Some things are too horrible to take in all at once. The eyes send accurate data to the brain, but for a few moments at least, the mind simply cannot fathom what the eyes are saying. At a key moment on 9/11/2001, ABC News had a split-screen shot with a burning World Trade Center on one side of the screen and a burning Pentagon on the other. The New York camera had zoomed in on the northeast corner of the South Tower’s 80th floor, where molten metal could be seen pouring from the building.
The director’s instincts were perfect because this was about to be the first point of structural failure that would turn into the cascade of failures that would bring the building down. The camera caught that initial break in the structure. As the cascade continued, the cameraman pulled out, allowing us to see the giant building collapse in real time. Floor by floor, a modern structure turned into an angry cloud of concrete, metal, and plaster dust.
ABC anchorman Peter Jennings missed it. He continued chatting amiably with a reporter as the tragedy unfolded on the monitors before him. With the building fully down, he realized something had happened, but did not know what. He wondered aloud where this new plume of smoke had come from. It took a reporter on the ground to make him realize that the tower was no longer visible because it was no longer there.
I’m sure that many across the country had the same problem. The brain had no point of reference for understanding a building of this size collapsing in on itself. We couldn’t believe our eyes because what we saw seemed impossible.
A new 9/11 is taking place in America. It is happening before our eyes. But it is so big and so terrible that our brains struggle to interpret what our eyes tell us. A cascading collapse is underway. The weak levels break first, but the catastrophe eventually crushes the entire edifice.
It’s not a failure of our eyes. We can see what’s happening. The problem is that we have never seen anything like this. We don’t have a frame of reference quantifying the ongoing national destruction. Radical Muslim terrorists physically attacked the United States on 9/11. This time, terrorist sympathizers have been accepted into the mainstream of American politics.
There are many examples of America’s structural failure. I’ll use socialist darling Hasan Piker as an example. He has said, “I would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time.” In other words, he favors totalitarianism and terrorism over liberal democracy. Piker has been prominently featured at campaign rallies for several major political figures this year. He has said, “America deserved 9/11.” He apologized later, but what a thing to pop out of a person’s mouth. Using words too profane to quote here, Piker has also expressed utter disdain for the U.S. Constitution.
He laces his rhetoric with vivid images of violence. “Left-wingers, liberals, you need to be showing your opponents’ guts on there, you need to be gutting them … [Let] their intestines writhe on-stage. Slice them up. Slice ‘em and dice ‘em.” (As with the rest of his quotes, I have left out the profanity.) He calls for killing landlords. “Murder” them. “Let the streets soak in their red capitalist blood.”
Piker is not just a socialist. He loves communism and admires even the most murderous communist regimes. He said, “The fall of the USSR was one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century.” He also said, “Mao Zedong is one of the great leaders of this world.” The Black Book of Communism, a standard reference work, estimated that Mao’s regime murdered 65 million people — far more than any other in history. Yet major politicians embrace this man and honor him at their rallies.
The big difference between the collapse of a building and the collapse of a nation is that once the building begins to go down, the options disappear. But with our nation, there is still hope. When Jonah preached to Nineveh, it was not a great sermon by modern standards. He said, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (Jonah 3:4). Then something amazing happened. The people “believed God” (verse 5), and He spared Nineveh.
This isn’t about a candidate or a political party. It’s about America and God.
