9/11/2001–9/11/2021 — What Have We Learned?
Reality creates difficulties for many
The twentieth anniversary of the worst attack by a foreign power on American soil was marked throughout the country with a day of remembrance, reflection, and tributes to the bravery of many Americans, especially those who brought the plane down in Pennsylvania.
The exception, of course, was former President Trump, who solemnly chose to narrate a bogus boxing match for TV.
Most of the country was made aware that what happened twenty years ago brought out the best in our citizens. So many Americans gave fine examples of bravery, unity, resilience, and caring. We were stunned and shocked, but we were resolute, America would respond and rebound.
Twenty years later, Osama Bin Laden would be amazed and thrilled by how his well-planned and almost perfectly executed act of terrorism changed the world. America was exposed to be a Potemkin village: beautiful and rich on the outside, but crumbling and slowly rotting away underneath. The huge stock market rise of the 1990s had burst with the realization that just because a company had dot-com in its name, it wasn’t worth $110 a share if it was losing money and had no real prospects of ever turning a profit. The wealth disparity was growing. Education costs were rising while salaries were stagnant. Banks were still finding new ways to make money while actually producing nothing of value, this time by trading bundles of mortgages.
The president at the time, George W. Bush, appeared calm and resolute at first. He spoke forcefully and reassuringly that America was hit, but our faith in our country, its citizens, and our system was unshaken. However, President Bush soon proved to be the wrong man for the job. He started strong. His first response was to attack and destroy the people who planned and executed the terrible attack. The whole country was behind him. He successfully routed Al Qaeda and the Taliban who protected them in Afghanistan. Good job! A measured and well-executed response.
But, Bush couldn’t stop there. When the Taliban surrendered, he and his advisors and his generals rejected any deal. Their arrogance and ignorance of the culture led to twenty years of a chaotic, useless, and corrupt effort by the US to establish a western-style democracy in Afghanistan. Twenty years later, just weeks ago, that effort ended in complete failure. We had wasted trillions of dollars and caused thousands of unnecessary deaths. Since the soldiers were volunteers from mostly poor families hardly anyone paid attention to the war while it was going on, except for “thank-you for your service” and fly-overs at football games.
But even that wasn’t enough. It seemed that President Bush thought that being a “war president” would help his reelection. So, for reasons that are still unclear to me, he was convinced by several of his advisors and generals that he could overthrow the terrible regime in Iraq, be welcomed as a hero, and establish a flourishing western-style democracy in another Middle Eastern country. Again, it was the deadly combination of arrogance and ignorance.
Meanwhile, inside the US, the wheels continued to come off the wagon, and to batter the analogy further, the wagons were being circled with the guns aimed inward. 9/11 had opened the door for the government to find reasons to peer into everyone’s life, and this was happening at a time when Apple, Google, and other technology companies were perfecting ways to do it. At the same time, US society was become fractured as different people advocated for different definitions of who was a “real” American, and what “freedom” in America really meant.
George W. Bush, following his conservative, no regulations philosophy, allowed banks to do whatever they wanted with people’s money, and that led to a huge melt-down of the entire financial system. His government rushed to bail out banks, but left the people hurting, and having their houses foreclosed. Things got so bad that America voted for a young, Black, charismatic, constitutional scholar to become president.
A Black president, even one who was funny and cautious, was more than many people could stand. The Tea Party was formed, Trump jumped in with his “birther” lies, and the Russians and the newly robust right-wing media all fed the flames of splitting America more deeply along a divide that was basically white, Christian, men facing off against almost everyone else. This point of view was backed by billions of dollars from a select but powerful group of very rich, white, Christian men and their media.
This is the group that now regards “freedom” to mean that the “right people” are entitled to do whatever they want, without regard for how their behavior will affect their community or the country. “Freedom” to them means that everyone is free to be selfish, greedy, racist, misogynistic, or just plain stupid, such as believing in Q-Anon conspiracy theories and getting elected to Congress.
So, what have we learned from the tragedy of 9/11/2001? That the flaws and divisions that have always been present in America have reached a tipping point. At this moment there seems to be no way for the huge gap in values to be healed. There are those who believe that the ideal America is one where everyone is free to be who they want to be, to think what they want to think, to live how they want to live, with equality, liberty, and justice for all. This implies that at times, compromises are necessary for society to function. It means that my desires cannot trample on your rights, and that there is some agreement that when all of us do better, each of us does better.
The other side has decided that those last clauses and sentences intrude upon their lives. They want the freedom to do what they want to do, grab as much as they can grab, bully anyone who can be cowed, and believe in the myth that America is a proud, special, powerful, white Christian country, in which each individual is his own king, who carries his own gun. There is no need for cooperation, coordination, compromise or caring with anyone other than the few people who agree with them. That covers politics, interpersonal relations, commerce, and international relations.
That means if they lose an election because those sweaty brown and beige people voted with all those women to elect some kind of liberal, then it doesn’t count. It means that some people won’t get vaccinated just because so many of those scientists and intellectuals are saying it’s good for them.
There are many major problems that confront all of us who live in the twenty-first century. Problems such as the huge gap in wealth between the top 1% and the rest of the country and the world. This gap includes gaps in education, opportunity, safe living environments, justice before the law, and even life expectancy. There are problems with integrating new technologies into everyone’s life; who will benefit, and who will be excluded. There is also the problem that the living conditions for humans on this planet have been made noticeably worse due to the behaviors of almost all of us. Behaviors we are reluctant to change.
None of these problems can be solved by three-hundred-million individuals acting on their own. To quote one of our founding fathers, Mr. Franklin: “If we do not hang together, we shall surely hang separately.” Or, in today’s vernacular, “If we don’t pull together, everything will fall apart, and it won’t be pretty.”
Again, America is at a tipping point. We are one of those angels trying to balance on the head of a pin, except we aren’t angels. We are a huge country with many diverse opinions. On 9/11/2021 the current president and four previous presidents tried to tell the country that there is still time for us to find understanding, unity, and a way to compromise and cooperate. e pluribus unum.
One of our previous presidents was somewhere else, doing something else, continuing to voice his message of selfishness, greed, and disharmony. If he was on that plane headed for the Capitol there is a good chance that by the time they were flying over Pennsylvania, he would have tried to join the Taliban. Anything to save his own ass.
What we have learned from 9/11 has become clear. Americans have to decide what kind of a country this will be. Will we be able to deal with reality, or will we remain blinded by arrogance and ignorance? It’s the same as it was seventy years ago when Pete Seeger, that pinko, commie, storyteller asked “Which side are you on?” Abraham Lincoln asked the same question one hundred sixty-five years ago. The sides are still, basically, the same.
It’s time to choose, or lose. Pay attention. Do the work.
