Singing 9/11 blues of kumbaya and e pluribus unum

One had to admire local businessman Stan Parker’s resolve to hold an early morning 9/11 observance at Waco’s Lee Lockwood Library & Museum without the usual venomous politics on parade. As Tribune-Herald staffer Mike Copeland noted in his story advancing the event, Parker vowed the 20th anniversary ceremony would include “a moment of silence, remarks and the respectful playing of the national anthem by a local guitarist.” What would not be tolerated, he said, were partisan political demonstrations.

Certainly any event emceed by a retired TV weatherman aims to be inoffensive. And, indeed, familiar themes dominated. The police chief spoke of the hope and courage rallying Americans in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by Islamic terrorists on our nation’s centers of commerce, governance and military might that left 2,977 dead, including 343 New York City firefighters and 23 police officers. The local fire chief spoke of the daily sacrifices of first responders, all in line with those who rushed into the World Trade Center towers in danger of collapse. And, yes, the observance included appropriate (if predictable) remarks on global Islamic terrorism and how “never, never again should we let our guard down or negotiate with terrorists.”

Most interestingly, Ralph Jones, introduced as part of private security at Ground Zero in the aftermath, spoke of undertaking long personal security rounds of the New York City site those eerie nights before similar annual 9/11 memorial observances: “After spending the night in that big hole in the ground with all those gone-too-soon souls, I cleansed my tortured soul with the sun rising on the usually crisp mornings, knowing in my heart that God almighty is still in charge.”

Jones concluded his brief address by quoting John 14:2-6 about heavenly refuge, then offering a cryptic reference from an Army infantry journal: “If you see a bomb technician running, try to keep up with him.”

Thus we had another traditional 9/11 observation, complete with bagpipers playing “Amazing Grace” and the increasingly obligatory electric-guitar variation on “The Star-Spangled Banner,” all played out against the backdrop of a massive U.S. flag suspended by Waco Fire Department trucks – a bit of feel-good hometown spectacle envisioned and organized by a man whose personal Facebook page greeted visitors thus: “The worst attack on American soil happened in the ballot box on November 3, 2020.” Another meme warned: “This is the government the Founders warned us about.” Parker reposted these memes after the 9/11 ceremony.

About the same time he posted the tenets of a good and worthy Mason – presumably befitting the imposing stone library and museum, recognized by some as “the last great Mason building built in America” – Parker on social media attacked “Dementia Joe” Biden for pressing a national vaccination mandate. One meme: “It’s not the government’s job to protect my health. It’s the government’s job to protect my rights. It’s my job to protect my health. When you trade liberty for safety, you end up losing both.” Perhaps most disgracefully given what he set out to do locally, Parker posted photographs lampooning President Biden and other prominent Democrats presumably paying equally sincere homage at 9/11 tributes elsewhere in our nation in 2021.

Given that these memes fall neatly in line with those memes posted before 9/11, one must ask: What did Stan Parker take away from the memorial observance he helped plan?   

In explaining his 9/11 ceremony’s intent to a reporter afterward, Parker broke down in emotion: “I’m sorry, but this is what it’s about, people coming together. America needs to come together, and this is about coming together and being Americans.” He stressed the importance of our history: “That makes us who we are. And the firefighters, and just the people of America, will go and help somebody they don’t know when they need help. And that’s a very American trait. And we need to keep that trait.”

Yet the proverbial cow is not only out of the barn but has prompted a stampede, as Parker’s divisive and misleading private posts prove. (For the record, I happened across these posts via a link on the Lee Lockwood Library & Museum Facebook page chronicling or advancing the Masonic institution’s public activities.) And while some of Parker’s posts were for whatever reason subsequently deleted, others remained, including this of Aug. 31, complete with a lean, muscled-up actress Linda Hamilton from “The Terminator” movie franchise loading an assault weapon: “Look around you. Appreciate what you have. Nothing will be the same in a year. There’s a storm coming.” This references a QAnon conspiracy divination about “the storm” – that former President Donald Trump will be restored to power to the delight of the masses and will then arrest for execution the enemies of the people. In other words, the leaders of the proud “deplorables” will eliminate fellow citizens deemed undesirable and their immigrant friends. Such sentiments have poisoned American society and made less likely any kumbaya amid the nativist rumblings and partisan vehemence. Indeed, as historians have noted, the national unity on display after the attack soon dissipated.

