Beautiful Dreamers Thursday, September 11, 2003

Outside my window, kids are reading the names of dead people. This morning I had a repetition, as Dr. Percy would call it: an 8:30 appointment at my allergist, which is where I was precisely two years ago. Back then, the receptionist told me a single-engine plane had hit the World Trade Center. I flinched for a second: Mrs. Wrong Turn Journal-to-be was there. I remembered how the Empire State Building, which I passed on the way to the office, had taken a hit in the Forties and come through just fine. Then I got downstairs and saw the smoke. Somebody said eight planes, somebody else said Pentagon. I never knew I cared about the Pentagon.

My wife-to-be made it through that day unhurt, and watched the tower fall from Exchange Place, where there is a statue of a valiant Polish officer being bayoneted in the back. That very night, a friend of mine told me he knew where they were coming from but they should've found a better way to stick up for the Palestinians. I ate two pizzas and slept for twelve hours.

Much in the meantime. Wars and rumors of war. Weddings and babies. And opinions. Oy, the opinions. I remember going out to eat last year on the anniversary and hoping nobody brought up politics. I hoped that, in fact, every goddamn time I've talked to anybody in the past twenty-four months.

It comes down to how you arrange the proposition. Either: We, as a nation, are flawed, but.... Or: ....but we, as a nation, are flawed. To put that more clearly, we have a choice between: Yes, we were attacked, yes, we suffered horrible losses, yes, the people who did this are awful. But we are flawed and worse things than 9/11 happen at sea and much of those things are our fault anyway, so we should be introspective and penitent, not warlike. Or the other: We are haunted by our past because God is just, as Jefferson warned us. And yet who else are you going to look to to save the world? A bunch of bureaucrats in Brussels? Beijing? Tierra del Fuego?

This, I think, is the subtext beneath the arguments for and against the war and everything springing from it: Half the country thinks there is a cancer at the heart of this society, Western Civ as well as this nation, and life will be a lie until we confront it and cut it out. Everything we've done while it's been growing, democracy, culture, all of it, is beside the point; it's like a talent show in the terminal ward. You sit there under the bunting and applaud, but in embarrassment and sadness and sympathy more than appreciation. The other half think we're the doctor on rounds. Maybe the doctor drinks, maybe he's an old crank, maybe a know-it-all who treats his staff shabbily. But without him nobody's going to get any better.

So what would it take to bring the two halves together? Two years ago, it seemed like war would do it, but apparently not. If Ming the Merciless showed up with his earthquake machine and death rays, he would have a cheering section. Friendship and love don't work, either, since I still grit my teeth when politics comes up in conversation and friendships no longer hold against abstractions. I think the road runs through Rome, but that's an argument for another day.

How about respect? If one half of the country says to the other half: We are all products of a singular country and a singular culture, one achieved with sweat and invention and libraries of ideas and the blood of the committed and innocent. Can we agree to assume the best of the other side, in fact to assume us to be all part of one struggle? And may we further assume that we all have the same black mark on our soul that consigns us to act out of a combination of weakness and high principle, that commits us to the struggle but keeps tricking us into slackening when strength is needed most?

Sure, comes the answer, from everyone, including me, to my shame. You first.

@ 10:23:00 AM,

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