If you walk into a convenience store right now, there are kids buying cigarettes, or college kids in bars buying booze, who were not alive on 9/11/2001. There are kids serving in the United States military in foreign countries right now who were not alive on 9/11. I can state this kind of unequivocally now- 9/11 is a long time ago, it is now just a moment in history. There’s a fairly good argument that those moments on that Tuesday morning 24 years ago changed the course of history more than any other point in this century, and yet, it’s not really a part of the political conversation now. We are no longer in Afghanistan, the war that was a direct response to the attacks on America that day. The moment of national unity that 9/11 ignited is most certainly dead and in the ground.

Imagine having a President with 90% approval today, albeit only because society rallied around him. George W. Bush basically exhausted all of that good will and probably is not a President we should emulate today. With that said, imagine any figure in American life taking a bullhorn and telling the assembled first responders at Ground Zero “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” The unity in that moment in time was remarkable. It’s something we have never felt since. It’s something we probably will never hear again. Not long after this, it was all gone amidst fights over Iraq, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, and all the other political wars of that moment. But at least for a moment, we had it.

I remember everything about that day. I remember driving to school and remarking that gas was under a dollar. I remember that the sky was a perfect blue, almost completely cloudless here, roughly 75 miles from Manhattan. I remember that we were supposed to have a cross-country meet that day at home. I remember being in Latin I (I had spots to kill as a senior) and saying to a friend named Tarin that this was “definitely al-Qaeda,” (I read a lot of news back then) when we honestly really didn’t know yet. I remember being sent back to homeroom after that period. I remember sitting in senior lunch (privileges to go out to lunch hadn’t started yet) with my friends and talking to our principal about what was happening. I can almost recite the whole day from memory. I remember the weeks after too. I remember going to New York City, to Shanksville, and to Washington, D.C., all somewhat by chance, and seeing the destruction. I remember the terror of the unknown that followed. I was in the Anthrax scare in the U.S. Senate office buildings (I went to meet Rick Santorum. Yes, really.) and remember being quarantined for a night after a girl with me got sick. I remember the military members with machine guns at the Eagles-Giants game in October, the first Monday Night game in New York after the attacks. I think the enduring image though, for me and for everyone else, was still watching the first responders run into the Trade Centers, and not come out until we saw them dug out by their own colleagues in the weeks that came after. It was sick. It was disgusting. They were the best of humanity. The terrorists truly did represent all that encompasses the worst of humanity.

I’m going to be honest- before 9/11, I really didn’t like New York City. I grew up going there, even as a kid. It was big. There really wasn’t that much for me to do as a kid. There was traffic. My family liked going there for stuff that I really didn’t love at the time. I hate all of their sports teams. If I’m even more honest, I found a distaste for Washington, D.C. as a young adult that took me until years later to get over. Today they are two of my favorite places to go. One of the things that 9/11 made me realize though is that to billions of people around the globe, New York and Washington are quite literally the most recognizable symbols of the United States, and possibly the Western World. I am incredibly lucky to live within a driving distance of either. Part of the reason that cowardly bastards who join petty terrorist organizations wanted to harm them is because they represent the best of us in many, many ways.

That’s the other point that I think needs to be made here. Literally only people from these places could have endured these attacks and dusted themselves off and moved forward. They are resilient people. They’re fighters. For all of the mud that gets thrown at some of our biggest cities, I think it’s important that we remember, these people are tough. Real tough. And proud. And after 9/11, they the victims were the example for the rest of us on how to move forward. If you grew up or lived in the area that I lived in, you remarked for years how every town along I-78 from the city out here to Eastern Pennsylvania had flags on the overpasses and memorials to remember their residents who died in the attacks. It was literally every single one.

I think it’s important to also give Shanksville their props too. The tiny Somerset County town and it’s surrounding areas were not ready for Flight 93 to crash there that day. No one was. They rebuilt though, and built a beautiful memorial to the victims. Their Western Pennsylvania grit got put on full display.

As I said, this is all just history now. George W. Bush is a private citizen living in the Dallas area, and the “Bush dynasty” in politics is over. Osama Bin Laden is dead, and I have to say that celebrating his death outside of the White House was enjoyable and well deserved. There are millions of voting aged Americans who have no recollection of 9/11 or were not alive. It is simply a part of the history books now.

It’s up to us to tell that story now. For the sake of history, we all should. We are all the primary sources of how we experienced that day, and the days that followed. I hope we never forget that.