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.
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.
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.”
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
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
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?
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