‘Way back around the turn of the century, I was an amateur of American politics, and I argued with people online (mostly in the comment threads at salon.com; blogs weren’t really a thing yet). I was dismayed, in my naivete, to see how unpersuadable the leftists were; how completely impervious to facts, logic, and shared values their minds were.

In the apprehensive aftermath of the 2000 elections, when the recounts and lawsuits were still going on and no one could say for sure whether Bush or Gore would be president, I was talking politics with one of my office mates. I said, whoever ends up president may regret it; he will be sorely tested. I just had this intuitive sense that the fuse was lit and some big bad history was sure to play out in the next four years. I had been reading news from the Levant; very ugly goings on over there at that time.

Then George W. Bush was inaugurated, and he had this kind of deer-in-the-headlights look to him. The man did not inspire confidence. I supported him and dared to harbor hopes for him, but he ended up being a disappointment across the board.

Then came the 9/11 attacks. I was riled up and ready to kill somebody. And I thought, well, this is horrible, but it’s also a whopping big dose of reality that nobody can deny. Even those impervious leftists I’ve been clashing with have got to sober up and get serious now. The press can’t downplay this; they’ll have to acknowledge that this is a war, and get on a wartime footing to support the effort. And Bush simply must step up and be a wartime president. It should be easy to rally the public behind him; maybe with increased public support he can further a domestic agenda to restore American freedom. Surely we must all be patriots after this, I thought.

We all know how that worked out. The media downplayed the attacks from day one. Instead of a storm of righteous anger in the opinion press, we saw nuanced takes delivered in calm, deliberate NPR voices. The president was not galvanized; he revealed himself to be a slave to political correctness, a man with no ideas and no charisma, a man unwilling or unable to use the bully pulpit. The public did not rally. Additional constraints, often arbitrary and humiliating, were applied to individual liberties. Anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-American demonstrations became fashionable. And leftists slipped their mental moorings and sailed off to a place even further beyond the reach of reason than they had been.

Matt Drudge today ran a story about how the country is more divided now, compared to the “unity” we experienced after 9/11/2001. That unity is a fiction. It never happened, not even for one tiny instant. The squabbling grew loud before sunset, on that terrible day.

The horror of thousands of people flattened by impacts or charred by fire gave way, over time, to the realization that all the people in a position to do anything about it were not in a mindset to do anything about it. Bush should have dished up daily doses of fire and brimstone; instead he came out bi-weekly to serve weak tea and steamed melba toast. The media jerked his chain any old way they liked, even as they acted as a soporific to the public and donated publicity to the anti-war movement. You know the rest.

9/11 wasn’t just an atrocity and a horrible experience. It was also a red pill, a destroyer of illusions. 9/11 shone a harsh and sudden light on the frightful decline of America. After 9/11, anyone who had thought there were moral and conscientious limits to the human capacity for partisanship and doublethink, found out there were no limits after all. Anyone who had confidence in the authorities found out that confidence had been misplaced. Anyone who cherished his liberty and dignity got aggressively frisked by the TSA. Anyone who hoped America could heal its partisan divide by uniting around a shared value – any value – found his hopes dashed for good.

The thing about red pills is, once you’ve had one, you get more. There must be numerous Americans who got their first red pill after 9/11. Those who continued to pay attention have acquired a lifetime supply by now.