From 'United We Stand' to 'United We Stood'

It has now been 6 years to the day since the United States was attacked. Buildings fell, people died. In the wake of the most contentious presidential election in recent memory, it was thought that the events of 9/11 would spur a renewed unity, a renewed sense of shared purpose and struggle, and a return to civility in our land. It did not.

I admit that it is very hard to keep the cynic in me at bay on a day like this. It is very easy to join the often angry laments coming from both sides of the spectrum about how and why we've arrived at the place we find ourselves today. And while what follows is certainly influenced by the cynic in me, I hope that this is not a cynical post for two reasons. First, those who are in harm's way to protect me deserve better from me than smug cynicism. Second, cynicism is not a virtue and should not be nurtured as if it were some mark of sophistication. It's not.

With all that said, I have three points to make, the first two of which are not particularly inspiring.

It was often said in the days after 9/11 that '9/11 changed everything'. As my wife sometimes reminds me, I was disagreeing with this sentiment almost from the get-go. I didn't believe that 9/11 had changed everything, and I had serious reservations that in the long-term, 9/11 would change much of anything fundamentally. I took no pride in feeling this way; I just thought it would prove to be true in the end. Six years gone, this is indeed the conclusion I have arrived at as we sit here today. Today, instead of saying that '9/11 changed everything', people are now asking whether 9/11 has been or should be forgotten. While the instinctive answer is to say 'no, we shouldn't forget', I fear that at the basic levels of our societal grid, most of us have already forgotten.

The lasting legacy, the lasting impact, of 9/11 has been its potency in amping up pre-existing attitudes. There was an already existing urge to go after 'enemies', and 9/11 provided justification for it. There was an already existing attitude that America is largely to blame for much of the world's problems, and 9/11 provided cover for that too. 9/11 proved the reality of God's judgment to some people who were already inclined to believe it, while proving to others that there's no way God exists when that's what they were otherwise inclined to believe anyway. As best I can tell, very few people actually moved across these kinds of aisles as a result of 9/11. Most people opted to interpret 9/11 in such a way as to stay put with where they already were on the spectrum, and just get more dug in. For most of us, we individually processed 9/11 through particular pre-existing lenses we were all already wearing.

The result is that 9/11 changed almost nothing at the root - we all just found ways of using the tragedy to strengthen the belief systems we were all already operating with on 9/10. The only thing that's changed is that many of us feel even stronger about what we were already believing. No doubt, many of us were shaken up, and I'm sure there were some people who fundamentally thought certain things on 9/10 and changed their minds as a result of 9/11. But such a phenomenon has been very rare in my experience, and I have lived and worked 10 miles from the Pentagon. One would think that if a broad-based change in outlook could be found, it would've been here. But no such thing ever happened.

One practical manifestation of the above is the second point I'd like to touch on. It is now commonplace in the media and in much of the culture to see the continued divisiveness that defines our nation, and put the primary blame on the current Administration. There are many columns and stories in the press that dream about the fictional legacy of 9/11 that could have been, if only someone else had been president. Underlying these dreams is the basic assumption that 9/11 would have indeed brought the nation together if just about anyone else had been president. This sentiment, echoed today by Marc Fisher of the Washington Post, is deeply flawed.

Fisher unfortunately parrots the general media sentiment that the current administration is primarily to blame for the fact that we are still a divided nation. But last I checked, George Bush is incapable of bringing people together who don't want to come together. I'm not saying that Bush is blameless; he's not. I think Bush himself succumbed to what I said above, in that he allowed his pre-existing tendencies to be ratcheted up by 9/11, with the result that he embraced the 'wartime president' motif irresponsibly. But only the most self-absorbed and delusional among us can truly believe that there was any real chance that 9/11 would magically wipe away the very deep divides in this country that both sides are hell-bent on maintaining. Pick any leader you want and put them in charge at the time of 9/11 - today's landscape still wouldn't look much different. The country isn't gonna rally around anyone for any significant amount of time for any significant reason. We just like to fight our ideological battles way too much to do such a thing.

In the end, sentiments like Fisher's are a complete abdication of individual responsibility in failing to own up to the part each one of us has played in why 'United We Stand' so quickly became 'United We Stood'. Blaming Bush is the cause celebre of our day, and it's certainly not without foundation. But it's also a very lazy cop-out to justify our own rancorous stances and boorish public dialogue, both of which pre-date the 2000 election. America has become a great paradox of embracing at the same time the contradictory notions of individual responsibility and scapegoating. This is what happens when large segments of the country become very hardened in their established positions. They lecture the hardened folks in the other camp to take some responsibility, while refusing to see how their own hardened stance has equally contributed to the problem. Again, 9/11 has amped pre-existing attitudes, and the divided house we're living in is the lasting legacy.

But thankfully, there is a glimmer of hope. While giving blood, and donating time and treasure were natural responses in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, any real realignment of priorities is something that is proven over the longer term. While many of us lament the sparse change that seems to have resulted from 9/11, there have been inspiring glimmers of something better. Six years later, it is still fairly routine for churches to pray for the victims of 9/11 and to provide tangible support to those left behind in the form of monetary aid and faithful community embrace. Six years later, there are still many grassroots efforts to support the troops with cards, care baskets, and reassimilation to civilian life. People continue to open their homes to families who have a soldier currently serving in a hot spot overseas. Tears are still shed over what happened on 9/11. None of this gets any airplay in the press, but it's there, and it's real. The kind of commitment it takes to maintain these good works is far more laborious than being committed to sniping and whining, and it's far more virtuous too. If we are going to take comfort in humanity as made in the image of God, it is here where we must look to find a redeeming legacy of 9/11.