It’s safe to say that the spasm of post-Sept. 11 national unity has officially passed. The flags are disappearing from porches and stores report the Old Glory sales frenzy is over. Taliban traitor John Walker Lindh is back and awaiting trial, though there’s debate as to whether he’s an imminent threat to national security or a hapless mope.
Now comes word that there’s an angry backlash developing against the families of those who died in the terrorist attacks. Those families stand to collect an average of $1.65 million from a federal fund set up after the attacks. Some families, however, are demanding more money from the federal government. That has triggered the outrage. After a spokesman for Families of September 11 Inc. recently appeared on television, he said he got a letter from a viewer. “If $1.6 million isn’t enough for you, then I hope you rot in hell,” the viewer wrote.
Even a month ago, such criticism of families of victims would have been unthinkable.
The patriotic atmosphere was so charged in late December that the publisher of the Sacramento Bee was jeered off the stage at California State University when she tried to deliver a commencement address about civil liberties and the limits of law enforcement.
Now, just as quickly, that atmosphere seems changed.
Lawyers have filed the first wrongful death lawsuits against airlines, having patriotically held off for three months. A proposed statue of New York firemen raising the flag at Ground Zero turned into a verbal brawl over the ethnic backgrounds of the figures.
Take a step back for a moment. Millions of words have been written since the attacks. About heroism, and the New York City firefighters who charged into the burning World Trade towers knowing that they might not come out. About a generation of young people learning, for the first time, the steep costs of liberty and what it means to be an American. About getting a glimpse of what it must have felt like on the homefront during World War II, in a country united by singular purpose.
For a few weeks, America felt like one community. People talked to each other differently. The flags came out; for many it was the first time in memory that they could fly the flag without a trace of embarrassment. Hearing the Star-Spangled Banner brought tears. People donated so much blood relief agencies were overwhelmed. Crime rates slipped in some cities.
In a plaza outside Tribune Tower, thousands of people stood in absolute silence on a sun-washed day in October, a month after the attacks. They were remembering the dead. Such memorials happened all across the country that day.
It was not so long ago. And it was a powerful, powerful moment.
Now life has resumed some familiar patterns. Some of the overt symbols of unity and patriotism have been tucked away. There are some unseemly squabbles involving lawyers.
But something has endured. It may not be quite as dramatic as President Bush’s contention that the nation’s mindset has shifted from “If it feels good, do it,” to “Let’s roll.”
We may not be able to quantify it. But something has changed in this nation’s soul. It is a better place for having responded so selflessly and so resolutely to unspeakable tragedy.
