We had our chance.
Ten years ago this week, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon gave us a rare moment of national and international unity.
Democrats and Republicans stood side-by-side and sang “God Bless America” together on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. People from around the world – yes, even in the Middle East – offered words of sympathy, support and solidarity.
Out of horrible actions came heroism. Meanwhile, there was a fleeting opportunity for Americans who regularly disagree to realize that they had far more in common with one another than with a monster like Osama bin Laden.
Ten years later, all of that is gone. We’ve slipped back into the quagmire of divisiveness.
It’s “us” versus “them.” We have divided government.
One side calls the other side “socialist,” questions whether they’re really Americans and claims “they” are trying to destroy the country.
The other side fires back with charges of “racism,” or fascism, or resorts to the grammatically-questionable slur “son of bitches.”
We’re back where we started before Sept. 11, 2001 – or worse.
But didn’t we all feel the horror the same. A group of delusional terrorists looked across the ocean at all of us and didn’t like what the United States of America stood for. They didn’t discriminate. They targeted all of us — Republican and Democrat, business and labor, Christian, Jew, Muslim, atheist and more.
We all shuddered at the attacks. Wherever we were, we stood side by side with people who aren’t necessarily like ourselves, and we realized we were shedding the same kind of tears.
At that moment, all of us could see we had a common, obvious enemy. Evil incarnate.
Ten years later, as we honor the fallen in a world without an Osama bin Laden, I hope we can reflect on something we lost with or without him: our sense of common cause.
It slipped away from us sometime after our nation started a couple of wars without asking the nation for the type of shared sacrifices that kept us all together during World War II.
With an all-volunteer military, only about 1 percent of Americans have paid a disproportionate price. The other 99 percent were quite literally told to go shopping. They weren’t asked to buy war bonds, collect up scrap metal, or pay higher taxes. In fact, they demanded and received lower taxes. And then the debates over war devolved into bitterness, were washed away by Hurricane Katrina, and devolved into instinctive finger-pointing and double-edged vilification by both sides.
By 2008, it looked like most average Americans had had enough.
Whatever you think of President Obama, remember that one of his big campaign promises was to end the culture of divisive partisanship that had taken over Washington, D.C., like a cancer. That, more than anything else, was the reason he won the election and explains why, on the world stage, he was awarded a premature Nobel Peace Prize.
The nation and the world were beyond eager for a moment of unity not unlike the ones we felt amid the tragedy of 9/11.
But the “hope” and “change” campaign has proven no match for the forces of division. If you blame the president or you blame the Tea Party or something else, then let’s face it, you’re part of that very divisiveness you don’t want.
On Sept. 11, 2011, let us remember those whose lives were lost. And let’s think for a moment about giving them a legacy by getting back the unity we had for a few fleeting moments.
Today, there is another big enemy: economic despair.
The American Dream is under attack. And that affects each and every one of us, rich and poor, black and white, business and labor, people of all religions.
Let that be our common cause. We can disagree about how we attack it, but we shouldn’t spend all our energy attacking one another. The disagreements are big ones, but they’re only about strategy. We all have the same goal.
Let’s pull this country together in a way we haven’t seen for 10 long, painful years.
M.E. Sprengelmeyer covered the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack at the Pentagon for the Rocky Mountain News. Today he is reporter and publisher of The Guadalupe County Communicator in Santa Rosa, N.M.
