This post will not be about 9/11. I have written about that day for each of the last three years and have poured out all the emotion and psychic injury that the memories engendered by watching the horror originally filled me to bursting. There is nothing left to say that I haven’t already said and I hate repeating myself. I am, as the poet said, a “vessel’s contents spilled out onto the ground, a wastrel shadow, as sands in an hourglass pouring till time marks my soul’s rest.”
Have we really changed all that much? We conservatives like to talk about Democrats and liberals living in a “9/10 World” but the fact is, the world and America were changing long before 9/11 and will continue to change as long as we are alive. As a chronicler of events and enthusiastic but hopelessly amateurish historian, I have watched history’s march these last few years and tried to answer the question “What has changed in America since 9/11?” It might surprise you that I have come to the conclusion that a much more relevant question is “What has remained the same since 9/11?”
The internet is more of a factor in people’s lives but everybody and their stupid uncle saw that one coming in the 90’s. The ubiquitousness of cell phones has made it possible for people to plug in to the world in the morning and remain wired for the whole day. HDTV is cheaper and better. The greatest boon to mankind – the Tom Tom – has altered the way we drive and probably saved a few marriages along the way.
But save a few technological baubles that glitter in our hand or in our home, what has really changed in America since 9/11/01? Democrats and the left still believe that 9/11 was a tragedy but that the “War on Terror” is a misnomer and we are going about it the wrong way. The right believes the left wants us all to die at the hands of a scimitar wielding Islamist and that the US is suffering from Sharia creep.
Both outlooks are silly, stupid, and self defeating. I would say to my friends on the left that there is a “War on Terror” whether you want one or not thanks to our enemies declaring it so. And the idea of fighting such a war by “addressing the root causes” of the conflict is just absurd. Some of the truly fabulously wealthy people on this earth – Saudi princes – are some of the most dyed in the wool, American and western hating Islamists.
It isn’t a lack of education either. The madrasses that are currently turning out Taliban fighters by the hundreds every month in Pakistan take great care in teaching their charges how to read and write, figure sums, and teach other subjects western children also learn. Of course, they also teach how to blow people up which makes them somewhat different than your average suburban American school.
To my friends on the right, please get off this silly meme that America is being Islamized. Every time I read a story about some town or city accommodating the religious beliefs of Muslims and then read blogs and commenters who point to that as evidence that America is giving in to Sharia law, I want to throw up on my monitor. You sound exactly like the Know-Nothings of the 1850’s who feared the Irish because they were “papists” and thought they would turn America into a Catholic country. There are about 5 million Muslims in the United States and the chances of them taking over and converting the rest of us are about the same as the Democrats winning the presidential race in Wyoming.
I have come to the conclusion that we are pretty much the same country as we were on September 10, 2001. We are more cognizant of the terror threat which is a good thing. But we have allowed the war against terror to become politicized which is not. I have written many times that we need the left in this fight if we are to eventually prevail. But that won’t happen as long as our liberal friends continue to see fighting terror as some kind of police dragnet and the right calls anyone who disagrees with them unpatriotic. Somehow, a bridge must be found that both sides can use to rationally discuss our situation.
And boy do we need a national conversation. Both sides have fallen into such absolutes on the issues that we have the spectacle of some on the right defending torture while some on the left seeing any increase in executive power as tantamount to the creation of a dictatorship. This is nuts. If there is one thing we should have learned since 9/11 its that absolutism is deadly. Its stultifying effects on debate precludes any kind of rational response to the serious threat of Islamic terrorism. There is room for disagreement about terrorism and other national security issues. But how can you debate someone so closed minded that they dismiss the other side out of hand because they believe their opponents don’t care about America? Or that their political foes prefer an authoritarian police state to freedom due to unreasoning “fear” of terrorism?
Toxicity in our national dialogue exists not because we debate whether Obama called Palin a pig or even if Obama is as unqualified as Palin for high office. This is politics and in case you haven’t noticed, it is the way political contests have been fought in this country for a long time. Television and the internet have only magnified the controversies, given them a more immediate impact and perhaps a longer shelf life. But jumping on something dumb your opponent has said has been forever a part of American politics. To pretend – as the left and the media is whining today – that this is something new is ridiculous.
It is not the trivial things that separate us. It is trust in the intentions and motivations of the other side. I have written often that the left – with the best of intentions – supports the trashing of our culture. The ostensible reason is more freedom. The result is toxic sludge as the appeal to the lowest impulses in human beings slithers to the surface and enters the mainstream. The backlash against this we see with Christian cultural warriors who believe the left is out to deliberately infect their children and hence, they seek to impose their own standards and morals on the rest of us.
The inevitable push back from the left, who believe the Christians are out to destroy America, adds fuel to the fire and a full blown culture war erupts where debate is useless and both sides seek government help to impose their own worldview on everyone else.
This poison has spilled over and now infects all of our politics. If there is one thing that has changed since 9/11 is that the chasm between the two sides has gotten wider and the infection has spread to the point where nothing is untouched. The hope that Obama could bridge the gap – or anyone for that matter – was never realistic. America is what it is today and blaming one side or the other for the mess our politics has become is futile.
