It was early that morning. I was laying in bed still, very much in love with a French film director whom I thought would be a permanent fixture in the lives of my daughter and I. A radical lefty, he wasn’t someone who would ever sympathize with America on this day. And in the weeks to follow he would argue the other side, that the terrorists had a right because of the bad things we had done over the past few decades. He was anti-Israel, pro-communist, and very much anti-American. But I loved the bastard. Until I didn’t.

There are times when my love for my country burns hot. I love being an American. I feel no shame in it. On 9/11 I really did feel a need to unite with my fellow Americans because we’d been hit. Not only had we been hit, but we’d been hit by a ragtag group of very smart terrorists who needed only a rudimentary knowledge of flying and some box-cutters. We were sitting ducks.

Since then, everything has changed.

Any time you get on an airplane you feel the effects of 9/11. Any time there is a major emergency in the country and the cable news networks cover it 24/7 you remember 9/11. Any time you see a fire, you think of 9/11. And any time you watch a movie with a shot of the World Trade Center, you think of 9/11.

My daughter was three when the planes hit the towers. She has grown up in a post-9/11 world. In this world we don’t trust anyone when we get anywhere near an airplane, a train, a subway platform, an amusement park, or anywhere else we might suddenly be attacked by a rogue terrorist out to make a point. I have never bought into the idea that they just want to “hurt Americans” because of our “American lifestyle.” No one is that stupid. They hate our imperialist ways, our war mongering, our Americanization of the world. They probably wouldn’t care what we did with our silly lives as long as we weren’t up in their business, taking their oil, supporting wars and then abandoning them.

This country did change after that day. It changed in ways I never thought possible. The radical right wing fanaticism, racism and hysteria we see today is a direct response to what happened that day. Three Presidents have been judged vis a vis 9/11 and subsequently the war in Iraq (9/11 used as a lame excuse to invade Iraq).

One can’t help but be moved by the patriotism and love for America that emerged in the wake of this day ten years ago. I find myself with mixed feelings, though. I see the day being used and abused by those who seek to gain power through fear. I see the American flag waving as if this was a war we could actually fight and win. We can’t fight an enemy we can’t see or recognize. And now to see that fear and anger lobbied at Muslims – the whole thing comes full circle. We can’t really find them or fight them because we can’t separate them from ordinary citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan. They are the unseen enemy, our terrorist enemies. So now some radicals have decided to just paint all of Islam with the same brush. What a shame. What an ugly side of our country we are showing now.

We elected the right man to lead us out of darkness. But he isn’t going to do it by fanning the flames of hate. And for that, he will be punished.