Editorial: The indelible mark of Sept. 11, 2001

On Sept. 11, 2001, everyone woke up the same splintered, tribal people they were the night before.

Americans were Democrats and Republicans. They were liberals and conservatives. They were Catholics and Jews, Methodists and Muslims, Californians and New Yorkers, Pittsburghers and Philadelphians. They aligned by job, by home, by alma mater, by sexuality, by ethnicity and more.

Just like on Sept. 10, 2001, there were a million different ways they would identify themselves.

But in nature, there are moments that leave an indelible mark. Cut a tree and you can read its history in the rings that tell of years with drought or floods. Striations in rock can tell stories of volcanoes and earthquakes.

That morning at 8:46 a.m., America experienced one of those moments that draws a thick, dark line. When the first plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York, the people we were became fossils. The people we became would never be the same — for good or ill.

On that day, all of us experienced the same set of emotions in some degree as one plane became two and a third hit the Pentagon and finally as the fourth plunged into a Pennsylvania field. We were confused. We were afraid. We were hopeful. We were angry.

It was these raw emotions that united us. The speech given by George W. Bush at Ground Zero two days later was undeniably his best moment as president, when he encouraged us all to come together and promised us all to exact justice.

At our best, that fissure between what was and what would be made us committed and focused. It made us put country before party. It made us appreciate not only our families and friends but also our neighbors.

At our worst, it made some distrustful and hostile toward anyone we perceived as a new and potential threat. It wasn’t just that there was anger toward Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network responsible for the deaths of 2,977 people. There was backlash against Muslims as well as Sikhs and others.

In the years since, we have pulled further away from our best selves. Political polarization seems worse than at any time since the Civil War. We do not just have different opinions than each other. There is contempt — if not outright hatred — of those who do not believe what we believe. Even those on the same side become the enemy if they don’t align enough.

A hard, dark line divided us into before the Sept. 11 attacks and after. Our instinct in time of unprecedented loss was to be our best selves. Now, 23 years later, we would better serve the nation if we held hands rather than throwing punches.