I was 24 when 9/11 happened. As shocking as it was seeing that tragedy happen in real time, what truly horrified me in the ensuing years was the way many Americans reacted. The Islamophobia, xenophobia, the willful embrace of laws that eroded our civil liberties – and the politicians who pounced on that sentiment.
You already know the idiom about history, so I won’t repeat it here. I’ll simply note that the post-9/11 climate in the US was a big step toward where we are today. Not the first one, but the first one where I was old enough to appreciate what was really going on. This was the decade of the Patriot Act, the Homeland Security Act, and the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), followed by Supreme Court rulings like Citizens United.
These were things that influenced me when I wrote “The Republic” in 2006, later published in Wet Ink in 2008.
Reading the story again for the first time in over 15 years, it’s disappointing to see that the same themes ring true today more than when I wrote it.
Here it is for you to read. Apologies for the low-quality PDF! All I have is one copy of the original print mag that I had to scan from with my phone app, not even a proper photocopier or scanner like I had in 2006.