Saving America From Itself

A lot of hypotheticals made the rounds after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. “What would you do if” questions were a way to process all the horror, as were scenarios of how to go forward.

My boss back then was a young Jewish woman, raised by her Orthodox rabbi grandfather. She had spent time in Israel, where she said the kind of invasive security procedures that eventually became codified as the Patriot Act were necessary to protect the country. “But if it isn’t America after you’re done protecting it,” I asked, “what’s the point?”

Ten years later, I still wonder about the answer to that question. When Bush suggested that average Americans could best defeat terrorism by going shopping, we responded. We flooded sport utility vehicle show rooms, and gawked as Hummers and Lincoln Navigators attempted to squeeze into parking spots like paunchy football coaches trying to wear their high school uniforms. We distracted ourselves with the antics of second-rate celebrities as they bounced from sex tapes to drug binges to rehab and back. We went along with invasions, with shock and awe, with rigged videos of statues falling and blond female service members being rescued. We were at war but we were never quite sure with whom: Insurgents? Dead-enders? Enemy combatants?

And at its core, our country changed. For a few brief months, even as Bush plunged the last stake into the heart of capitalism by removing the essential element of risk with the TARP bailout, it looked like we might regain our pre-9/11 senses. We elected Barack Obama, who ran on a platform of hope and change. But the transformation of the America that used to be, into the smaller, fearful, faded empire that it now was had gone too far. The Tea Party of the Flies and its, “There’s not enough for everyone so I’m gonna get mine” scarcity mind-set with racist, homophobic, fundamentalist undertones took hold.

I listened to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont on the Diane Rehm Show recently defend the idea of the federal government coming to his state’s aid in the wake of damage from the storm Irene. That he would have to make such a case was unthinkable ten years ago. Today, we don’t bat an eye as tea party Republicans call for defunding the Federal Emergency Management Administration. Let the states do it, they huff. But Sanders pushed back.

The last that I heard, the name of our country is called the “United States of America,” and the essence of that, and what a nation is about, is if there is a tornado in Missouri, if there is a terrible hurricane in Louisiana, if there are problems in New England, we are one nation. And if communities are devastated and people don’t have a place to sleep, and roads are washed out, we as a nation respond to the crisis and the devastation that takes place in another part.

We’re one people. So the idea that some folks are saying, that federal government does not have a role to play in that, I think is, is terribly wrong. We do need the assistance. Vermont needs the assistance of the federal government, New Jersey right now, just as Missouri did, just as California has in the past. That’s what being a nation is about.

…You know, this debate about whether or not we are going to be one country or we’re going to be a confederation of different states I thought was settled way back when our country was born. I think, frankly, at a time when China is spending 9 percent of its GDP on infrastructure, building high-speed rail, building roads and bridges and airports, the United States of America will look like a laughing stock in front of the entire world if we cannot rebuild communities and roads and bridges and schools that have been devastated by natural disaster.

But the tea party cares not one whit about the rest of the world. They don’t even care about their own neighbors, let alone residents of another state or region. Just check the comments on your local news web sites for vivid illustrations of how little tea party members care for their own communities, for the elderly, for libraries, for constructing public buildings out of anything more expensive than sheet metal and concrete block. “I got mine,” they say. “Don’t even think about taking any.”

Pres. Obama addressed this sentiment in his recent jobs speech.

Yes we are strong and self-reliant, and it has been the drive and initiative of our workers and entrepreneurs that has made this economy the engine and the envy of the world. But there’s always been another thread running throughout our history: a belief that we’re all connected and that there’s some things we can only do together, as a nation.

And yet, ten years after 9/11, I wonder if there is anything left that we’re willing to do together as one people. I wonder if my fellow Americans have enough lighthearted generosity left, enough recognition that you only remain great by doing great things, enough concern for the future, to turn back the clock.

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