Remember This

It's been five years and a day since the terrible reality of international terrorism came crashing down on our heads. In that time, our nation has changed a great deal, and not all for the better. I say that we have changed, and not that we have been changed for a reason: many of the changes are things that we have, collectively, inflicted upon ourselves.

Some, right about now, will want to argue with that. A few will insist that all of the changes were caused by the enemy without, by the terrorists, and that we had nothing to do with it. Others will be able to be honest enough with themselves to admit that the terrorists did not cause all the changes, but will not be able to shoulder the blame themselves. Instead, they will want to blame the enemy within - the other side, the other guys, the Adminsitration, Bush, Karl Rove, Bill Frist, whoever. If only that were true. We are all partly to blame for what has happened. The terrorists inflicted a great deal of harm on us, but we have inflicted a great deal more on ourselves since then.

The worst of it is that we have allowed ourselves to become, once again, a nation divided. We were aided and abetted in this by politicians eager to demonize their opponents, by a media more interested in entertainment and profit than in journalism, by groups that are euphamestically called "special interests" but which could more accurately be called "self-interested." Ultimately, though, we can only place so much of the blame on their shoulders, because ultimately it is our own inner demons that are to blame. They divided us, but we let them. The terrorists might have struck the blow, and the politicians may have provided the wedge - but we held it in place for them.

As a nation, we have allowed ourselves to be turned into an easily-manipulated public, and we need to fix that. We need to truly remember that there is far more that we share in common than there is between us, and that we should define ourselves based on our similarities, not on our differences. We need to accept responsibility for our destiny, and to remember that it is ultimately the American public, not the political parties, that bears the responsibility for shaping the course that the nation follows.

That is not going to be easy. Right now, every poll in the known universe, on virtually any issue that can be conceived, shows us split. Every Sunday morning talkshow shows us someone else who is trying to use that divide for their own petty advantage. Public discourse has descended so far that it has become almost routine for people to call their opponents traitors. Honesty has been lost from the public forum for so long now that even the most naive optimist thinks that the possibility of regaining it is nothing more than a pipe dream.

Against this background of division, it is good for us to look back five years and a day, because it is there, in that tragedy, that we can clearly see something about ourselves that offers us the greatest hope that we can overcome our differences and our divisions. Five years and a day ago, we saw that we were, as we remain, a nation populated by people who will run into the fire to save strangers.

As long as we have that, we are not hopelessly divided.