On June 5, 2028, the alleged mastermind of the worst terror attack in United States history is finally due to stand trial. America has taken its time. So much time, in fact, that the country doing the prosecuting is almost unrecognizable from the one that was attacked.
In 2001, the United States was enjoying its moment as the world’s undisputed hegemon, while Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq and the Taliban governed Afghanistan. Facebook did not exist, and America’s understanding of itself and its position in the world was governed by newspapers, cable TV and a few well-known anchors. Today, America is but one power led by a reality TV star, confronting a rapidly shifting global order.
On the day Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s trial will begin, the iPhone will be three weeks shy of legal drinking age, and TikTok will be almost 12. The Taliban will still rule Afghanistan, though. When Mohammed and his three co-defendants finally enter the courtroom, will it feel like the reckoning that 9/11 families have spent decades waiting for?
Or will the trial become yet another battlefield in the culture wars, with legions of disillusioned Americans picking it apart in real time and dismissing the institutions prosecuting it? Ask anybody in the U.S. over the age of about 35 where they were on September 11, 2001, and they’ll likely be able to reel off a detailed description of a moment crystallized in time. They’ll remember the profound shock they experienced watching the scarcely believable scene of towers collapsing and doomed inhabitants leaping to their deaths.
They’ll also recount how fear and horror morphed into anger and desire for retribution. But with each passing day, the population that remembers these raw emotions shrinks a little, and the way the nation relates to 9/11 shifts in tandem. By 2028, almost nobody under 30 will have anything more than a toddler’s memory of 9/11.
For most of Gen Z and all of Gen Alpha, the attacks belong to that strange category of historical events they have technically seen, but that happened before they existed. The look of alarm on then-President George W. Bush’s face in a Florida classroom as Andrew Card whispers in his ear, “Sir, a second plane has hit the tower,” is not an image synonymous with a national tragedy; it’s just a way to express your faux shock at the latest spat between vapid TikTok-famous reality show celebrities, or news the local Trader Joe’s is out of branded tote bags.
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