“We became a fear-based, hyper-security state,” Rizvi said. “It was a shock to the American system.”

National security went from being a governmental priority to a full-blown religion. Bits of twisted steel from the wreckage of the towers were shipped all over the world and welded into ad hoc memorials in places like a strip mall in Parma, Ohio, and a firehouse in Giddings, Texas, where they were honored as saintly relics—“franchising 9/11 memory,” as researchers Samuel and Max Holleran put it.