America Wanted To Return To 2019

We Never Moved On From COVID-19; Trump's Reelection Was A Healing Move

At 8 a.m. on Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, I parked my car on the campus of Hofstra University. It was my second week of freshman year. Enjoying my newfound independence as a new adult, I walked to grab a coffee at Starbucks on Hempstead Turnpike. Then I headed back to campus, taking a seat and smoking a cigarette on the edge of the campus’ labyrinth, an art installation recently installed that was modeled after the one at Chartres Cathedral in France. This being a time before smartphones and social media, I was utterly oblivious to what was happening in the outside world.

I was enjoying the beautiful, sunny Long Island morning when I saw a woman run toward the parking lot behind C.V. Starr Hall. She looked like she was in a panic. A minute later, I saw two people, a man and a woman, stepping out of the Monroe Lecture Center next door. The woman burst into tears, and the man comforted her. A few minutes after that, another woman ran to the parking lot. The sirens from the local firehouse that resemble air raid sirens went off. I knew it couldn’t be good. It wasn’t noon or 6 p.m. when they typically went off. Something was up.

I stood up and walked toward the Monroe Lecture Center, where I was to have a 9:35 a.m. science class, but the crying woman stopped me.

“I think they’re canceling classes,” the man consoling her said.

My stomach dropped.

“Why?”

“You didn’t see? Two planes crashed into the World Trade Center,” he said. “The buildings are on fire.”

I imagined two Cessnas, piloted by terrorists, flying in tandem into each tower, causing some minor damage and killing perhaps a few dozen people. I could not even fathom what it would be until I stepped into the building and saw one of the televisions tuned to ABC. The image of Two World Trade crashing to the ground is forever burned into my brain, as is the exchange between Peter Jennings and Don Dahler, the latter of whom was on the scene.

“The entire building has just collapsed…It folded down on itself, and it is not there anymore,” Dahler said.

“The whole side has collapsed?” Jennings asked

“The WHOLE BUILDING has collapsed,” Dahler responded with emotion.

I thought for a time all of Lower Manhattan was gone. I remember the front page of the Daily News that weekend: a photo of rescue workers carrying a body out of the rubble with the headline: TERROR TOLL MAY TOP 10,000.

The Labyrinth on Hofstra University’s campus on Long Island. The short brick wall on the left is where I was sitting on the morning of 9/11.

Everything felt very different in the days, weeks, months, and even years after 9/11. The attacks became part of our identity as New Yorkers. Everyone knew someone who died; everyone felt personally affected. For a long time, it felt like the city had two lives: one before 9/11 and one after. The attacks felt like a shadow hanging over all of us. The grieving process and the moving-on process were challenging.

The path back to normalcy after September 11th came by inches. Pretty quickly, I had the urge to move on, even as everyone around me grieved. I did not want to watch another special report or hastily-produced documentary about the attacks. I remember my uncle once walking into the room and scolding me for watching the Screen Actors Guild Awards because another channel was airing previously unseen footage from the World Trade Center moments before the collapse. He changed the channel because he was morbidly interested in seeing if the footage showed bodies falling from the tower. “Why would I want to see this?” I thought.

I didn’t want to be on Hofstra’s campus anymore. I sincerely considered transferring out because just being on the campus was triggering. I finished my first semester with a 1.95 GPA and was on academic probation because I rarely attended class.

Exactly one year and one week after the attacks, I started the eight-week training course for WRHU, Hofstra’s student-run radio station. I was cleared for air on the same day former Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota died. My first broadcast was breaking the news of his death. Slowly, I felt more comfortable being on Hofstra’s campus. Still, for the rest of my time as a student, I refused to take any class offered in any academic building east of California Avenue except once: Sociology of Terrorism. When I took that class in the Spring semester of 2005, it was the first time since 9/11 that I had set foot in the labyrinth. I felt that class, which I took primarily to ease my anxiety over the possibility of another terrorist attack, was a form of healing.

