Twenty five years ago the world veered away from a good place.
Ms. Ace and I saw the second attack on the World Trade Center live on TV, half a world away. An acquaintance rang our phone in the middle of a winter night and screamed to the top of her lungs;
Turn the T.V. on now! You will not believe this!
Our eyes were captured by the drama unfolding in front of us: a magnificent New York skyscraper, a symbol of American capitalism was billowing a thick, poisonous cloud of smoke.
It was hard to believe the nature of the scene in front of us. Was this an accident? An attack?
A few minutes later, another jetliner came on screen and slammed itself against the South Tower. And we saw this in real-time.
Ms. Ace, who is very prescient and observant, said to me:
“Bush has got his war now, and America will never be the same again.”
And these twenty five years have proven her right. Oh, so right indeed.
The 11th of September of 2001 became the Reichstag fire of the progressive, liberal democracy of the late 1990’s. It was the funeral pyre of the world I grew up in.
And now, twenty five years later, I can say that Ms. Ace was right with her assessment.
The world we have now is much worse than it was in 2001:
Al-Qaida and the Taliban are stronger and regained what they lost back then. The United States has presented itself to be a lamentable husk of its former glory, ruled by corrupt psychopaths. Israel is in a perpetual war against its neighbours and itself. The European Union has been damaged beyond repair by populism, illegal immigration and Brexit. Liberal democracy has vanished and authoritarianism is stronger now than ever. Unjust invasions, land grabs and genocide are in the news every single day. Climate change is now unstoppable. Artificial Intelligence is almost out of control and might turn on us. Corruption, crime and the moral bankruptcy of the ruling classes has become legendary.
Just like in one of my favourite science-fiction stories, a single fleeting moment changed our future for the worse.