle chatter of his other guests and wanting to scream: how can you keep on talking like that? Don't you all understand? Everything is different now.

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Noah Millman

Noah Millman is a screenwriter and filmmaker, a political columnist and a critic. From 2012 through 2017 he was a senior editor and featured blogger at The American Conservative. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Politico, USA Today, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Foreign Policy, Modern Age, First Things, and the Jewish Review of Books, among other publications. Noah lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.