When 9-11 happened, I, along with the rest of the country, wondered what our country would look like once we figured it out. We still don't know but something a friend said resonated with me at the time and is still with me: "9-11 has forever changed our country and everybody in it and anybody who has anything to do with America."
This has proven to be true. One of the very subtle ways I think the country has changed is the perpetual suspicion which is a part of our lives: suspicions of those who are different. Here's an example: On the bus, as I was crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, I glanced up and noticed a woman in a burka and beyond us, coming toward the bridge, very close, was a gigantic container ship: my first thought: how ironic that I'm in a bus with a Muslim woman, crossing the GG Bridge and my first thought is terrorism. It is in our psyche, a completely new phenomena, only since 9-11. Can any of us say that when see someone, a different look, someone we perceive to be Muslim, that our minds don't take us to Suspiciousville.
Other things, of course, remind us that life has forever changed. For one thing, two wars going on with the continuing reminders of young Americans dying, not to mention, Iraqi and Afghan innocents being blown up with regularity. (These events may have left the front pages of our newspapers but they are still going on). And, my personal pick, Gitmo where we are still holding low level types acting like they are major terrorists.
On a personal basis, I think that we simply have to protect ourselves the very best we can and then not worry about it. It is the only way to preserve our American way of life. God bless those who gave their lives in whatever ways on that fateful day of 9-11!
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