Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com

Hello, friends.

I will try not to take too much of your time in this introduction since today’s essay got away from me and weighs in around 1,800 words (my typical essays are between 800 and 1,000 words, usually closer to 800). It’s about 9/11 and my thoughts on its 25^th anniversary. None of it is likely new. Most of it is probably said by greater minds than mine. But I wrote it and it’s here, a little below. I hope I did alright.

Welcome to the 190^th installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and musings the post-9/11 world. If you’re a reader who subscribes via Substack, my website, or Patreon, your encouragement helps motivate me. I’m thankful to have any audience.

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I added about 7,500 words to Project: Memoir this week. I wrote about being bullied from the ages of 10 to 15, actually using some essays I wrote for this newsletter last year to help with the process. I also wrote about teachers who impacted me, mainly good and one bad. Real bad. At 53,100 or so words, I think I’m nearing the end of the memoir. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, if anything. The most likely thing would be to post it my Patreon but I’m not sure if it’s too self-indulgent. Considering it’s mainly about how media and fandom made me who I am, it’s not exactly original, but I suspect that if you like the tone of my newsletter essays, you’d probably like the book. We’ll see.

I also worked a little on Four Moons. I edited some tricky chapters and am heading into the point of the novel where the engine really starts moving. I suspect that the editing will become trickier.

There was also a lot of thinking about my various other projects. While the week exhausted me (and next week doesn’t look much better), at least I got some work of my calling done. That makes me real happy.

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I grew up hearing my parents say, “If you’re of a certain age, you’ll always remember where you were when you found out that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.” The same, apparently, with Elvis Presley’s death and John Lennon’s assassination. Growing up, it felt strange to remember things so horrible. And considering my parents—born in 1941 and 1950—lived through the turbulent, bloody 1960s and early-1970s, there was a lot to remember. The morning of September 11^th, 2001, was my generation’s moment. More than Kurt Cobain’s suicide, more than the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, more than the Oklahoma City Bombing, and more the Challenger space shuttle explosion in 1986, all which helped define who were are as a generation or two, the 9/11 attacks loomed larger than them all. Twenty-five years after, it’s impossible not to see how it was a linchpin moment with repercussions of which we’re still living.

I’m not a scholar, politician, futurist (noted or otherwise), or historian. I’m a guy who writes stories that I hope entertain people, a teacher who I hope helps young people achieve their goals and dreams, a parent and husband who provides for their loved ones while dreaming of a better life more suited to chemistry and longings than what I have now. In other words, I’m a regular guy trying to figure shit out. But sometimes I see things and my brain makes connections and I’m not sure if they’re correct, but I’ll be damned if I’m not often surprised that those connections seem to be real.

We would not be in the mess we’re in as a country—and as a world—if the 9/11 terrorist attacks hadn’t happened. And they were inevitable. If not those particular attacks on that particular morning, then something like it. One could argue that it was more surprising that it happened sooner. One could also argue that we were lucky that the attack wasn’t worse. Unfortunately, it did what it was supposed to do. It changed the United States into its worse components, gave voice to the worst of its hatred, racism, religious zealotry, and patriotism.

It’s difficult to remember that the country was better than this at one point. Not much. There was still all the issues that plague us now but there was a feeling that we could, maybe, reach that Gene Roddenberry-like future where peace and science and equality and love were the driving forces. Ah, but I’m doing what many middle-aged people do and looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses.

The opportunists were already trying to undo all the progress that had been done. Wait. Let me define what I mean be progress, because the word can be used in so many ways. I’m talking about the social progressivism with which we still live with but has been under meaner attack over the last, oh, twenty years or so. The opportunists were already in step with the progress that means building bigger buildings, making more money, and leaving more people in the cold. The election of 2000 was a moment where they really made their move.

Because Liberals (and Progressives) often vote with their hearts rather than their heads, voter turn-out was low enough that Al Gore, Bill Clinton’s Vice-President, didn’t receive the Presidency. I write “didn’t receive” because he won the popular vote. However, the antiquated electoral vote was neck and neck and it all came down to Florida, where George W. Bush’s brother Jeb was governor. Of course, Bush ended up by “winning” the election as a result. Bush and his Vice-President, Dick Chaney—a Sith Lord with a penchant for white collar crime and shooting people in the face—coming into office made the inevitable even more so.

I believe 9/11 would’ve happened even had Al Gore been President. It was something being planned for a long time. It might’ve happened on a different day, maybe a different year, but it would’ve happened. Decades of bad business by the United States in the name of crude oil dictated that something would happen at some point. But Bush’s Presidency all but assured it could happen. The Texan bravado that those particular Republicans seemed to love made it impossible for them to listen to anyone who might not tell the story they wanted to hear. Of course, who could hear it when the President had already taken more vacation time by September than most Presidents take in their first two or three years? Their goal was the goal that the Republicans had been after since at least Richard Nixon, which was deregulation of big business and getting the rich much, much richer. In the name of Freedom™ they want to deregulate gun laws even though the science proves less gun laws equals more dead people. In the name of Freedom™, deregulate health care so prices of everything can go up and up and up, which equals more dead people. In the name of Freedom™, deregulate big business so companies can move their businesses to places with even less regulations, offer lower salaries, drive the prices up of everything, which all equals more dead people.

