Unity Has Gotten Us Through the Toughest Times. We Need It Again

Last Saturday in a quiet Pennsylvania field on a blue-sky sunny late summer day a former president rose to speak on the 20^th anniversary of the September 11^th terrorist attacks. President George W. Bush spoke words that we needed to hear. 

Certainly, the mere mention of his name will drive many to reactions one way or another. And therein lies a problem we have in America. We strive to find faults of anyone to discredit all they may say or do.

We fight about everything. Even the mundane and miniscule are inflated to Everest-sized issues for those engaged in a steady slate of culture wars—culture wars used to fuel an anger that only benefits an opportunistic political class.

Inside the bubbles people foment constant battles, rallies and endless campaigning as a means to build legions of angry people. It is the ultimate grift to attain and retain power and money from the tribes of like-minded zealots. 

Divide and conquer on a national scale.

That is why President Bush’s speech was an important lesson. The events of 9/11 gave him a unique perspective from those dark days when grief and defeat seemed crippling to this nation. And he looked to where we are as a nation today:

“In the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks, I was proud to lead an amazing, resilient, united people. When it comes to the unity of America, those days seem distant from our own. A malign force seems at work in our common life that turns every disagreement into an argument, and every argument into a clash of cultures. So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear and resentment.”

For our nation, the resurgence of COVID-19 with the Delta strain is challenging and tragic like the events of 9/11. The pandemic is treated seriously by some but dismissed as a hoax by others. Rather than a coordinated effort, our response became a political issue driven by governors and politicians whose political opportunism was rewarded by creating a faux anger among some people.

Looking back at the days after 9/11, things changed. Men and women went off to war; our support for them was united and unwavering. For the rest of us, our daily routines changed. Getting on planes or going to stadiums or arenas entailed new security measures. And while we may not have liked it, we did and continue to do it.

In World War II we sent a generation off to war and mobilized every American either serving in our Armed Forces or working in factories and farms to support the cause.

And what are we being asked to do in 2021? To look out for one another by wearing a mask and getting a vaccine. That’s it. 

It seems silly to complain about that. 

Some talk about our “freedoms” and “rights” being infringed upon. But there is a myth being built, an idea that all rights and freedoms flow to us without asking anything of us in return. The truth is this: our rights and freedoms exist only because in our darkest days we’ve taken up the common cause for uncommon results.

We are fortunate to live in a country where vaccines are readily available, and an army of front-line workers battle on our behalf. Like our support of our troops after 9/11, our commitment to today’s front-line workers should also be united and unwavering.

But our tendency toward division should not surprise us. This is a nation where we fight over things as small as preferred pronouns. She/her, he/him, they/them are part of people’s e-mail signatures when the truth is that many people’s favorite pronouns are really I/me.

In a time of challenge made more difficult by divisions, the pronouns we all need right now are We and Us.

My father’s favorite prayer, a prayer that we recited before and after each game he coached was the Our Father. And it was that way because every pronoun in that prayer is plural. Look at all four verses of the Star-Spangled Banner: every pronoun is plural. 

WE and US bind us to one another.

What has made us great, what has made us unique has been that we are the UNITED States of America. We may disagree on policy but throughout our history when a path to victory was clear we did our part.

In some ways our nation’s wounds are self-inflicted because selfish individuals have led us astray. It is time to reject division, it is time to pull together rather than fall apart.

Put aside that hollow rhetoric of those who try to convince you otherwise. Somebody who knows a guy who knows a guy should not be given the same weight of credibility as expert men and women with decades of experience. Lurkers who scour the internet for any segment of any statement to discredit experts are not leaders.

These divisive dishonest people are venomous enemies of the state.

President Bush also said: ”In the sacrifice of the first responders, in the mutual aid of strangers, in the solidarity of grief and grace, the actions of an enemy revealed the spirit of a people. And we were proud of our wounded nation.”

In fighting the pandemic enemy of these times, what spirit of our people have we revealed? Twenty years on when we speak of these days, we may not like what we see.