Weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 claimed thousands of American lives, the mayor of New York took the podium before the General Assembly of the United Nations and called for unity: The United States must redouble its commitment to democratic values, he said, and “transcend all forms of prejudice” in combating terror. “This massive attack,” he said, “was intended to break our spirit. It has not done that. It’s made us stronger, more determined, and more resolved.”
“We are unified,” the mayor continued, “and we will not yield to terror.”
That mayor, of course, was Rudy Giuliani, who, in the 20 years since he gave that address went from “America’s mayor” to opportunist crank to corrupt clown working — clumsily — to subvert democracy on behalf of Donald Trump. It’s a transformation that encapsulates much of the disappointment and decay and destruction of the last two decades: The promise not to “engage in any form of group blame or group hatred” was broken practically in the same breath it was made, with a rise in hostility toward Muslims that persists today. The “stand” against terrorism that Giuliani, then-President George W. Bush, and members of both political parties demanded led to nearly ten years of war in Iraq and twenty years of war in Afghanistan, the latter of which ended last month with the chaotic withdrawal of American forces and the takeover of the country by the Taliban — the group whose control was overthrown when the U.S.-led coalition began its operations in the nation in 2001. And the “unity” elected officials spoke of in those fevered days after the attacks? If it ever truly existed, it was for a brief spell that leaders can now only recall with an ache of nostalgia. Far from bringing Americans together around shared values, the last twenty years have seen the country cleaved apart — so much so that basic tenets of reality and common sense are now matters of heated political controversy.
There’s been progress and cause for optimism in those years, to be sure. But there has also been a prevailing mood of pessimism hanging over the country, as a new Washington Post/ABC News poll released Wednesday underscored. A vast majority say the 9/11 attacks changed America, and far more respondents than not — 46% to 33% — say the country has changed for the worse. Perceptions of the course the country has taken over the last two decades may be colored by the pandemic, which has not only dramatically altered American life on its own, but underscored the dysfunction that has long plagued the nation. But the poll also suggests a sense of gloom that has grown steadily, rather than with a single event: On the one year anniversary of the attacks, 55% of respondents said the event had changed the country for the better. On the ten year anniversary, that number was down to 39%. Now, it stands at just 33%.
“While Americans had a shared sense of anguish after Sept. 11, the months that followed also were marked by rare spirit of public unity,” as Hannah Hartig and Carroll Doherty wrote in a thoughtful Pew Research analysis last week of Americans’ shifting views of the attacks. “Yet in many ways, the ‘9/11 effect’ on public opinion was short-lived.”
That was not inevitable, of course; it is, in many ways, the product of two decades of bad choices and bad faith. What leaders vowed would unify the country instead fueled assaults on civil liberties; two devastating, intractable wars; and grievance politics that would eventually help lead to the rise of Trumpism. It’s perhaps no surprise that liberals in the Post/ABC News poll tended to have bleaker views about the direction of the country since 9/11; the ugly forces in our politics that were underscored by the attacks have only seemed to gain in strength over the last twenty years, while Democrats have frequently proved ineffective in confronting them. It can be hard to hear the progress over the constant hum of crisis, which our leaders and institutions have not only struggled to avert and respond to, but in many cases exacerbated. “The United States — as both a government and a nation — got nearly everything about our response wrong, on the big issues and the little ones,” the journalist and historian Garrett M. Graff wrote in the Atlantic on Wednesday.
That has implications not only for the current predicament we find ourselves in — suffering the equivalent of a 9/11 twice a week over the course of the last year and a half in a pandemic that continues to rage, despite the availability of life-saving vaccines — but for our ability to climb out of it. “We are,” as Graff wrote, “confronting the current crisis with little of the hope, goodwill, and unity that 9/11 initially created.” One rather hopes that the spell can be broken — that, if it wasn’t inevitable that the U.S. would get on this course, it is also not inevitable that it has to continue down it. But Americans in recent polls suggest they aren’t so confident.
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