Consequently, the prospect of finding and enlisting gifted speakers with compelling insights worthy of 9/11 observances and other occasions becomes nearly impossible, especially as political and cultural polarization grows, egged on by those individuals to whom we might have otherwise looked for profoundly unifying thoughts. “Coming together and being Americans?” More likely question: Which Americans? Many of us huddle daily in intellectually barren caves, taking comfort and even delight as co-conspiracists and rumormongers in our ranks malign our leaders or figures of accomplishment who don’t mirror our every expectation in politics. Social media has obviously aggravated the problem, allowing some of us to burrow deep into echo chambers where our posted opinions, views and whims not only go unchallenged but garner knee-jerk praise, often in as few words as possible and sometimes with only smiley-face variations. Those who disagree with us we insult or humiliate online in ways we wouldn’t dare at the neighborhood ballpark, community picnic or workplace water cooler.

“One of the theorists I read and teach my students is Carl Schmitt, who was writing during the Nazi era and was himself affiliated with the Nazi Party for a time,” David Corey, director of Baylor University’s “Baylor in Washington” program and a professor of political science, said during an Oct. 9, 2021, forum on heady problems bedeviling America’s increasingly pluralistic society. “And he thought this just was politics, that the right way to understand what politics is is the identification of friends and enemies and the war is against the ‘enemy,’ whether they’re internal or external. So it is actually disheartening for me to see a theorist whose view of politics is in some ways in harmony with what the Nazis did to the Jews, and then to see Americans in effect practicing if not owning up to practicing a politics that looks very similar to that. I think the direct question that has to be answered is whether there are differences in our country among factions that are that serious we must make war over.” Corey’s observation is spot-on. It’s regularly been lamented that Americans who rallied, however briefly, against a foreign enemy in the wake of 9/11 now regard one another as more threatening than the Islamic terrorists, especially in the wake of the Black Lives Matter unrest and Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol – two events that defy easy comparison, given one was prompted by concerns over decades of racial injustice pivoting on the death of an African American at the hands of four police officers over a counterfeit $20 bill, the other incited by a vain, profane and unscrupulous man desperate to somehow cling to power over the land after a closely vetted election tallies showed he had clearly lost approval by a majority of the people.

One result of this societal whirlwind of toxicity and madness is an astonishing lack of figures in America to whom all of us can respect, at least to some degree. This explains the lack of political figures in Austin or Washington willing to earnestly seek consensus on major issues including immigration, health care and racial equity. America today lacks even a Rev. Billy Graham to rally different constituencies and citizens. “We no longer have consensus experts and trusted authorities that appeal to significant demographics of the population across different political ideologies,” Washington University (St. Louis) law professor John Inazu said during the recent Baylor forum on pluralism. “This is an interesting phenomenon that in the contemporary moment maybe we are seeing for the first time — the loss of those figures. I mean, they came [in our past] with good and bad. There were real challenges as to who conveyed and held that authority in past eras, [but] these people were there and they did important work to reach broad audiences. We’re just more fractured now in terms of who that authority is and who is trusted in those positions.” And amidst everything else plaguing our times, evidence of this truth can be seen in the challenge of finding worthy speakers for occasions such as the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 2001.

Short-term but self-defeating solution: Smother the occasional commemorations and remembrance with crowd-pleasing pageantry, ritual and music – and keep any messaging innocuous but rousing. Something of this mindset was to blame when, upon the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Wacoans could only shake their heads in collective amazement at a 9/11 memorial project called Enduring Freedom. Proposed in 2002 but by 2011 drowning in indecision and incompetence amid constant changes, the local project proved that government doesn't have a monopoly on organizational failure. Originally undertaken by Keep McLennan County Beautiful, organizers planned to honor heroes and victims of Sept. 11, including police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel. However, in response to input from veterans, plans were revamped to pay tribute to veterans of every war and peacekeeping mission since World War I. Changes in vision and scope brought more and more delays and increasing loss of focus while causing the estimated cost to skyrocket to as high as $355,000. Keep McLennan County Beautiful president Shirley Blanton was among those who said she was proud so many groups wanted to be associated with the memorial, even as she acknowledged accompanying complications, including ever-changing designs to accommodate the memorial's growing scope. "We are bringing in so many different elements, ranging from different wars to different professions — even the K-9 Corps," she told me in 2009. "When we were originally designing this, we kept getting so many questions as to why this group was left out, or that group. It was supposed to just be 9/11. And we were getting some big offers, including banks and L-3 Communications, and everyone wanted to see it expanded." Result: A full decade after 9/11, the limestone slabs salvaged from the Pentagon rubble after the attacks and some 20,000 bricks purchased for the memorial lay unused in area storage facilities with no clear plans in place for completing the project.

