On Sept. 11, 2001, while driving to work in Washington, D.C., I witnessed the American Airlines plane that slammed into the Pentagon. Not only was that terrorist target a building I had worked in for three years, but I had a former coworker on the doomed aircraft.

Minutes later, a cousin of mine would be one of the first to rush into the burning building in an attempt to save lives.

The issues we now disagree about — or actively hate each other over — truly seem trivial in comparison to that day and the following weeks, when almost every car in the nation flew an American flag in both pride in our nation and in defiance of the attack.

Coming up on 23 years later, virtually no cars in the U.S. have American flags. Even worse, many on the left have come to view the flag as a symbol of hate and repression.

Partisan politics is an acid that corrodes all it touches — an acid made exponentially stronger by social media and those who hide in the shadows and behind masks while sowing division and hate.

But........

© The Hill