This is the fourth time in my life that I’ve crossed the US on the ground. The first came when I was a kid, on a family trip back east to see clumsy, extended family members, visit cemeteries, and attend cultural sites. The second took place in college, when we did a band tour across the US, playing in venues as far-flung as Sheridan WY, Boston, Havelock NC, and Lawrence KS. (Our next show after Lawrence was in Fort Collins, Colorado, so we drove in one day a distance greater than the remainder of my walk. Band tour is even more of an enduro-challenge than this walk.)
My third trip across the US was unplanned. My friend Jon and I were traveling in Europe–a huge, 3+ month adventure that started in London and aimed to carry us through almost every European country. It was 2001 and we’d been traveling for just over a month when the 9/11 attacks occurred. Every American alive at that time has a story from that day, that jarring moment when they learned the news, and we were certainly no different. What was most distinct, though, was the distance from which we encountered it. In the still-early days of the internet, we were largely disconnected, only consuming limited media options when we felt like paying for access. We rarely watched television. So, while everyone at home was watching the footage, again and again and again, we only consumed short snippets–an image here, a headline there. It wasn’t until months later that I would actually watch a complete video of the towers being hit and falling.
We continued traveling for weeks after 9/11, but as September passed into October, we started to lose some of our zeal for the adventure. As we tried to sleep on a boat back from Crete to Athens on October 7, we heard that the US had started bombing Afghanistan. Soon after, we decided to map out our own exit strategy (apparently, we were the only ones). We decided to come home a few weeks early and then, when our flight landed in Pittsburgh, to skip the connecting flight home and instead rent a car. We’d see America, passing through “quintessential” sights like Niagara Falls, Wall Drug, and Mt. Rushmore, even climbing Mt. Lassen before heading home. After months away, disconnected from what felt like a defining moment of our generation, we would travel thousands of miles across the country.
Though we were many weeks removed from 9/11, we were immediately struck by the proliferation of flags and by our constant encounters with patriotic songs, which kept popping up unexpectedly on radio stations or in supermarkets. Equally surprising to me were the positive feelings that these engendered in me. Growing up, I nurtured a highly critical outlook towards both the US and nationalism. It was hard to have pride in a country that had such a long track record of throwing its weight around so flagrantly. (Indeed, one of my instant reactions to 9/11 was to pair the domestic outrage of the attacks with a previous 9/11, in which the US engineered a coup in Chile. We have filled our walk-in closets with skeletons.)
Indeed, I don’t think I’m alone in my demographic–middle class, children of professionals, well educated–in my tendency to have a critical orientation. As a teacher, I recognize now how systematically we cultivate this. Repeatedly, we ask students to develop arguments, finding original perspectives on texts or issues explored in class. One of the easiest ways to do that is to actively seek out flaws, gaps, or inconsistencies in the writer’s argument. Instead of working to reconcile or see the best in a perspective, we are constantly on the hunt for weaknesses. And the reality is, there are ample rewards in that orientation, as we tend to view more negative analysis as more intelligent and legitimate.
Sitting in the car, though, as we drove hundreds and hundreds of miles westward, I was oddly comforted. It’s hard work hating, or focusing negatively, on who you are, and I am undeniably American. If 9/11 could bring us together, I thought in that moment, there could be a huge silver lining on that terrible event.
Of course, those tentative bonds were already fracturing, and the sociocultural unity fragmented as the military response expanded. Today, that short-lived detente is so far detached that it’s hard to recall, and harder imagining a recurrence in the future.
I had all of this in mind when I recently read a piece by Derek Thompson in The Atlantic, titled “Elite Failure Has Brought Americans to the Edge of an Existential Crisis.” Thompson explores how three long-standing elements of American traditionalism–national pride, God, and the nuclear family–are on the wane in today’s so-called Millenial and Z generations. Setting aside any consideration of the relative merits of those three elements, I thought this paragraph from Thompson was striking:
This blanket distrust of institutions of authority—especially those dominated by the upper class—is reasonable, even rational, considering the economic fortunes of these groups were pinched in the Great Recession and further squeezed in the Not-So-Great Recovery. Pundits may dismiss their anxiety and rage as the by-products of college-campus coddling, but it flows from a realistic appraisal of their economic impotency. Young people today commit crimes at historically low rates and have attended college at historically high rates. They have done everything right, sprinting at full speed while staying between the white lines, and their reward for historic conscientiousness is this: less ownership, more debt, and an age of existential catastrophe. The typical Millennial awakens many mornings to discover that some new pillar of the world order, or the literal world, has crumbled overnight. And while she is afforded little power to do anything about it, society has outfitted her with a digital megaphone to amplify her mordant frustrations. Why in the name of family, God, or country would such a person lust for ancient affiliations? As the kids say, #BurnItAllDown.
What do we have that can hold us together as a people, that we can collectively look upon with pride and shared value? In an age of well-nurtured and even more well-justified skepticism and criticism, is it possible to find common ground on things we appreciate, instead of merely scorn?
The flags are all at half-mast in Lawrence, Kansas today. It seems like the aspirations for many of the young people walking around this college town could be as well.