My friend Bill Mahon, a Vietnam veteran with a remarkable record of civic leadership who helped save the Waco Veterans Affairs Medical Center from closure by the Department of Veterans Affairs, stepped forward after others abandoned the memorial project in frustration and embarrassment. He led area veterans to project completion and dedication, albeit on a smaller scale – and not at the sprawling Extraco Events Center in Waco amid the pomp and circumstance originally envisioned but in a modest but dignified ceremony in the neatly manicured Veterans Memorial Park in the nearby town of Lacy Lakeview a few days before the 12th anniversary. Pentagon 9/11 attack victim and Republican state Sen. Brian Birdwell was present to help with the ceremony, noting the memorial commemorated not only “what happened to the nation but also how the nation responded. It takes a special heart to run into a burning building or to go overseas to defend the country.” Possibly telling of our times by then, Joe Phipps, owner of Phipps Memorial, who acquired and offered for inclusion in the 9/11 memorial those pieces of the Pentagon building that broke off during the attacks, ultimately declined to include them in the scaled-down memorial, supposedly owing to its proximity to a Confederate soldiers memorial in nearby Bellmead that had been vandalized in the past. This concern, if earnest, raises questions about how 9/11 was perceived even a decade after the event – and whether some of us actually viewed a proper 9/11 memorial as comparable to a poorly tended Confederate soldiers memorial several miles away – a spectacle complete with Confederate battle flag that telegraphs certain local sentiments to motorists approaching Waco on Interstate 35. (Because of traffic ferocity on the interstate, I’ve found that many motorists don’t even notice it; their eyes are focused on the road and other vehicles.) And lest anyone blame plodding efforts to plan, fund and erect a proper 9/11 on procrastinating, quick-to-placate local bumpkins in Central Texas, it’s relevant to recall the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center was similarly delayed by, to quote a damning 2012 Associated Press investigative report, “ambitions to build a bigger, better memorial than any other in the land.”

Even by then, 9/11 ceremonies and perhaps late-blossoming memorials demanded more in the way of messaging – not necessarily more honorees and more sacrifices and more pageantry but words and thoughts and reflections that made sense of what we had experienced and how it changed us and how it all still challenged us as Americans. I remember a letter we received at the Tribune-Herald and published on occasion of the 10th anniversary: “As I watched the 9/11 anniversary ceremonies this weekend and remembered how the United States was united after the evil and monstrous attacks, I can’t help but wonder what has happened to us? When we look back at the past four years, many of our leaders and citizens have acted like spoiled, arrogant, selfish jerks. Just a few examples include: Republicans who said they would do everything possible to see our new president [Barack Obama] fail; the tea party when it said it was eager to see America default on its debt; and Democrats who said their Republican counterparts were Nazis. If we are to survive as a nation, we have to quit the political and partisan rhetoric and mean-spirited actions. We need to truly work together in the very same spirit that we had as a country after these monstrous attacks by our enemy 10 years ago. That should be our hope and prayer.” Such sentiments remain in conflict 20 years afterward. Wars warranted, as our invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 surely was, or unwarranted, as our invasion of Iraq in 2003 surely was, beg deep political thought and meditation and debate by the very nature of their impact on commercial and global trade, the national security of our allies and ourselves, budgetary matters that impact our taxes and debt, personal freedoms possibly compromised in efforts to better detect terrorism in the United States and, above all, the precious lives of U.S. service members. And, yes, our layered, tumultuous history makes all fair pickings.

