This Sunday, it will have been ten years since the terrorist attack now known simply as 9-11. While this remains a special memorial for all Americans, for me it was very personal.
On 9-11, 2001 I was employed as a program specialist/emergency manager with FEMA. On that morning I was in Seattle to conduct a week long training and certification class for many of FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue K-9 teams. It wasn’t a good day.
I lost several friends that morning. One, a fellow army pilot, worked in the Pentagon. Several more were members of Task Force One, the FEMA urban search and rescue unit sponsored and staffed by the New York City Fire Department. They were among the first to respond to the Twin Towers and sacrificed themselves in an effort to save their fellow citizens.
Over the next days and weeks I was deployed to the National Emergency Operations Center in D.C., the Pentagon and eventually New York City. I can still remember the smell and the blackness inside the destroyed Pentagon and the dust and grit that ground into the very pores of the skin at Ground Zero.
Yet, what I remember most is the strength and kindness of the people. Thousands of volunteers from all walks of life came together in an unprecedented selfless effort. Rich and poor, famous and not so famous, all contributed the best they knew how. People of all political persuasions stood together to show with courage and dignity that the terrorists would not win.
Loretta Swit, (you might remember her as Hot Lips Hoolihan from the TV show “MASH”) was serving hotdogs from a hotdog stand right outside the Javits Center, where many of the responders were headquartered. And I got a hug (designed to make my wife jealous) from Debra Winger the female lead in the movie Urban Cowboy as she toured the site to encourage the workers. Returning to our hotel late at night, it was common to be stopped by strangers who, recognizing the dusty and dirty FEMA blue uniforms, just wanted to offer support.
No one asked what political party you belonged to, and none seemed concerned with what news channel was your favorite. We were all just Americans trying to do the best we could for our country.
I pray we don’t need another 9-11 to pull us together again. But perhaps, on this tenth anniversary, we can remember that when the chips are down Americans pull together. Although we may passionately argue over the exact path to prosperity and freedom, the argument should be limited to reasonable debate and not name calling.
A caller on an investment radio talk show the other day said she didn’t understand how good news for corporations had anything to do with the job market. Besides her lack of understanding basic economic realities (only profitable businesses hire additional help) this seemed another sign of how successful some politicians have become at demonizing those who power the engine of real economic growth.
Class warfare has become so acceptable we even see it in advertisements like the one for Nationwide. They brag that because they are member owned they don’t report to Wall Street or have to worry about shareholder profits. How long do you think Nationwide would exist if they stopped worrying about the bottom line or ignored the company owners, whoever they may be?
Besides, do they really think we don’t know that most of those evil shareholders are regular people like you and me who invest in the stock market as a way to hedge our financial future?
It’s gone so far that Representative Andre Carson at a meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus felt comfortable declaring, “Some of them in Congress right now with this tea party movement would love to see you and me hanging on a tree.” There was no backlash from his fellow democrats. Some publicly cheered. Where is the outrage?
Considering that there is no evidence to support his claims of violent racism in the TEA Party, and despite lots of evidence to the contrary, how can anyone not be offended and see the danger of such politically motivated lies. Are we so partisan we will let these statements slide, regardless of our political persuasion?
And as for those poor brain washed souls naive enough to believe that TEA party folks are gearing up to lynch blacks, how surprising will it be when they turn violent in what they see is a justified defense?
Demonizing the enemy to shore up a week argument is as old as politics. But we may want to remember how similar demonizing led to death camps under the German III Reich and to Japanese internment camps in our own country. I’m convinced that the recent riots in England are the results of politicians demonizing private success to justify a more socialist government.
I don’t think we want to go there.
“Beware of those who feel obliged to prove their own patriotism by calling into question the loyalty of others … Strive to develop a maturity of mind and emotion and a depth of spirit which enables you to differ with others on matters of politics without calling into question the integrity of those with whom you differ. -Hugh B. Brown, Commencement address, Brigham Young University, May 31, 1968.
So can we disagree? Of course we can. A strong, patriotic sense of right and wrong is both appropriate and required in a free society. But if we continue to demonize those with whom we disagree, the terrorists of ten years ago could have just saved themselves the effort.
The Founders Tavern 