LETTER: Remembering the unity of 9/11
Nineteen years ago, During the morning of the cowardly 9/11 attacks, I, like so many other Las Vegans, did what little I could from afar and made my way to the blood bank. There were not many of us at first. I was taken in quickly, but by the time I was done, the line of donors encircled the building. At the price of thousands of lives, we were unified for a period of time.
As we fast-forward to today, we find we are close to seeing the loss of 200,000 American lives from a virus that one country could have staved off from circling the world. But do we find ourselves in unity? No. Instead we find ourselves being torn apart by political gamesmanship that have people in fear of announcing their support of a candidate by so little as even a yard sign, and a press generally more interested in scoring view traffic then factual reporting.
We also find ourselves facing a critical presidential race where the incumbent is denigrated at every opportunity and his anointed challenger is bubble-wrapped from questions and accountability. We have changes to a voting system that make it far too easy for zealots to skew the outcome.
Perhaps our next unity will come this Election Day, but I am not betting on it. I ask my fellow voters to make an informed decision and not an emotionally biased one.