Unfortunately, growing politicization of everything has not only fueled societal tribalism but set off a mad scramble in which cherished American symbols such as the national anthem and U.S. flag are commandeered by opportunistic politicians seeking to influence us, glorify themselves, score political points and excuse decidedly unpatriotic behavior. When a president literally wraps himself in the U.S. flag (as President Trump has famously done at Conservative Political Action Conferences), when insurrectionists seeking to prevent Congress from its constitutional duties drape themselves in flags while running amok in the U.S. Capitol (as local winemaker and Air Force veteran Christopher Grider did the afternoon of Jan. 6, draped in a yellow, American Revolutionary Gadsden flag, complete with coiled timber rattler poised to strike), prospects for the meaningful unity that Stan Parker laments at least one day a year become quicksilver. As conservative S.E. Cupp noted of Trump’s fondling of the flag during his 2019 CPAC theatrics for the gullible and the worshipful, “Many conference attendees called it one of his best performances. But Trump’s ‘best’ performances are almost always at the nation’s expense. They are ‘best’ because they are memorably divisive, unfiltered, often profane and seething with animus for enemies perceived and real. And they are all about love for him. Manhandling the American flag was a perfect representation of this dichotomy. Half the country likely saw it as a fitting metaphor for his presidency writ large: an assault on our most cherished values. He took what was not his, robbed it of all its virtue – and then presumably moved on to his next conquest.”

Nowadays, whenever the U.S. flag is unfurled or the national anthem is cued, the wary, well-informed and discriminating American braces for another hijacking of such symbols, much like those four airliners were hijacked on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. The more discerning among us brace for prostitution of such symbols in service of incendiary, fact-free rhetoric, rants and ravings, all designed to appeal to patriotic instincts and gut-level emotions but not our powers of deduction, reasoning and healthy skepticism. Granted, there’s a fine line between citizen reverence for the U.S. flag at campaign rallies and party functions and such affairs as the Conservative Political Action Conference where the flag is drafted and transformed into a cheap political prop. What remains of flag etiquette and the Pledge of Allegiance preclude too many spectacles such as a grown man fondling the flag with all the grace of a drunken lout performing a pole dance on the stage of a stripper joint. And certainly many Americans were offended by those self-envisioned patriots who used flagpoles, with flags still attached, to beat into submission duly sworn police officers charged with defending duly sworn lawmakers in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Some of these lawmakers later claimed the protesters jailed in the Capitol violence were “political prisoners.”

A viable solution to increasingly irrelevant occasions such as those commemorating the sacrifices of 9/11 is not so much in making a political point but doing so in a thought-provoking, nuanced, unshowy way – one that respects the differing perspectives of a racially, ethnically, politically and intellectually diverse America, even as the speaker appeals to higher ideals and promises societal and historical epiphanies for some of us. Stan Parker may well have seen this as too tall an order in a society that regularly settles for speakers who don’t challenge audiences so much as pander to them. Considering his own sentiments online, his wisest move might have seemed keeping some ham-fisted politician from turning the occasion into a shallow partisan event mirroring his own political proclivities. Possibly he overcorrected, settling for the bland, the predictable and the unthinking.

For the record, Baylor University’s 9/11 ceremony a day before the Lee Lockwood Library & Museum event also played it safe, despite the many on its faculty who might have offered some deep messaging worthy of the occasion and our times. President Linda Livingstone dutifully saluted first responders (and offered another where-I-was-during-the-attack testimonial), presented framed decrees of appreciation to the police chief, fire chief and head of Baylor security, then allowed Sen. Birdwell to say a prayer. Happily, Birdwell was not allowed to deliver his divisive talk on who loves his country and who doesn’t – one that he delivered last year in a local church and in a fiercely partisan context that should have caused every Bible in the sanctuary to burst into flames. After the Baylor 9/11 ceremony, Sen. Birdwell returned to Austin, there to further aggravate America’s racial and partisan strife. This included helping forge redistricting maps that, despite U.S. Census figures showing that 95 percent of Texas’ population gain over the past decade came from Hispanics, Asians and African Americans, ultimately added two white majority congressional districts to the mix of maps. Birdwell’s remarks in that church and his work in the Legislature making voting harder for minorities in growing urban centers and fueling fights over the teaching of our nation’s racial history in school classrooms, placed alongside Stan Parker’s thoughts, ultimately summon up John Inazu’s legitimate fears that “we’re prone today to jump to the conclusion that everybody who doesn’t believe what we believe is not only wrong but evil.”

