a day of sad remembrance

we still don't understand all the ways in which that day changed us, mostly for the worse --- nearly three thousand people died that day, and hundreds of thousands in the wars that followed, leaving religious bigotry and general jingoism on the rise, privacy and personal freedom on the wane --- rather than being an awful footnote to our history, 9-11 has looked more and more like a crucial turning point, in the wrong direction --- and it didn't have to be that way --- that is the real sadness of it all