The fear I have is that if 9/11 can’t bring us together, what will? A nuclear terrorist attack? Assassinations? War with a nuclear Iran?
We are a weaker nation because we are so divided. To my mind, it’s only a matter of time before someone takes advantage of that fact and makes us pay a price we may be unwilling to bear.
1:39 pm
Well, that’s certainly a gloomy outlook consistent with the pathos of the 9/11 remembrances. Worse, in my opinion, is that when both sides come together in the mourning for the 9/11 victims, they are both wrong. Yes, mourning is OK, but where is the ANGER that should be directed at the perpetrators and their still-extant murderous ideology? Can we have some balance, here?
I am also a bit disappointed that, while you correctly and lucidly point out the great political schisms in our society, you seem to have no solutions. Not that I have any, either, but from my viewpoint there is a straightforward solution: electing conservative political leadership top to bottom, and pushing government back to its legitimate role. Liberals cannot achieve their ends—the control of as much of your life as possible—without political power, and their sole interest, it seems, in promoting cultural division and politicizing absolutely everything is to regain that political power. How else to explain their deranged prattling that Bush was responsible for 9/11, and simultaneously that he has made America /less/ safe since then?
I think it’s important, in these “culture wars,” to recognize the axiom that “it takes two sides to make a peace, but only one side to make a war.”
2:05 pm
Rick – thought-provoking post. makes me wonder when did the chasm between left and right really start to widen?? Robt Bork? Clarence Thomas? Clinton/Lewinski? Bush/Gore 2000? 9/11? Start of the Iraq War? Katrina? and on and on ,........, not sure where it’s going but it can’t be good.
2:47 pm
The funny thing about all of this is that most people are somewhere in the middle. They understand that black and white rarely exist. The discourse is polarized, but the boots on the ground are not.
This is why a two party system is the worst possible idea ever.
2:54 pm
Rick,
so be it…
in response to rayc,
i think the schism that we see today began in earnest with Roe vs. Wade, one simple issue was used as a wedge by both parties, and of course these political machines have found it easier to divide than to unite, so they continue to make more of issues…(mind you that is in recent times, we have been divided since George Washington and even before)
3:11 pm
Great post, Rick.
I have one comment (not really an objection) regarding the paragraph about the “silly meme about America being Islamized”. First, I believe that the overreaction to incidents of accomodating Muslims have a lot more to do with a basic revulsion to the religion that an actual fear that the country is being taken over. Second, there is a very clear slippery slope when it comes to granting accomodations based strictly on religion (undermining the separation clause of the first amendment), and some slack should be granted to people that are outraged by this. Third, if indeed it is fear of Islamization, you have only to look at Denmark, The Netherlands, and even England, to see a basis for some paranoia.
Finally (and I know this is a nit), it was the know-nothings (not the no-nothings), and an excellent comparison it was, considering they were a crucial component in electing the first Republican president.
3:36 pm
Rick wrote: “You sound exactly like the No-Nothings of the 1850’s who feared the Irish because they were “papists” and thought they would turn America into a Catholic country.”
That is sort of a simplified analysis.
As an Irish-American myself, I see nothing wrong with US citizens exercising their democratic rights to determine what their country will morph into. The existing citizens of the USA in the 1850’s had that right, as we do too today.
Today, Catholics and Jews are at the forefront of the open borders lobby and nobody denies this. Most Americans are against their ideological positions on it.
What should matter is what voters want, not elites.
3:58 pm
Whew…
For a second there I thought it wasn’t going to be about 9/11.
4:35 pm
Great post Rick. The feuding class seems to have become more estranged from each other, but the more I read about political culture in America the more I realize that we have always been a passionate people who take politics seriously. Sometimes that leads to grotesque charges and over-wrought prognostications about the country dissolving under our feet, but it has always been like that. When I hear you wonder about what hasn’t changed, I think that while we may be living in our own generational bubble, the political tempest we’re in right now isn’t new. In fact, every four years they tell us that THIS is the most important election EVER! It’s so important in fact, that we must shred the opposition to save ourselves.
That’s not to say I don’t appreciate a good pitchfork party, cause I’ll race you to the rack as long as I’m able! But you’re point is thought provoking, and I wouldn’t have America any other way…
4:37 pm
[...] Rick Moran [...]
6:00 pm
Rick,
Nice analysis. Probably the best I’ve seen in the past couple of years.
6:49 pm
Just wanted to echo the replies of “Great post”.
There was a fascinating book by Niall Ferguson written a few years ago called Colossus that also dealt with the idea that 9/11 might have forced us to refocus but the game itself has changed very little.
Frankly though, I don’t know if I prefer the health nazis on the left or the bible bangers on the right when it comes to culture wars. While I may disagree about the left being the only side that is “trashing culture”, I certainly agree that any talk of of Islamization is ridiculous. Muslims peacefully living in the United States and Britain is the best evidence that Islam and modernization are not natural enemies.
