S15 EP163: Hour 1 - Remembering

On the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001, Erick Erickson opens not with the news but with Welles Crowther, the 24 year old equities trader on the 104th floor of the South Tower who tied a red bandana around his face, carried an injured woman down 17 floors, and went back up the stairs again and again until he died alongside firefighters in the lobby. Prompted by a question from his daughter Evelyn about whether Americans have turned misery into a way of honoring the day, Erick draws a hard line between grieving and honoring, reads the names of the 2,977 dead, and argues that the unity of September 12 was cheap unity because fear is free. He revisits Todd Beamer and Flight 93, the 343 firefighters and 71 police officers, Article 5 of NATO, Cantor Fitzgerald's 658 employees, President Trump's posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom for Crowther, and the algorithmic outrage industry that now profits from keeping Americans sorted into factions.

Welles Crowther, the red bandana, the 78th floor sky lobby, and the Tunnel to Towers Foundation touring the South Tower stairwell as Trump awards him the Presidential Medal of Freedom Erick's answer to his daughter Evelyn: grief fades with time and is private, honor is public and chosen, and a country that only knows how to grieve on September 11 has made an idol of the day Why the post 9/11 unity was cheap: Gettysburg 1913, British poppies, the 2000 Florida recount, Jim Jeffords, and unity that only shows up when a building falls on your neighbors Todd Beamer, Flight 93, "let's roll," the Pentagon, Article 5 of NATO, and the 2,977 names Erick challenges listeners to scroll through Caller Mark in Jacksonville on why America came together after 9/11 and tore itself apart over COVID, plus Erick on Albany Georgia, the conspiracy theorists who still claim controlled demolition, and the algorithm that pays people to divide us Erick's own September 11 memory in a middle Georgia law office, the out of town lawyer who insisted the deposition go forward, Adam Milani and Oklahoma City, and the moment he stopped wanting to be a lawyer