20 years later, we’re finishing what the 9/11 terrorists started: the ruin of America
Like most of us who lived through the 9/11 attacks, I had a sick feeling for weeks afterward — for the devastating assaults on our country, and for the unknown terror that might follow.
But never once in those weeks and months that followed did I ever think for a moment that America could end.
I can’t say that, 20 years later. We have shown ourselves quite capable of finishing what the Sept. 11 terrorists started at New York’s World Trade Center.
America’s divisions over politics, race and nearly every vital issue are wider, nastier and more fundamental than at any time since the Civil War. And our ability to be civil enough to work through our differences is burning off like the morning fog.
In a nation bound together by ideas and ideals rather than ethnicity, our most fervent personal values have diverged frighteningly and perhaps irreconcilably. I can tout such all-American principles as the Constitution, limited government, self-reliance, private property, secure borders, law and order, capitalism and even free speech, and take a ton of flak for it. I once advocated for a movement that promotes the selfless leadership ethic of Jesus, and was derided for it.
It’s not even fashionable to be patriotic anymore. Stephen Colbert has made a nice living making fun of it. A California teacher said in a video, perhaps jokingly, that she told students they could pledge allegiance to the LGBTQ pride flag instead of the U.S. one. In California this week, U.S. flags that hung on an overpass to honor the 13 service members killed in Kabul were torn asunder.
Pressed to name any value she shares with liberals, one of my conservative friends cited only her strong opposition to animal cruelty. But even there she wondered if liberals and conservatives could agree on a definition of it.
What in heaven’s name has happened, and is still happening, to the country most of us love? A number of things, I’m afraid — big, intractable things with deep roots and thick branches. But it all comes down to one word, in my view:
Balkanization — defined as the “division of a place or country into several small political units, often unfriendly to one another.” Bingo. That’s us — identity politics, pitting groups against each other, focusing on everything that separates us and very little on what unites us.
How has this happened?
For one thing, we have an unprecedented array of information sources, which is good in many respects, but which leads to far different perceptions of reality — especially when news media become partisan and fan the flames of division, choosing sides rather than choosing to simply report the news. Sadly, “news” networks profit mightily from the ratings bonanza of discord.
And thanks to so-called social media, incivility — the gateway drug to hatred — is always at hand.
Then there is the chronic careerism in Congress, which allows sworn enemies to torment each other, and us, daily on TV for decades. Isn’t that special!
Timothy J. Shaffer, director of the Institute for Civic Discourse and Democracy at Kansas State University, also agrees with a 2018 Rand Corporation diagnosis of “truth decay” — including the blurring line between opinion and fact. But Shaffer notes a more modern sign of truth decay: an increasing disagreement on the facts themselves.
I also fear that, after decades of undoubtedly teaching American history in an overly romantic fashion, academia has way overcompensated and is now emphasizing America’s painful and inglorious past. Again, that’s an inarguably good and belated thing, but not in isolation — not while failing to also instill an appreciation for our system of government and our place in the world despite our considerable flaws.
This is why you have American flags for the fallen ripped to shreds.
How do we pull out of this spiraling nosedive, when so many factors are at work and so many institutions and politicians and talking heads benefit from us fighting each other? How can this end well?
We’d better figure that out, or the 40th anniversary of 9/11 will be all the more painful.
