I had bronchitis for the second time this year last week, and during it I happened to be listening to Science Friday when they had Laurie Garrett on. They were talking about different things: her book, her work consulting for films, and several different aspects of the environmental impacts of 9/11.

She talked about something that has gone under the radar for some time: that the plume of smoke from the World Trade Center towers’ collapse completely enveloped parts of Brooklyn and other western parts of NYC that day. It’s not like it’s never been discussed, but it’s really not been part of public discussion.

So I’m listening to her talk about the chemical effects of burning jet fuel + asbestos + the insides of thousands of computers and other electronic devices, and all I can think about is how normal it’s become for me to cart around an inhaler, how I can expect any cold to go straight to my lungs, and it sends me back to how hard it was to breathe that day and I realized I never actually needed or owned an inhaler before then.

Most years, you know, I write something about 9/11 – something about the experience or a perspective of how the general tragedy of it is used/abused in our political system, but this year I think we should pay attention to all those emergency responders who still can’t get support for health care for diseases they acquired working at ground zero, to the decisions at the EPA about what was deemed safe and what was not and why, and to the people who were not in lower Manhattan, but saw their worlds shrouded in dust as well.

On Monday’s Daily Show, the writers took aim at this idea of “Real America.”

While I could break this down intellectually – what that means, why it’s used – the whole thing is so visceral to me that I don’t really feel like doing that today.

When that guy from Wasilla talked about how New Yorkers will pass by a guy lying in the street and that 9/11 brought out the best in the country (ignoring Jason Jones’s quick note that 9/11 happened in New York), I wanted to scream.

I have been an urban-dweller for my entire adult life – St. Paul, Minneapolis, Manhattan, Brooklyn – and I am a liberal and not ashamed of it. I am also a real American. Real America isn’t confined to white people in small towns. There are millions of us – millions – living in cities in this country, millions of Americans who are not white, millions of Americans who are not conservative – socially or otherwise – millions of Americans who are immigrants or whose parents are immigrants or whose grandparents are immigrants.

This country is ours, too. We are Real Americans too.

When I stood on the roof of my apartment building and watched the World Trade Center disintegrate and obliterate the skyline; when my neighborhood was choked with ash; when I and my friends and neighbors waited for some kind of contact to know that the people we cared about were safe; when my friends and fellow New Yorkers who worked in the city walked miles in confusion and fear just trying to make it home – no one I know would have said that we as Americans, and we as the world, didn’t feel that pain together.

And then Jerry Falwell came out and blamed gay people and feminists and then for the next eight years the Republicans made 9/11 an us versus them game. “Us” being people who were conservative and “Them” being people like me – with a different ideological view of how we fix society, as well as someone who was there.

You know what, FOX news? You know what, Michele Bachmann? You know what, Sarah Palin? You don’t get to decide who Real America is. There is no “Real America.”

Just because I happen to disagree with you on what this country needs doesn’t mean you get to throw me out.

I think you’re wrong on defense, wrong on morality, wrong on taxes, and wrong on social programs. I think the policies you promote are perpetuating inequality and making it harder for us to work together as a country and respect each American’s unique experience and life. I think that you call people names so you don’t have to debate issues because your ideas don’t stand up to actual debate. I think you use catch phrases so you don’t have to explain your ideas.

But I’m not going to tell you you’re not American. Because here in these big cities, we grow good people, people with values, civic-minded people who want to create better schools and better lives for ourselves and others, but America isn’t a series of stars on a map.

Like it or not, we’re in this together, and it’s time to start acting like adults.