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One
nation united in differences Gerald Early on 9/11 and national unity Source: Gerald L. Early, Ph.D. - (314) 935-5576 Related: International Writers Center biography [St. Louis, Mo., 9-10-02] - Gerald Early, Ph.D., the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters at Washington University and a frequent essayist on American cultural issues, comments below on national unity and what it means to be an American in the wake of 9/11. One nation united in differences By Gerald L. Early, Ph.D. (Reprinted with permission from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 8, 2002) The tragedy of Sept. 11 has forced many Americans to confront again the familiar question: What does it mean to be an American? The question has perhaps acquired a pitch of urgency as anti- Americanism seems more virulent now, exceeding even the anti- Americanism of the Vietnam War era.
How dare someone attack us; and, in God's name, what have we done that we should be attacked? We Americans have often believed it is possible to consider people quite apart from the forces that have produced them. This has sometimes confounded our ability to understand ourselves in any mature way. Our moral simplicity as Americans has often made it difficult for us to understand how others see us or themselves. Our optimism and our success have convinced the rest of the world that we have no ability to u nderstand tragedy, only a need to fix things. The world considers us privileged juveniles, alternately narrow-minded and gluttonous. Sometimes, the world has been right. The Sept. 11 attack caused some Americans to believe our culture to be both fragile and superficial, an unreal combination of contrived desire and rabid status-seeking, as we seem fixated on luxurious possessions and dieting. Americans may be as disliked by the rest of the world for our narcissism as for our seeming chauvinism, and this narcissism is, to many Americans, a sign of weakness. But other aspects of our cultural life became apparent after the attacks: our tremendous sense of volunteerism and moral duty, our deep philanthropic urge, our willingness to join and to organize. We are not shallow people. The left condemns Americans for an inhumane foreign policy that has been constricted by provincialism, corrupted and controlled by huge money interests and flawed by racism. This has often been true, but not always. The United States has done things that were unwise, even morally reprehensible at times. But it is a distortion to characterize the United States, as some Marxists do, as an evil country. We have, on several occasions, tried to do good in the world and sometimes even succeeded. Yet I think the right is almost certainly correct in saying that the attack was not motivated by some historical memory of a dastardly U.S. intervention somewhere but rather by more desperate, and more irrational, expressions of jealousy, hatred and anger. We should take no false comfort in this by demonizing our enemy as our enemy has demonized us. Our enemy is not a sect of organized lunatics but a passionate movement against Western liberalism of some considerable reach and influence. The attack was a symptom, not the problem. Still, a war on terrorism is quixotic (terrorism by states is the true bane of the world) and likely only a political gambit to generate consensus to help a weak president get re- elected. Never was the atmosphere in the United States more stifling, more oppressive, than during the few months immediately following the Sept. 11 attack when President George W. Bush enjoyed unnatural popularity and no one dared breathe a word of criticism for fear of being labeled unpatriotic. That phony consensus seemed to comfort many Americans, striking some oddly tuned chord of sentimentality that, finally, the Vietnam generation was going to get its Good War, as The Greatest Generation had with World War II. Thank goodness, we seem to have awakened from the fantasy that there are good wars or that we are Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in "Casablanca." American ideology is not simply a belief in free markets and individual rights, it is the belief in the power of dissent. What makes America the powerful and, I think, ultimately, great nation that it is, is that we have a roiling, fluid culture, that we are a fairly divisive people but we manage our divisions, we learn to use the creative tensions they provide. We are factions and special interests, but we understand the limitations of our divisions as we understand our need for them. Belief in America is the idea that there are many ways of seeing what we are, and we need all those ways of seeing. Many other nations have not come close to learning this. I hope the Sept. 11 tragedy has taught us that this unity in division might be the most important aspect of what it means to be an American. |
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