September 11, 2026
If there is one lesson I wish we could have learned over the last 25 years, it would be from this quote by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Sadly, as a society, we are incapable of following this advice. We allow our initial emotions to cloud our judgement and, instead of carefully choosing our actions, we do what feels good in the moment to create a feeling of revenge and retribution toward those we think are responsible for an event.
Here we are, 25 years later, and what have we actually accomplished? Afghanistan is still ruled by the Taliban, we sacrificed our privacy to a degree that was unimaginable at the start of the new millennium, and we have a Middle East that is still in Chaos.
The Texas Observer had an editorial back in 2001 that also wanted us to fully process our emotions before using logic to choose actions to respond to address the event.
Nate Blakeslee
