There are two words that can, with no further explanation, evoke vivid memories, and complex emotional reactions in all Americans: September Eleventh. You don't need to know the year; you can already see the images, hear the screams and remember the horror of the day, even if you observed the events on CNN rather than from the streets of New York City. The four planes wrought devastating, almost incomprehensible damage on landscapes and families, and more nebulous harm to that more nebulous entity, the collective American psyche.
For some, the lasting injury is one of horrific images frozen in the mind, and the nauseating helplessness and dread that return when the memories play back in slow-motion. For others, namely those who live in New York or personally knew someone in the towers or on one of the planes, the pains are deeper, the wounds more profound. But on the macro level, the long-term effects are less tangible.
In the widespread search for the silver lining in the days and weeks after that fateful day, Americans told themselves that the shared, horrific experience would make us, as a populace, cherish each moment and come together in some grand feeling of national unity. "Nothing will be the same," everyone said with apparent sincerity. And it's true that those of us alive at that particular historical moment will forever feel a slight shortness of breath when we see the pictures and hear the words that have become iconic—the airplanes, the collapse, "Let's roll." But these are mere symbols of a singular moment, not a indication of cultural change, not a marker delineating a societal "before" and "after."
The American "way of life" will be changed forever only because we will have one more image to add to our national database of "defining moments." Memorials, monuments and Academy-Award winning movies are not enough to demonstrate that something has "changed" forever.
Americans don't like to feel that their safety is in doubt, and certainly don't like to be reminded of anything bad that has happened in the past. When anything tragic happens in or to the United States, something that shakes the entire nation, people always say, "We will never forget." This is generally true; we still talk about Pearl Harbor, Japanese internment camps, the Vietnam War and Oklahoma City, to name just a few events. What we forget is not the events themselves but the lessons that each event should have taught us.
Take Oklahoma City. Most Americans can probably tell you when it happened (April, 1995) and who did it (Timothy McVeigh). How did it "change our way of life?" By 1998, the heightened security that had been in place was virtually gone, except for that in governmental buildings. The bombing shook middle America, forcing us to realize that bad things don't just happen on TV and in big, far-off cities; terror has no boundaries and evil acts can be committed anywhere. But it was not truly a nation-changing event. It did little to alter our collective priorities, political views or actions; three years later, our country was fundamentally the same as it was in March 1995.
And once again, in spite of what we said in the immediate aftermath, in spite of the indescribable horror of September 11th, societal inertia has put us pretty much where we were on September 10th. Hating the Yankees is cool again. The Pentagon is not a scene of devastation and fire but merely a label identifying the source of a quote, a mundane landmark housing military offices. Television and pop culture are certainly no less crass. Partisan bickering is arguably worse than ever. And in spite of the belief that communities grow stronger under national duress, we seem more fragmented than ever.
There's no sense of shared sacrifice, first of all, and the enemy in the war on terror is so elusive, so faceless, as to render meaningless all attempts to create the classic storyline of the united us versus the monolithic, knowable, evil them. All but the most xenophobic among us understand that there is no concrete "Muslim" or "Arabic" bloc of individuals—those who committed these acts fit these all-too-general labels, but so too do many of our allies in this so-called War on Terror.
Our national spirit has not changed. Our resolve may have been dented, our paranoia heightened, but what we desire most is the comfort and predictability of normalcy, of continuing to listen to the same songs, live the same lives and create the same sort of public policy as we did five or ten years ago. This is understandable, even necessary; to run in fear or refuse to do that which we enjoy, that which sustains us, is to suffer unnecessarily. You simply have to keep living, not just surviving, but living, breathing, smiling, maintaining a level of optimism.
But that doesn't mean we have to repeat our past mistakes. It doesn't mean we must never change, must never take steps to make the future better. It doesn't mean we can't reflect. It doesn't mean we can't act prudently to make positive changes. And it certainly doesn't mean we have to relapse to our traditional distaste for productive civic discourse.
We still have low voting rates; we're still, collectively, remarkably uninvolved in our democracy, and rather content in our apathy. It's easier to insulate yourself from the messy world than to attempt to step out into it. And when we do engage in dialogue and debate, it takes one of two unproductive forms: preach-to-the-choir discussions with those whose comments serve to solidify our entrenched positions, or hostile confrontation. Civil, active dialogue is hard to find in the diners, on the editorial pages, or among political candidates, and even when there is congenial give-and-take, it usually does not produce actions or change. Our civic role, for the most part, consists of passive citizenship, democratic lethargy, interrupted periodically by brief bursts of name-calling and intense argument, which subside after a while when we realize it's so much easier, so much more comfortable, to be complacent and tune it all out.
Even our elected officials resist change. Has any of the post-September 11th public policy shown genuine reflection? The Patriot Act and its cousins were reactions to September 11th, but were they reflective? Did they look-long term to solve a host of issues affecting our society as a whole? I think not. The New Deal was real change. In the post-September 11th era, change could take several tangible, valuable forms. Implementing a national health care program because it would make easier the process of treating all the survivors or people who have become depressed as a result of the attacks. Realizing that our students should be better educated so that they are better able to understand the issues affecting them and because the best defense is an educated citizenry. Restructuring our various social programs because September 11th made so many people jobless, homeless and hungry. These are all opportunities for change, all opportunities lost.
In short, our policies haven't changed and we haven't changed.
Most of all, we haven't changed as a collective unit because, well, we still don't exist as a collective unit. This is still a patchwork society—and I don't mean that in the clichèd multicultural "melting pot" manner but in the sense that the NASCAR dads and soccer moms are very much at odds, and the issues and attitudes of any given faction within the populace places the group in competition with other groups. Secular vs. religious; North vs. South; White collar vs. blue collar vs. whatever color graces the collar of your friendly Wal-Mart or McDonald employees. Even when the competition isn't outwardly hostile, even when groups overlap, there's still an innate disconnect, that constant, paranoid feeling that they're not like us, and they are threatening us.
And so, instead of seeking to bridge these gaps or reflect on our shared pains and common experiences, we insulate ourselves. We continue to live our lives, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, getting sick, being healthy, and, above all, riding the current of our American lives. Our individual welfare fluctuates; our lives change constantly. But as a collective entity, if such a thing even exists, we do our best to resist change. The wounds torn into our collective psyche by those four airplanes have not healed, but we've done our best to forget them—Americans' attention spans and propensity for self-reflection have never been among our strong attributes. We don't particularly want a cure if it requires acknowledging we have a problem.
Doug Mack lives in Minneapolis and does lots of reflecting and ruminating as he shovels the sidewalk. Contact him at doug@professoryeti.com.
