Revisiting Flight 93

(Short essay posted on my social media on January 9, 2021.)

A screengrab from the FRONTLINE documentary ‘Trump’s American Carnage,’

Words matter. Take the word “Antifa.” When used on Fox News, it is shorthand for “domestic terrorist.” To attribute an act to “Antifa” is to brand it the act of a “domestic terrorist.”

By week’s end, an odd dynamic had emerged. Many of the “Patriots” who had proudly stormed the Capitol had begun claiming that it had actually been stormed by “Antifa.”

To assign blame to “Antifa” is to acknowledge that storming the Capitol was a terrorist act and that those who stormed it were, by definition, domestic terrorists.

Terrorists achieved this week the victory that alluded terrorists on 9/11 – a successful assault on America’s foremost symbol of Democracy: The U.S. Capitol building.

The mission of the terrorists locked in the cockpit of Flight 93 had apparently been to ram the jet into the U.S. Capitol dome. But their terrorist mission failed because a group of passengers breached the cockpit door and brought the plane down before it reached its target.

The passengers’ assault on the cockpit marked the second time that day that the cockpit of Flight 93 had been breached. The first group of passengers to breach the cockpit on 9/11 had been the terrorists.

All Americans recognized the villains and heroes on that plane. The villains were the terrorist passengers who first breached the cabin door and the heroes were the patriotic passengers who breached the cockpit to take the plane back and, in so doing, spare the U.S. Capitol from attack.

And all Americans were of one mind on 9/11 that the person who had set that terrorist attack in motion would be held to account, no matter the cost, no matter how long it might take.

The America of this morning is unrecognizably different from the America of 9/11. While we all – even the terrorists themselves – can agree that the assault on the Capitol was a terrorist attack, we cannot agree on the heroes and villains of what just happened: The terrorists who breached the Capitol fervently believed themselves to be the patriots attacking to reclaim control of the cockpit.

Gone, too, is America’s resolve to hold He-Who-Set-The-Terrorists-In-Motion to account.

Yesterday, I watched with pride as an apolitical American wrote to every single U.S. Senator to plead that they act to hold the instigator of the attack to account.

This morning, I awoke to find half of America focusing, instead, on the instruments most frequently used by the instigator to set things in motion, while once again turning a blind eye to the need to hold the instigator-in-chief to account.

If guns don’t kill people, then neither does Twitter.

If you are one who honestly believes that he who pulls the trigger is who must stand to account for his act, then now is the time for you to hold him to account.