Walking down the streets of any city of the United States today, most everything seems just as it was ten years ago. The same honking horns, hustling crowds, mundane and sometimes myopic worries and preoccupations propelling us.
I note this with gratitude — our fears have not overcome us. Indeed, for a moment during those weeks following September 11, there was a glimmer of something new, a social civility and mutual concern that showed us what we are capable of as a people. We looked at one another and the world differently, treaded more gently and kindly.
Ten years later we find ourselves trying to make up for intervening bad choices, from the invasion of Iraq and the installation of inhumane antiterrorism tactics to the continued weak regulation of our financial sector. And the streets and subways of New York again require the broad shoulders and strong will of a footballer to force one's way through the unseeing crowds.
It's like the aftermath of any personal tragedy, really. In the early days, we gain the frightening awareness of how truly fragile (and blessed) is everything we hold certain. But often enough we soon slip back into sleep. For most of us true conversion entails countless relapses.
Barack Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and his subsequent ascent to the presidency seemed a hopeful sign of a permanent shift in the national temperament. Obama's refusal to fall back on old tropes of Republican vs Democrat or USA triumphant, his unwillingness to use dog whistles or chest thumping to make policy were refreshing in the fullest sense of the word.
Today some historians are noting that the bills passed in Obama's first two years as president constitute the boldest and most far reaching set of legislation in a generation. His presence on the international stage has likewise offered a more adult form of leadership and respect.
At the same time, in the three years since the financial crisis began Obama has proven largely unable to stop the corporate and financial sectors from having their way. The Obama administration has likewise been slow (or unwilling) to pull back from many of the draconian Bush-era policies towards captives who may or may not be terrorists.
And