Of course they were doing that, just as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush had done.

When 9/11 happened, the opportunists who’d cheated (IMHO) to get Bush II into office decided to make a play for the gold ring. Within days they turned the outpouring of love and sympathy the United States received after the horrific attack into political opportunity. If you didn’t agree with Bush/Chaney, you were Unpatriotic™, against America, and were for the terrorists. So when France looked at the United States’ bullshit reasons for invading Afghanistan and Iraq and, “Nō,” it became the custom to say how horrible and anti-America the foreign country was and let’s rename French fries to Freedom fries. I’m glad that didn’t stick. And if I ever was at a place that had “Freedom fries,” I would ask for French fries even though I usually only ask for “fries.” No one challenged me and I enjoyed my deep-fried potato sticks.

The results of these wars and these policies affect the country still. After Bush’s two (because he’d been so successful in his first term) terms were up and the country decided they needed hope, we got Barack Obama and Joe Biden, two Good Men who were left with a huge mess that came from U.S. policy from the last sixty/seventy years but particularly the previous eight years. This got some of the opportunists enraged and formed the Tea Party movement in the Republican party. The Tea Party—bastardizing the Boston Tea Party for their own uses—took all the bad things the Conservative movement had become and magnified it. That would not have happened without 9/11.

Their numbers would have been construed as far-right fools with weird beliefs that were detrimental to progress. Instead, because of the power grabs and the losses of human rights experienced in the United States because of the Patriot Act, which enabled the opportunists to create military police states in the name of national security so a small down in Massachusetts, Ohio, or Oregon have military grade weapons and vehicles to “defend” themselves against terrorists or Those Who Would Do Us Harm (Who Usually Have Brown Skin)™. The terrorist cells in Bumfuck, Nebraska, and Scottyhoot, Wisconsin, have defended themselves from a number of Jihadists over the last 25 years. All this security has kept the United States one of the safest places in the world. Just ask the 60 people who died in Las Vegas in 2017, the 49 people who died at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the 32 people who died at Virgina Tech in 2007, or the 26 people—including twenty children between six and seven years old—at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Ask Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, or anyone else listed here.

The Tea Party led directly to the current regime in office. In 2016, instead of electing the overqualified woman—who won the popular vote—the opportunists emboldened by Post-9/11 Patriotism™ put a person into office who was the very antithesis of the America Dream (no trademark needed because the American Dream is for everyone). And so it grew worse. A four-year respite by a kindly old man was nice but in 2024 a different overqualified woman lost the Presidential race and now…

Now…

Twenty-five years after the United States was attacked by horrible people who felt they were hitting a country that had done horrible things to their country (which it had), we live in a nation where those people who would espouse how unpatriotic a person was for questioning the government’s taking away rights have ignored real health concerns for the first responders and people who dealt with the immediate aftermath of the collapsed Twin Towers, have caused the deaths of millions of people from wars, and who have enabled a man who would become a dictator, emperor, or king to make the United States the very kind of place that we told the world we would not abide by. We would not allow religion to overtake the government. We would not allow the downtrodden to remain so. We would not discriminate based on color or sexual orientation or gender. We would not make our citizens or those who came to our country as refugees or just seeking a better life disappear. We would not shoot them for questioning authority or living by—gasp!—the American Dream. Renee Good and Alex Pretti would still be here if not for 9/11. So would many of those I’ve mentioned.

Twenty-five years ago, a 24-year-old stay-at-home dad watched as his country was attacked by terrorists, frightened for his three-year-old daughter and what kind of world she would grow up in, because he feared that everything would change as a result.

He was right. Goddamn if he wasn’t right.

But we can fix it. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani proves that. U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proves that. U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar proves that. Kamala Harris proves it. Barack and Michelle Obama prove it. David Hogg proves it.

History proves it.

Never forget what the terrorists took from us. Never forget what the attacks allowed the opportunists to achieve. But also never forget that rebellions are built from hope and love and the future we lost on September 11^th, 2001, is still possible. We just have to fight harder for it now. We owe to at least 2,977 people.

We owe it to many, many more.

And we owe it to ourselves and our children.

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I’ll be taking part in the Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival on October 17^th, 2026, at the Lawrence Public Library in Lawrence, Massachusetts. I’m excited because so many authors, editors, and people I admire will be there, as well as a few friends. Find out more here!

I will also be joining a panel about monsters and cosmic horror at Once Upon A Bookstore in Fall River, Massachusetts, about a week later!

I’ll share more info on both of these events as we get closer.

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That’s this week’s newsletter. Thank you so much for subscribing, reading, and for your support. Be safe out there, friends.

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