There is no silver lining to the cloud of horror thatdescended on America September 11. Many are engaged in burying the dead andtending to the survivors or facing the awesome responsibility of satisfying thenational demand for action that serves justice rather than multiplying evil.Those of us who are going back to "business as usual" have an obligation, as wedo so, to reflect on what we have seen.
The September 11 attacks revealed some truths about the American politicaleconomy that have been obscured in recent years. One is just how much of oureconomy is made up of what used to be called the "working class"--thenonsupervisory, non-college-educated people who make up 70 percent of our laborforce. For the last half-dozen years, the media saw economic trends through theeyes of the glamorous, globe-trotting business executive--to the point that manypeople abroad must think the corporate elite represent the vast majority ofAmerican workers. And one could hardly find a more fitting symbol of the newglobal economy than the World Trade Center--surrounded in the evenings with herdsof sleek limousines waiting to serve the masters of the universe at the end oftheir day.
Yet it turns out that the enterprise was run by thousands of data clerks andsecretaries, waiters and dishwashers, janitors and telecommunications-repairpeople. The list of trade unions mourning their dead is long: firefighters, hoteland restaurant employees, police, communication workers, service employees,teachers, pilots and flight attendants, longshoremen, engineers, electricalworkers, federal employees, construction workers, and a variety of state, county,and municipal employees. And many were in no union--meaning no job security, nobenefits, and certainly no limousines.
A second insight revealed by the awful gaping hole in the Manhattan skylinewas how ill served we have been by a politics that perpetuates the illusion thatwe are all on our own and holds the institutions of public service in contempt.For two decades, politicians of both major parties have celebrated the pursuit ofprivate gain over public service. Shrinking government has become a preoccupationof political leaders through deregulation, privatization, and cuts in publicservices.
One result is that the United States is the only major nation that leavesairline and airport security in the hands of private corporations, which by theirvery nature are motivated to spend as little as possible. So the system wastossed in the lap of lowest-bid contractors, who hired people for minimum wages.Training has been inadequate and supervision extremely lax. Turnover is estimatedto run 126 percent a year and the average airline-security employee stays on thejob for only six months. Getting a job at Burger King or McDonald's representedupward mobility for the average security worker. In an antigovernment politicalclimate, the airline corporations were able to shrug off the governmentinspections that consistently revealed how easy it was to bring weapons on board.The competition for customers sacrificed safety to avoid inconvenience. How elseto explain the insane notion that a three-and-a-half-inch knife blade is not aweapon?
Private provision of public services has been the dominant philosophy ofgovernment in recent times. Only natural, the economists told us. People weremotivated by money. It's human nature. "Greed is good," said the movie characterin the send-up of Wall Street--a sentiment echoed by politicians of both parties:"Collective solutions are a thing of the past.... The era of big government isover.... You are on your own." Public service was "old" economy, just for losers.A teacher in New York City schools starts at $30,000; a brand-new securitieslawyer starts at $120,000. Does anyone believe that this represents sensiblepriorities?
And does anyone believe that the firefighters who marched into that infernodid it for money? Does anyone think that people working for a private companythat hires people for as little as possible would have had the samemotivation--would have been as efficient? At the moment when efficiency reallycounts?
When the chips are down, where do we turn? To the government's firefighters,police officers, and rescue teams. To the nonprofit sector's blood banks andshelters. And to big government's army, navy, and air force. During last year'selection campaign, the current president of the United States constantlycomplained that the people knew how to spend their money better than thegovernment did. Overnight, we just appropriated $40 billion for the government tospend however it sees fit. Who else would we trust?
The stock market itself made one point. Despite calls for investors toexercise patriotic restraint, the market opened with an avalanche of sell orders,driving the Dow to its largest point loss in history. As one broker said, "Thisis how capitalism is supposed to work." Just so. The market is about prices, notvalues.
Finally, perhaps we learned something about our national identity. It iscommon--almost a cliché--among political philosophers and pundits todefine the United States as an "exception." For many, this nation'sexceptionalism means that it is the best place to get rich. For others, it is ourunique set of laws--our Bill of Rights. Still others see this country not innational terms at all, but as a patchwork of ethnic groups and regionalinterests.
There is some truth in all of these views. But those who risked and gave theirlives--both the public servants and the brave civilian passengers who rushed theterrorists and forced their jetliner down in Pennsylvania before it could hitWashington--are unlikely to have acted out of reverence for the deregulatedmarket or for our court system or out of ethnic or religious loyalty.
Everything we know tells us that they acted as human beings responding to theagony of other human beings, or trying in one last, desperate effort to sparetheir country more damage--not because it is the world's superpower, but simplybecause it is their country. No country has a monopoly on simple patriotism. IfAmerica is, as the politicians often remind us, the "last, best hope" forhumankind, then it is not because we as individuals are exceptional and differentfrom the rest of the world, but because we are much the same--full of the normalset of human traits, which at times of stress often bring out the best in us.
It is obvious that we can no longer rely on our exceptionalism to keep ussafe. In the coming weeks and months and years, we are likely to be reminded ofthat. To get through this, we need to be disabused quickly of the illusion thatwe are all on our own. America's strength, like the strength of any othersociety, is in our ability to be there for one another.
