NEW YORK — One World Trade Center gleams above the Manhattan skyline on the footprint of the twin towers a handful of Islamist zealots brought down with a sucker punch. The mast atop it reaches to 1,776 feet, symbolizing a year that matters far more than 2001.

Jeffrey Fagan, a world-savvy criminologist, took me through the warren of streets he was driving past when those planes struck. He had seen rescue crews brave the inferno as terrified people leapt to their death. In all, 3,000 died. Yet the lesson of that day went unlearned.

A stricken nation obsessed over that question — why do they hate us? In fact, few did. But blind fury set the world ablaze. Today, lots of people hate America. And opposing factions at home hate each other. As Fagan says, too many Americans twist facts into their own preferred biases.

Voters need the “mainstream media” to provide firsthand reporting and informed comment so 1776 continues to signify more than what history will recall as the starting point of a once-noble democratic endeavor that ended in 2025.

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ARIVACA, Arizona — On party days when banjos and stirring voices spill out from La Gitana Cantina and Café, talk of the nearby Mexican border is mostly muted. This funky little settlement smacks of a ranchland redoubt of old souls and new-age spirits.

In Avdiivka on the collapsing Ukrainian front, the soundtrack is booming artillery. Russians knifed through town to advance on farms and villages against heavily outgunned dispirited defenders who plead for more ammunition.

The two towns, 6,500 miles apart, seem to be in different galaxies. But they’re not.

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TUCSON — Winnie-the-Pooh, a whimsical little storybook bear, once made sense: “If the person you are talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.”

But when concrete blocks too many ears, it’s time to heed Chicken Little. That old tale taught kids not to fret over small stuff, like the hen bonked on the head by an acorn who yelled “The sky is falling!” Look around today. The sky is falling.

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TUCSON — In an old Buddhist parable, blind men describe an elephant. Whatever one touches — tusk, trunk, leathery hide — defines it. That is no challenge with the Trump-corrupted Republican Party version. Just lift up the tail.

Britons learned the hard way with Brexit the costs of a hasty decision by ill-informed voters. Great Britain is now simply a Britain fraught with troubles, and there is no going back. Imagine the incalculable impact of an Amerexit.

If November elections go badly, the United States will likely be an ex-democracy mired in pachyderm plop, too self-absorbed and mean-spirited to help turn down the heat in an increasingly bellicose and autocratic world.

In a book titled “The Bill of Obligations,” seasoned statesman Richard Haass lists 10 requisites for citizens in a free society. The first says it all: “Be Informed.” That is no easy task in a nation befuddled by lies and lunacy that spread at the speed of light.

This is a hard look at what is going on beyond the oceans that insulate America from a reporter who has watched the world fall on its axis since the 1960s.

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LUKEVILLE, Arizona — Nothing reveals the fear and loathing that is poisoning America like the Mexican border I’ve crisscrossed since I was a kid. Republicans exploit blatant fallacies as a path to power. Their cruelty shames America while choking off skills and labor it badly needs.

An ex-president found liable for rape, who wants to come back with the right to execute citizens at whim, calls refugees fleeing for their lives “rapists and murderers,” vermin who poison the nation’s blood. He says only a fortress barrier can stop them. It can’t.

Here at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, his “big, beautiful wall” destroys natural splendor, sacred Indian sites, wildlife habitats and watercourses. But more, it causes needless death and misery, showing a scornful world that the Statue of Liberty is a cynical sham.

In places, steel uprights at their base appear to mimic metal Picasso sculptures. Cartels cut holes in minutes at night with generator-powered saws. Welders patch in cross pieces, but they’re soon open again for crossers who trek miles to declare themselves to the Border Patrol.

Solutions would be deceptively simple. But self-focused legislators want to keep out conflict and climate victims. Their isolationism creates yet more refugees. Border talks tied to military aid weaken Ukraine as Russians advance. War widens beyond Israel and Palestine.

If voters don’t grasp reality by November, a misconstrued “border crisis” could turn that hallowed American dream into a nightmare.

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