Yesterday was the fiftieth anniversary of the Kent State shootings. It was a dark day on all college campuses following this tragedy. More than that, It was a defining moment in our history as a nation as a divide was created that still exists today.

There were other fiftieth anniversaries that I highlighted with a blog. Last year we had the fiftieth anniversary of the first moon landing (perhaps????)

In 2018 we had the fiftieth anniversary of the Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy assassinations

Then in 2014 we had the fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles first coming to America and appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show.

A few months before this, in November 2013, we had the fiftieth anniversary of the JFK Assassination.

But yesterday I was thinking about September 11, 2001.

I was able to process the fiftieth anniversaries of those events sighted as they did happen quite a while ago, and I was quite young. Thirteen for JFK and The Beatles, seventeen for MLK and Bobby, and nineteen for the moon landing and Kent State.

Somehow, however, the notion that we will be acknowledging the nineteenth anniversary of 9/11 blew my mind.

It hardly seems possible.

What a different world was created in the rubble of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the patch of ground in rural Pennsylvania.

The shock that we all experienced seemed to last for a long time. For, unfortunately, a short time, Americans were united as a nation. The partisanship that has torn our country apart from the Viet Nam War era until the present day was put on hold in September 2001.

You would think that a pandemic would do the same.

We are as divided as we ever have been, and it seems that each side hates the other with such passion and conviction that the prospect of working together to help our nation is more unlikely than ever.

I have tried to be positive on these pages and have not recently railed against any political leader, but anger has morphed into despondency, and I fear the America that we used to know and love may never be seen again.

We might as well be talking about Yankees and Rebels when we talk about Blue and Red states. There is so much disdain for the leaders of both parties and for their supporters.

We need reconciliation, on and we need it now or else the numbers of victims of this dreaded disease will continue to climb as we look for someone to blame for its spread.