7:55 pm
I have been reading your blog for a long time. I wanted to say I almost always agree with you 100%. I agree wholeheartedly with this post. Do you ever wonder what will happen if Obama doesn’t win? How long can the left go without winning before it triggers something? I correspond with people on FB and I posted a note the other evening while watching speeches from the RNC - All I said was – “I just love Fred Thompson”... I was just responding to Fred the actor/man/speech giver at that moment during his speech. Some of my liberal friends went BONKERs. You see, before that one line comment, I had very carefully avoided any political identity at all. One woman actually said (after BLASTING me for her four year Bush triggered depression) that she still liked me, in spite of my Fred Thompson comment. Really. Facebook can be a scary place for a moderate, much less a conservative. Anyway- I love your stuff and am with you. Like you, I think we are back to square 9/10…
11:52 pm
Recently, I have been wondering why I continue to read this site. This post reminded me why. While I don’t agree with every single point made in it, I do agree with the overall sentiment.
The odd thing is, that I believe Barack Obama would as well. If you watch his interview at Columbia University today, I think you will see what I mean.
I long for a country in which we can disagree and still respect those with whome we don’t agree with, because we understand that our hearts are in the same place. I believe that voices like yours can help take us there.
6:49 am
I’ll set aside specific quibbles and address the core issue you raise.
We aren’t united because we aren’t going anywhere. You can’t rally a people behind a cause that doesn’t exist, that they don’t perceive. We’ve become a backward-looking people. Left as well as Right, we are turning European.
What are we after? What do we want? What are we setting out to do as a people?
The Right’s answers are all strictly individual: get ahead, succeed. The Left’s answers are all strictly governmental: more for this program or that.
But none of it forms a picture of where we are going, what we need to accomplish. The Right wants to exaggerate some threats and ignore others. The Left is a perfect mirror, exaggerating different threats. Both are wrong. It won’t be Islamicists or global warming that destroy us. It will be aimlessness, passivity, trivialization and a sort of society-wide lack of focus.
We don’t need a threat to unite us, that’s why 9/11 didn’t do the job. We need an idea of what we want to create. We need a future. And the future will have to be more than killing Osama and driving a Prius.
5:39 pm
1870 till 1920 déjà vu
African Americans were first permitted to vote in 1870.
American women were first permitted to vote in 1920.
That’s 50 years that for one reason or another that African Americans were essentially treated with more dignity and respect than women. Think of it, they received more respect than the wives, daughters, and sisters did from their own husbands, fathers, and brothers. It took 50 years for the male voters to eventually see the cruel and unforgivable lack of fairness in the status of women between the sad years of 1870 and 1920. And, it was THE WOMEN, the suffragettes, who forced the issue—and championed their own defense of their Right to vote. The men eventually acceded to their entreaties for justice, but it was the women who brought the issue to the fore.
Now, in 2008, we as a nation of voters—and especially women—are again confronted by two choices: Do we again slight women by voting to favor an African American for the prestigious job of President of the United States merely because he is personable and has excellent oratorical abilities? And do we then exclude a wonderfully personable and charming woman who also possesses outstanding oratorical abilities? What, ultimately, are our aspirations?
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a groundbreaking election. It is precedent setting just as was the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870, and the Nineteenth Amendment of 1920. It is impossible to imagine women back in those sorrowful years…shaking their heads in utter disbelief at their second class status….
Men need to respect women more, but in truth, women also, need to respect themselves more. Once again it is women who are called upon to stand up for themselves and claim their Right to high executive office. Just as freedom needs to be defended (and that means fought for) so does breaking through the ‘glass ceiling!’
Women in particular should review their choices carefully, and ask: Who would best represent my interests? Which candidate is most likely to lend a sympathetic ear to the difficulties and challenges that I must personally face? Which of these two candidates would be most accessible, most likely to take my phone call, most likely to read my letter with heartfelt understanding and concern?
Ladies: The time has again come to defend your interests. Vote to achieve greater respect. Vote your heart. Vote for what feels right. Vote to advance your status in America. You have the power if you use it.——————————————————-
Please feel free to blog these thoughts along. CK Young
2:30 am
Rick, in the end we all know you will line up, toxin or not, for your lesser evil. And there you will go gently into that good night, not raging against the dieing of the light.
6:00 am
Good post … the future ain’t goona look bright ever again until we stop snipping at one another, blaming America first, killing millions of babies every year by convenience abortions and finally bring God back into this country, I know the left will not like the GOD comment but
lets all just agree to disagre without bloodying each other up so.
11:21 am
If I wanted to tear this country apart I would knock off a right wing radio god make a claim for “Lefties for Justice” or some other loony organization. Then I would knock off some leftie like Michael Moore and claim that “Righties for God “ did it for retribution. Them I’d sit back, pop open a beer, and watch the kool aid drinker beat each other senseless in the streets and do my tearing apart the country work for me.
Why AQ hasn’t figured this out by now only shows how pathetically stupid our enemy is.