Americans Are Already United

The 20th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks occasioned an outpouring of pessimism about the country’s future from certain quarters.

“The United States is a far less confident and optimistic nation now than it was in September 2001,” said historian Michael Allen. Its “political class is more confrontational and enjoys less trust in a nation that has grown more divided,” he continued. “The net effect is to leave Americans less capable of reaching consensus on any problem we face.” A cynical but broadly shared outlook among elite opinionmakers from the time posits that, riven by partisan politics and the distorting effects of social media, Americans would not display the shared resolve to meet a terroristic threat today. As comedian Jon Stewart mourned, “all that unity is gone.”