Putting aside the matter of what sort of leaders we dispatch to the corridors of power, the question of occasional observances in polarized times deserves reflection: Is there a proper balance at the mighty lectern between the coldly ceremonial and heatedly divisive? Sure – and for occasions recognizing lives lost and sacrifices made involving an event as presumably transformative as 9/11, ceremony sponsors should spend more time doggedly seeking those among us who can add to our understanding of 9/11 and, yes, one another. This could dwell on how 9/11 touches upon our national psyche, our conduct of two “forever wars” or even whether America is all it can be in these times. This is rich and challenging intellectual terrain that might help us better orient ourselves in dizzying times. Baylor faith and culture expert Greg Garrett, for instance, argues it “shouldn’t surprise anyone that an event that shook our sense of security and our identity would be reflected in every aspect of American life.” Even so, what most surprised and alarmed Garrett “is the degree to which 9/11 continues to shape our attitudes about race, religion, immigration and the Other, whether that Other is in Afghanistan or just across town." The scholar talks of how country musicians like Toby Keith “leaned into militant songs about American greatness and righteous revenge,” while the top-selling Dixie Chicks were “drummed out of country music for their public stand against going to war.” The TV show “24” reflected the “growing darkness of America’s extra-legal approach to that war,” including acceptance of torture as U.S. policy. He suggests public fascination with zombie movies and TV sagas, of all genres, reflected a 24/7 sense of encroaching menace, arguably more evident today than in 10 years ago: “You could fight all day every day against this menace, these creatures who look like humans but seek your destruction. And then the next morning, you still have to rise and confront it again.”

In a wonderfully edifying Sept. 11 Washington Post column on 9/11 and our society’s search for heroes emulating and even eclipsing the courageous passengers who rushed terrorist hijackers aboard United Airlines Flight 93, Alyssa Rosenberg suggests the post-9/11 world explains our cultural preoccupation with superheroes: “Instead of relying on the self-sacrificing courage of the passengers who tried to reclaim the cockpit of United Flight 93, superheroes could take on such burdens without putting themselves at risk.” But the post-9/11 days of superheroes may be closing; such cultural investments fail to stack up against the clandestine pockets of domestic terrorism with which our nation now deals, including those dedicated to overthrowing our government or inciting civil war between citizenry. “[O]ther threats have entered the pantheon of American anxieties, and superheroes have little to offer in response,” Rosenberg writes. “You can’t punch out a pandemic virus or an opioid epidemic; Bruce Banner would be more useful right now as a brilliant scientist than as Hulk in smash mode. The U.S. military can’t invade to prevent a domestic insurgent movement. What we need is Batman in his original incarnation as a detective, not as a one-man military.”

And if zombie apocalypses and superheroes galore seem over the top at dignified 9/11 remembrances, consider for a moment the reality and the surrealism of our era: Some lost souls among us now divine their truths at the QAnon oracle, which in its mythology has claimed that cannibalistic, Satan-worshipping pedophiles consisting of prominent Democrats and entertainment elites control the so-called "Deep State” steering American governance. QAnon regularly provides dates of when Donald Trump, savior of the masses from this subterranean devilry,  will be rightfully restored to power over his subjects, the better to round up for arrest his enemies; one prediction of his restoration surfaces as soon as another is dashed like “Whac-A-Mole.” Only weeks after the 20th anniversary of 9/11, actor Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in director Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ,” encouraged the faithful at a QAnon-affiliated “For God & Country: Patriot Double Down” conference in Las Vegas to “join St. Michael and all the angels in defending God and sending Lucifer and his henchmen straight right back to hell where they belong.”  Caviezel spoke directly of a coming development to which Stan Parker earlier alluded, however unwittingly: "We are headed into the storm of all storms. Yes, the Storm is upon us." No less than a Catholic bishop based in Tyler, Texas, subsequently urged his flock to heed the Hollywood Jesus’ prophecy.

Our fading memories don’t help. On the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Trib newsroom colleague Cindy V. Culp wrote a story about Baylor University neuroscience professor and memory expert Charles Weaver that sparked some outrage. Weaver’s research pressed project participants to record their memories of 9/11, beginning within 24 hours of the terrorist attacks, then again three months, six months and a year later. Questions included where they were when they heard about the attacks, what they were doing and who they were with. Numerous people said in later accounts that they had watched real-time TV footage of the first airliner hitting the World Trade Center, even though the only footage of the first plane assault didn’t emerge till days afterward. Similarly, when people were asked to recall what emotions they felt, some said they were angry and wanted revenge on terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, even though few actually knew who bin Laden was at the time.

