Consider that Virginia used to celebrate not Martin Luther King Day, but a monstrosity it called Lee-Jackson-King day, pairing King with [Robert E.] Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, as if a moral ocean did not yawn between a Black civil-rights icon and two slave-holding Confederate generals. America, you see, has always run from the truth of itself. That’s what made Lee’s last retreat so satisfying.

With their win in Afghanistan, terrorists by whatever name can only be further motivated to conduct new attacks. What might those look like? From experience we know they prefer the big event, such as crashing airliners into buildings and blowing up high value targets. There are other options when big targets are not vulnerable.

The coronavirus is a serious illness, and no country has gotten everything right. Australia has proven, though, that dispensing with key elements of advanced liberal society in the hopes of total victory over the virus is foolhardy and wrong.

Sad to say, it seems to take monstrous misfortune to unite us. The Great Depression. Pearl Harbor. 9/11. The COVID-19 pandemic, not so much. Something has happened in the past 20 years to pull us apart. Had we united against the coronavirus as we did against the Axis powers or al-Qaeda, we might have beat the virus by now.

As I watched in horror and amazement, the first tower of the World Trade Center collapsed. A sensation of astonishment came over me. The phone was still pressed against my ear, when Nancy explained that the Harvard office of the recording secretary on Mount Auburn Street was sending everyone home.

I sat there with my mouth open, trying to understand what I was seeing. Words like attack, phrases like “God help us,” and frantic news anchors’ voices came at me like bombs during the blitz.

We have become a nation of truths stranger than fiction, a nation where satire must run to keep up with reality. As we go forward from this moment, we find ourselves contending for the very soul of America — something none of us could have imagined 20 years ago. Which is why it must be said, tragically, that the terrorists succeeded beyond their dreams in inflicting damage on this country.