A Drunk Old Man Named, “America”

I remember September 11th, 2001, like it was yesterday. When I was not working, I was glued to a television, seeking answers or waiting for another attack. There was a profound sense of sadness and shock throughout the United States. On Thursday, September 13th, 2001, I was in New Jersey. I could see the smoldering dark cloud that billowed up in lower Manhattan from I-95. Later that day, I was in Northern Virginia. Arlington was a war zone. At an event on September 14th, I found myself in an obscure Virginia town, holding hands with strangers at an impromptu prayer for the victims of 9/11 and their families. After the initial sadness wore off, the anger and rage set in.

I, like many of my fellow Americans, were going to send every single Muslim to Allah – one bullet or MOAB at a time.

The 2000s found me operating around the world, dutifully contributing to GWoT. So determined to kill the enemy, I received my first Master’s degree in Islamic studies with an emphasis on Shi’a Islam. I wanted to understand my enemy better so that killing my enemy was easier. Then, as the wars continued on, the mood changed. Eventually, it became obvious to me that Muslims may or may not have perpetrated 9/11, but the real bad guys were in Washington, DC, not Mecca.

In 2001, the United States had just exited a transformative 1990s. “Pax Americana” was the mantra. The sole superpower, the United States no longer contended with the Soviet Union. China was still marginally irrelevant. The stock market had jumped to absurd heights before collapsing thanks to a “Dot Com Bubble,” but we were still an optimistic people. The internet, cable television, and an economy that was doing well (despite a mild recession), all contributed to a positive outlook. We were high on American power, and the fact that terrorists had hit us, only meant we would hit them harder. In 2001, it was almost impossible to find a home without an American flag.

In so many ways, 9/11 became the beginning of the end.

The totality of American hegemony contributed to an indescribable softness throughout the United States. Rather than children watching pro-war programming as they did from the 1950s to the 1980s, children were now raised on Glee and The Big Bang Theory. Muscular soldiers from GI Joe or Rambo upon which GenX was raised, were replaced by singing homosexuals and math nerds. Millennials and early stage GenZ children were being raised by gay actors and an Obama presidency that likely featured a transgender first “lady.”

The world was at war, and yet, at home, the confidence of American military might made the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq an afterthought. A pathetic indifference was very real in a United States that was thousands of miles away from young boys dying in Fallujah, Helmand Province, or Katsina, Nigeria. It was as if two distinct Americas had taken root in the country: one that was free to experiment on changing social norms and a burning hatred for the Constitutional values that ironically gave them the freedoms to be queer, and the other America that was burying its sons – whether those boys were killed by VBIEDs, bullets, or fentanyl, the pain of their mothers was ignored by Washington.

In 2016, and certainly by 2020, it was clear that the hubris of American might was unwarranted. Our jobs were outsourced to China, we lost in Iraq and Afghanistan, our economy was propped up by cheap lending and usury, and a pandemic was about to result in the meek surrender of our rights. Yet, like a drunk old man, too many Americans continued to believe in a strength that it no longer had. From 2021 to 2024, we saw that weakness amplified on a world stage.

The question for us now is which America will emerge from the hangover of the past 25 years. Will it be an ever more enfeebled man that needs to drink more of his own sauce to believe in his own strength, or will it be a man who awakens to the fact that he needs to return to his roots? Will he continue to raise future generations of geldings, or will he awaken to the need to get back to a strong and righteous life? Will it be a man still drunk on a power he no longer has, attempting wars with countries that are no longer weak, or a man who sobers up to the realities of a new world around him?

I do not know the answers. I simply know that the America of 2001 is long gone. As the 250th anniversary of the United States approaches quickly, which America will emerge: the drunk old man who stays drunk on his former power to the detriment of himself and those around him, or the man who sobers up and reclaims his old self by reembracing the values that gave him power in the first place.

You may hope for the latter but prepare for the former.