Among readers voicing anger at Weaver's research was one who cited it as inappropriate for the Sept. 11, 2011, edition of the Tribune-Herald: "Whether Weaver’s findings are accurate or not is not for me to say. But I would rather spend this anniversary reflecting on all the lives that were lost and pray for the friends and families that are left to celebrate their lives. Leave me with my memories." (Interestingly, another reader took offense at the paper's publishing on the 10th anniversary of the attacks a column by Al Siddiq, the mild-mannered leader of the Islamic Center of Waco, concerning treatment of Muslims in the United States since 9/11: "He ought to be glad that Bush and not Franklin D. Roosevelt was president during the terrorist attacks. FDR probably would have interred [sic] Muslims as he did the Japanese following the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. I know that many good Muslims have died fighting against Muslim terrorists around the world, but I would like actions and not just words from Muslim leaders." Siddiq, among other things, is an immigrant from Pakistan who served six years in the U.S. Army. And then there was the aforementioned embarrassment over the local 9/11 monument lost in indecision, a situation Cindy Culp also doggedly reported: “As a member of a family that has served in all major military conflicts, I say with conviction that this memorial should have no connection to any other ‘cause.’ To read that veterans groups wanted to be part of the recognition process is a travesty. We veterans are recognized throughout this city, county, country and world in countless places. This memorial should be dedicated to those directly impacted by 9/11 only. Anything else is simply self-serving and deplorable.”)

And if social-media inventions, cultural preoccupations and cognitive lapses that evolve into something more than genuine memory are inappropriate fodder (even if they aren’t), other studied offerings invite occasional reflection. On journalist and author Fareed Zakaria’s “Global Public Square” – easily the best hour of TV for those disposed to intelligent debate on geopolitics – former British prime minister Tony Blair on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 argued that radicalized Muslim groups such as those behind 9/11 have perverted Islam, turning it into a political ideology with totalitarian aims. The discussion is relevant in numerous ways in America that go beyond Islam. Other subjects relevant in a 9/11 context: The complexity of the wars we pursued (including the Sunni and Shia conundrum that often determines the success or failure of long-term military objectives and presidential policy); the militarization of Afghanistan in stabilizing ways employed in Korea (as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has suggested); and why the national spirit that 9/11 observances seek to rekindle is missing in our struggle against a viral killer that in the week leading up to 9/11 observances this year took far more American lives than the concerted, four-pronged 9/11 terrorist attacks. Yet many of us don’t bat an eye at this widespread and needless loss of life. 

In short, our 9/11 observances moving forward risk becoming bloodless, perfunctory affairs without  thought-provoking, paradigm-shifting moments, whether uplifting and unifying or inflammatory while still respectful and inclusive. What use is a ceremony commemorating loss and sacrifice unless it offers insight about where we were as a people on Sept. 11, 2001, where we are as a people now and where we should one day be as a nation? And if the speaker engaged for the occasion has spent his or her efforts in public life aggravating our political and cultural differences, if he or she has worked to marginalize some of us, then don’t expect Americans to “come together” beyond certain demographics. Don’t expect “e pluribus unum.”

Former President Trump gets that, at least in one sense. While other former presidents attended memorials, Trump made surprise stops to visit New York police and firefighters, using the occasion to attack President Biden’s “surrender” and withdrawal from Afghanistan (under unfortunate terms, it should be noted, that the Trump administration negotiated with the Taliban), to claim once again he’d won the 2020 presidential election, then to playfully tout his possible 2024 presidential candidacy. Trump finished the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks by speaking to a conference organized by Hak Ja Han Moon, widow of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the famously controversial Unification Church, where he took credit for peace in the Korean peninsula. He then provided boxing commentary for a pay-per-view fight extravaganza featuring 58-year-old Evander Holyfield, former heavyweight champion. During the fight, Trump took another jab at Biden. Holyfield got pummeled. Trump got press.