Over time, I still felt nostalgic for the world of September 10th, but slowly, as certain milestones were reached, that faded away. The end of the Bush presidency in January 2009 was another significant milestone, followed by the end of the War in Iraq in 2010.

I am not sure that I fully felt “normal” again until Osama Bin Laden was killed on May 1, 2011. The day after his killing, I went to Hazmat One, an FDNY firehouse in Maspeth, Queens, that lost quite a few members on 9/11. I didn’t get to interview anyone there since they were out fighting a massive fire that destroyed O’Neils, a popular Irish pub in the neighborhood. Still, while I was standing in Maspeth Memorial Park, which offers a panoramic view of Lower Manhattan – and where dozens of locals gathered to watch the attacks a decade earlier – I felt a rush come over me. The silhouette of One World Trade Center, still under construction, felt appropriate. We hadn’t fully healed yet, but we were close.

Why did I tell this story, and what does this have to do with the election?

I think a massively underexplored reason Trump was returned to the presidency this month was many voters saw his reelection as a form of post-pandemic healing. Like my nostalgia for September 10th, 2001, the American public still has nostalgia for 2019, the year before the COVID-19 Pandemic shut down the world and altered society, a pandemic whose long, arduous conclusion was during the Biden presidency, not Trump’s.

For the entire election season, Americans responded to pollsters saying they were not better off now than they were four years ago. This baffled many Democrats. Four years ago was 2020, the height of the pandemic and the economic and social chaos it caused. How could anyone say they aren’t better off now than during that crazy year? Many political observers, however, had concluded that Americans had memory-holed 2020, and when they were asked the question, the year they were harkening back to was 2019, not 2020.

Since the start of the pandemic, we often heard from people, mainly on the progressive side of the spectrum, that 2019 was “never coming back” and that we would have to adjust to a “new normal.” That was not true to the extent that they claimed it would be, but it’s hard not to admit that, in many ways, 2019 never did come back.

Even for me, memories of 2019 fill me with joy. It was the last time my friends and I went to the Hamptons for the annual summer weekend of partying we had been doing for 15 years. It was the last time I ate at some of my favorite restaurants, which never returned after the pandemic. It was the last time I went to a Pride Parade. Even this week, observing the backlash to transgender rights, I was reminded that 2019 was the year Taylor Swift released her Pride anthem, “You Need To Calm Down,” and Laverne Cox, one of the most prominent trans actors, appeared in several Pride-themed Smirnoff vodka commercials. So many things that brought me joy in 2019 – trivia nights, game nights, big holiday parties – have never returned in the same way they did before the pandemic. We may not have ended up in rolling lockdowns, living our lives behind masks the way many people predicted – even hoped – we would, but society did change, and for many people, that change left a lot to be desired.

Conservatives yearn for 2019 because it was a time when Trump was in the White House, Republicans had the U.S. Senate, and though “wokeness” existed, the Trump presidency, at the very least, offered a bulwark against its social power. Progressives yearned for 2019 because it was a time when the progressive movement was still ascending, serving as resistance to Trump, and progress was being made on social justice causes from LGBTQ rights, immigration, and criminal justice. The potential presidencies of Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren felt like realistic possibilities, and big things like criminal justice reform and Medicare For All still seemed possible. Moderates and apolitical people yearned for 2019 because eggs and milk were cheap, crime and disorder were low, the migrant crisis wasn’t as apparent outside of the border region, and there weren’t wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Politically, what people remember about 2019 was who was in charge – Donald Trump. While it may not seem logical, it makes sense that many voters would connect Trump and 2019 when choosing a president and default to him, hoping his win will help usher back in that period.

Whether Trump can redeliver 2019 is doubtful, but it’s possible, like the end of the Bush presidency and the death of Bin Laden was to me, Trump’s election might be an arbitrary change that might make people feel 2019 has returned without any tangible changes happening. Vibes, as they say. It might feel like a page that’s been turned without him having to do anything to turn it. If that’s the case, Trump will have had the last laugh.