I was born, raised, and have lived in the NYC area my entire life and continue to do so to this day. I assure you I'm familiar with the proximity to the event. This is not me trying to pick a fight about my fellow Americans feeling "special". It's me calling you out on your attempt to leverage a very real and significant pain felt by victims and their families for your talking points. When you say "_the_ pain and horror", you are (whether intentional or not) referencing the primary pain felt - that of those directly and most significantly affected by 9/11. In doing so, you dilute the gravity that referencing that pain carries for true victims. It's like a veteran who spent all his time behind a desk claiming that, as a vet, he had gone through horrors during the war, when there were in fact men and women who were on the verge of death on the front lines experiencing actual horror.

In reality, there was no need to use that statement. If your point is valid, it should stand on its own merits without the need for you to attempt to convince through emotion by answering a question that nobody was asking.