Former President George W. Bush gets all this, too, though in another sense. Of all the 9/11

addresses held across the nation, of all the remarks appealing to our patriotism and better angels and demanding deeper reflection about the state of our union, his ranked at the top – appropriately, considering that he was president at the time of the terrorist attacks and initiated two wars in its wake. He spoke at the national monument erected in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where Flight 93 crashed after its passengers, mostly strangers to one another, voted on a plan, then forcefully prevented hijackers from crashing the airliner into its reporter target – the U.S. Capitol. Nimbly addressing the “anger, fear and resentment” of today’s politics, Bush stressed “growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come not only across borders but from violence that gathers within. There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home. But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit. And it is our continuing duty to confront them.”

If one of these tributes offends you and the other doesn’t, welcome to America, which has always been as deeply rooted in snake-oil salesmen, rainmakers, Bible-thumping frauds and flimflam artists as in the inspiring words and ideals of Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Hamilton, John Jay and Tom Paine. The problem for Americans then and now is separating which is which, sorting out blood-pumping but selfishly manipulative rhetoric from deeply grounded truths and soaring calls of selfless citizenship, differentiating between Barnum and the circus of American scoundrels from those who demonstrate leadership, insights and guts. And for those who miss the unity too briefly shown in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, it's possibly useful to recall how no less than Rev. Jerry Falwell and right-wing televangelist Pat Robertson on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “The 700 Club” on Sept. 13, 2001, agreed the 9/11 attacks were evidence of a god angry over abortion, feminism, homosexuality, secular schools and the American Civil Liberties Union. (Ironically, Robertson later sought to distance himself from Falwell's comments.) Maybe Weaver is right about our memories concerning 9/11 and a lot of other events at home and abroad. That doesn’t mean e pluribus unum isn’t an idea worth encouraging long after the bagpipes, electric guitars and oversized U.S. flags have been put away.

The ringing of bells honoring cherished dead, the sounding of sirens acknowledging the heroic

spirit of first responders, the patriotic cries to be on guard for threats from abroad have properly conveyed gratitude, grief and vigilance at observances in the years immediately following the 9/11 attacks. Yet the passage of time and sweep of history demand far more of us in the succeeding years. Such events lose resonance and relevance if no one refocuses on the critical context of ever-changing eras. One senses on so many occasions now the absence of a dynamic orator such as Daniel Webster, someone among us capable of rousingly transformative insights. Such is found most often in newspaper opinion pages, even as the newspapers seen as so fundamental by the Founding Fathers wither and die. Washington Post columnist George Will acknowledges a certain satisfaction that only the learned now read newspapers, that he can thus argue finer points of history, law and principle with a willfully informed readership. He’s right in one sense. Yet this leaves the rest of us to a mix of rituals, gestures and sloganeering, too often manipulated by politicians and their lackeys, very often signifying little but benefit to themselves.

Exceptions do step forward on occasion. During the 9/11 observance near Shanksville, Gordon Felt, a special education teacher and the brother of Flight 93 victim Edward Felt, suggested the question 20 years out is not so much how reverently we honor the fallen of 9/11, the brave passengers of Flight 93 and those who lingered in the twin towers at their peril to help strangers and co-workers, “but rather the question to be considered is: Are we worthy of their sacrifice? Are we worthy?

"Do we as individuals, communities and as a country conduct ourselves in a manner that would make those that sacrificed so much and fought so hard on September 11th proud of who we have become? Do we share the same willingness to sacrifice for others in little ways as well as large, to act when necessary for no other reason than to accomplish a noble goal, egoless and without other motivation than to do what is right?”

In an age when so many Americans refuse to get vaccinated or wear masks to safeguard neighbors, co-workers and loved ones from the suffering and death incurred by a highly contagious killer virus, when some of us excuse violent behavior we might brand treasonous if pursued by others among us, certain questions on occasions such as 9/11 may well prove inconvenient or awkward or painful but can also enlighten, allowing us to take fuller stock of ourselves, the better to rally to meet new, unimagined challenges. It might help us settle on what our values are anymore. Yes, one might contend strong opinions, no matter how well argued or reasoned, risk driving people off from such annual observances. Yet to conduct hollow ceremonies and predictable recitatives year after year after year, without acknowledging questionable changes in ourselves, our nation and the world, risks showcasing symbols, music and rhetoric to grandly diminishing returns. And if we simply return to our destructive and ill-founded ways immediately after such ceremonies, can they really be regarded as consequential?

Meanwhile, dangers not so easily recognized as foreign-born Islamic radicals even now demand from us sacrifice, courage and self-introspection if we are to surmount them. Are we worthy?