"So maybe all this current fury is really just a long-delayed, long-pent-up angry reaction to what happened. Because what happened was awful. And unfair. And in the nine years since, the city never once stomped its foot and complained about that unfairness or awfulness. And maybe we should have, because right now this ground zero mosque insanity is on the verge of becoming very scary and out of hand."

Glynnis wonders if this Mosque insanity isn’t New York reacting suddenly - snapping, really - to 9/11 in a way that was simply not possible nine years ago. More from her very smart piece:

New York in the weeks and months following 9/11 was a city full of shell-shocked residents learning to live with day-to-day fear. A 45-minute delay on the L-train was panic-inducing. Lights off at the Empire State building too early was enough to start rumors of bomb threats. A power plant explosion on the East Side of Manhattan in the summer of 2002 that shut power down on the downtown east side was enough to send people scrambling to the phone to find out if we were under attack again.

Adam Gopnik wrote a piece for the New Yorker in June of 2002 that said a drawing of New York City at that moment would show “8 million people, each person standing on a pole above an abyss of anxiety — not looking down, never looking down, looking only from side to side, warily.”

My point is this: In the aftermath of 9/11 in New York City, there was no emotional room for the sort of furor we have seen this mosque generate. None.