What can be said about 9/11 that hasn't already been said? In all honesty, probably nothing.

If you were too young to remember or if you weren't born yet, Go look it up. Watch the footage. Experience it.

Those of us who were here, remember. We remember where we were. We remember the odd reactions that weren't "normal." We remember sudden gas lines at gas stations as people were unsure of where our world was headed. We remember the somber looks in everyone you met.

You remember thinking when the first plane hit that this was some crazy accident. As soon as the second plane hit, you knew. You knew that someone somewhere had decided that it was time to bring America to its knees. Then we heard of the plane hitting the Pentagon. Then Flight 93 went down in Pennsylvania.

We remember the shock on the faces of news anchors in New York. We saw the shock on the faces of those on the streets in New York. We remember the fire trucks rushing in and later debris-covered people making their way out.

Scenes we wish we could forget were people jumping and the sounds of their landings. As it played over and over again, we wished for the people not to jump, but we couldn't look away as they did. We didn't have a better solution for them to escape the flames, but kept hoping for one.

Now we can watch the footage of the command centers that had been set up in the base of the towers. The firemen going up the steps, as emergency services coordinated the rescue efforts on the ground level. We try not to rewind time in our head and refrain from yelling at the screen for these people to run! We know there's nothing that can be done 25 years later, but we still have that weird urge to somehow figure out how they could have been saved.

We remember the flags flying in the days after. We remember that feeling of grief and nationwide pride in America being at its peak for the first time since probably Pearl Harbor. We gathered our friends and family close. As a nation, we determined to bring the people responsible to justice.

We said we'd never forget. We thought the memories were burned into our minds.

But we forgot.

A mere 25 years later, we have a Muslim Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, minimizing the attacks to the Council on American Islamic Relations, known as CAIR, saying that on 9/11, "some people did something." In the weird world we now live in, we had a New Yorker, AOC defending the comment, saying that people were only picking on Omar because she's a woman of color. Nah, we just love our country and find that comment repulsive.

2,996 died when those people "did something."

Another 5,000+ have died from health issues caused by breathing in the debris.

Families of those lost on 9/11 have specifically requested that the NYC Mayor Mamdani please not attend services today after he hung out with a guy who said that America deserved 9/11. The mayor didn't push back on that remark - until he was confronted. But he's going to go, in spite of nearly 100,000 people signing a petition asking him not to. Even Jill Biden's former press secretary signed it. But, he went, just to show that the feelings of the families there don't matter to him. 

The mayor's wife, Bushra Khalidi, announced that she plans to host a "Free Palestine Solidarity March" at the World Trade Center site on September 11th, because the timing is "intentionally symbolic" and that "all of the important people will be there." She says it's "a celebration of resistance," and is scheduled to begin at 8:46 AM-the exact moment the first plane struck the North Tower in 2001. She's going to feature "interpretive dance performances" and "a candlelight vigil for Gaza set to the music of the resistance."

Ronald Reagan warned us, back in the 1980s, twenty years before 9/11, saying, "Freedom is **never more than one generation away from extinction. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same."

A generation is 20-30 years. 

That's how long it took for us to lose the respect for those who experienced the horror of that day.

We've been too busy being nice and tolerant. We thought that we could soften the hearts of those with the ideologies of those who attacked us. Over the decades, multiple attacks by the same group that attacked us on 9/11 even using the words "Allahu Akbar" still hasn't set off alarm bells for most.

Sadly, and yet somehow fortunately, we are still naive. We've welcomed in those who want to destroy our country. We cheer for the demise of what made us America.

Now on this solemn anniversary, we are being mocked for remembering. 

We tried to be nice, when we shouldn't have. We opened the doors when we should have slammed them shut and bolted them. 

All I can say to the next generation is, "Good luck." We failed you, and some of us know it.