Trade Talk: From the mountains to the prairies

At press time in mid-September, we are just days removed from the attacks on New York and Washington. I was on my way to work here in Minneapolis that Tuesday morning, listening to a local wacky FM morning radio show. It was my second work day back after a long vacation and I was absorbed in planning the coming week so I had tuned out the typically raucous drive-time chatter.

The words "plane crash" and "World Trade Center" brought me to attention.

My God, I thought, some poor commuter pilot must have had a heart attack...

Referencing their in-studio TVs, the now-serious DJs began describing the disaster-in-progress. Minutes later the second plane - a commercial airliner - crashed into the other tower.

I could scarcely comprehend what they were describing.

I rushed to get to work, bounding up the stairs of our office building, eager to find out if my co-workers knew more about what was going on.

The rest of that day is a blur. We spent part of the morning in an office down the hall, riveted to a small TV set and the seemingly endless series of calamities it displayed.

I didn’t think I could be shocked further, but when the towers of the Trade Center collapsed, I was truly astonished. In some terrible way, it wouldn’t have been so awful if the towers had withstood the attacks. But seeing these two pillars falling almost weightlessly yet inexorably earthward, I felt very vulnerable - just how the terrorists wanted me to feel, I’m sure. If they can knock those buildings down, and fly into the Pentagon for God’s sake, no one and no place is safe.

Hurried calls and e-mails were sent to friends in New York and Boston, making sure people weren’t on any of the airplanes or at Ground Zero, as the Trade Center site would come to be called. The replies bore good news - welcome comfort on a day when so little could be found.

In the days afterward, friends and members of the research community sent mass e-mails full of encouragement and pleas for togetherness. I must have received five or six copies of Canadian commentator Gordon Sinclair’s editorial in support of the U.S. (It’s a mystery how something produced in 1973 in response to anti-U.S. sentiment during the Vietnam War suddenly found its way into the Internet’s collective consciousness as a response to the terrorist attacks.)

I don’t know what the future holds. A lengthy conflict looms. More lives will be lost. The pain isn’t over. Our nation surely will never be the same.

But I am confident we will survive.

Though I am proud of my country, I am not the flag-waving type, probably because patriotism has become kind of unfashionable in my lifetime. Some associate it with right-wing extremists, angry white men who drape themselves in the flag and spout hateful rhetoric and long to close our borders to preserve the "purity" of our nation. For others, to be pro-U.S, is to be naive at best and hopelessly ill-informed at worst. After all, these people scornfully say, we’re racist, we exploit people and natural resources, and we inflict capitalism on the rest of the world. How can you be proud of a country that does so many horrible things?

Probably because it’s a country that also does so many wonderful things. It gives us freedoms unmatched anywhere in the world. It allows us to worship - or not to worship - the god of our choice. It cares about the health and safety of its residents and takes time to care about the needs of those outside its borders. Tuesday evening, as I sat on the couch, wishing my fiancde was safe beside me instead of finishing up a lengthy trip to South America, I scanned TV stations to get the latest news. I happened upon coverage of members of Congress as they met on the steps of the Capitol to display their unity in the face of the day’s events.

After the speeches ended and the groups dispersed, the cameras pulled back. Quietly, almost imperceptibly, the strains of "God Bless America" rose from the assembled crowd. As the melody grew more audible, I found myself singing along, blinking to see through the tears streaming down my face.

For a few moments, I was unashamed to be proud of my country. I felt no need to utter caveats and qualifiers to leaven my display of national pride. In the hours and days afterward my patriotism gew as I saw and heard tales of heroism, self-sacrifice, and endless toil.

If anything good comes from this nightmare, it will be that the country rediscovers its ability to be proud of itself. To be sure, expressions of nationalism can be ugly and divisive. But it’s been so long since we’ve seen that they can also be beautiful and unifying. What better way to soothe a country so rent by sadness and pain than with a reinvigorating of our national pride? Pride for all the good things we do, the generosity, the compassion, the hard work, the tolerance. The things that make us Americans.