25 years ago, I drove to work in Woburn, Mass. When I got to the building, a crowd was gathered around a TV. All I could immediately gather was that Bush was saying something of great concern, and people were too distracted to explain it to me. After going up to the office I learned what had happened.

I had a window that looked east, and normally I regularly saw planes taking off from Logan Airport. The absence of flights for the next few days made the most direct impact on me. MASSFILC published a songbook, which I edited, in memory of the thousands of deaths.

Another kind of harm took longer to emerge, and it’s played out to the present. Congress passed the “temporary” Patriot Act, which is still in effect today. The TSA made life miserable for air passengers without being effective at catching threats. Congress created the Department of Homeland Security and ICE. A bus was stopped in mid-trip in New Hampshire, and passengers were given the choice of allowing a warrantless search of their luggage or being abandoned far from any bus station. The US government used lies to justify an invasion of Iraq. Warrantless domestic surveillance greatly increased. None of this did much to make us safer.

American society’s distrust of foreigners, especially Muslim foreigners, increased. Every president since 2001, including one who got a Nobel Peace Prize, has launched military actions in the Mideast. Trump has hit new levels of audacity, but Congress has long been in the habit of shrugging off presidential usurpations of the war-making power. “National security” has become the all-purpose excuse for power grabs.

The World Trade Center was only the most visible part of the damage which Bin Laden did. The effects on our society have been far more persistent.