The Timeshare Beat: Potomac Crossings; What's Normal Now?

What’s Normal Now?

Prompted by a government who asked citizens to “be alert but return to normal,” a number of newspapers sent reporters and contributors into the field to see if there was any different definition of “normal” rising from the populace. Based on work done by The Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and The Futurist magazine, here is what normal looks like in America today. If their accounts are true, people may be listening to what you say from a new and different perspective.

Men Are Back. Peggy Noonan points out that not only God is back, men are back. She speaks of masculine men, the men who put the fire out, dug in the rubble and will build whatever takes the place of the World Trade Centre. She suggests a new respect for old-fashioned masculinity, for physical courage, for strength and for the willingness to use those attributes for the good of others. When we killed John Wayne, she continues, we were left with Woody Allen – nervous and fearful and ready to talk about everything and do nothing. Manliness wins wars. Women, she concludes, get to complain and make others feel bad about their plight. Men have to suck it up. Good men suck it up and remain good-natured, constructive and helpful. They are the gentlemen. Welcome back, Duke.

Touchy Feely Soldiering is Over. Our enemies think the U.S. is a paper tiger. The military has suffered through eight years of profoundly damaging ambivalence about aggressive action, writes Stephanie Gutmann in the London Daily Telegraph. Combat was regarded as the most politically incorrect action possible. War, after all, hurt other people’s feelings. The purpose of the military was to be involved in “actions other than war.” During that time, for example, General Claudia Kennedy instituted a mandatory program for all officers called “ Caring for Others.”

No more. The demasculinisation of military policy is over. Quoting Mark Anthony to Julius Caesar, Gutmann says “Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.”

Serious Purpose. The overwhelming reaction of ordinary people to 9/11 has been that it is now easy to see what is – and what is not – important. Previous issues – such as road rage - seem so petty that civility has returned. Families are making more time to be together, reports the Monitor. The suffocating cocoon of self-absorption has been torn open. There has been a surge of patriotism, even on campuses where the tired but tenured Marxists hold sway. A new sense of vulnerability promotes a keener sense of what is important. The getting-and-spending bubble seems to have burst. Acquiring things will now be judged as an affirmation of humanity. People are buying expensive items to affirm good emotions, to affirm creativity and to define civilized society as a good thing.

The Family and the Larger Family. Reminders of mortality have the effect of waking people up to just how important family was to them all along. Family, in this sense, may mean more than children or parents. It can encompass church and community. It can mean a renewed interest in the variety of brotherhoods and fellowships that make up civil society. The nation has formed new impromptu groups – for fund-raising, perhaps. Then, there is the family of the nation.

The government is being perceived as addressing truly important problems that no one else can address. Patriotism is strong and comes from unity. The terrorists didn’t discriminate among their targets – all were killed. The result was a national unity that defies cynicism. The upswing in patriotism sparked a broad interest in national service. As Americans were tested, the Monitor concludes, they reached for their wellsprings of strength – family, country and spiritual beliefs. It turns out that we are not nearly as secular as we thought.

The Role of Holidays. Plane reluctance is still rebounding through the nation’s social structure. One example is divorced parents. Some are now unwilling to put children alone on an airplane for visitation trips. If enough parents still feel that planes aren’t safe by the holidays, a restructuring of when kids “get to see dad” is in the works. A recent study shows that attitudes towards holidays are changing. The purposes of holidays are being revisited. Just one example – New Year’s Eve in many places is being transformed from a wild night of alcoholic excess to an arts and music-oriented “First Night” celebration. If different family rituals are needed, the way people treat holidays will change, says The Futurist magazine.

The Tone of Politics. Just this week, President Bush set the all-time Presidential approval rating of 92 percent. All politicians react to approval. They sense that the president has become more powerful as he has been perceived of as less partisan. How long the mood lasts depends on the state of the war, the economy and the fiscal balance of the government, says the Post. None-the-less, there is now a distinct emphasis on problem-solving rather than point-scoring and an end to automatic insults.

The public’s willingness to tolerate rancor, animosity, hyper-partisanship and the poisonous atmosphere enveloping recent government seems plainly to have shifted. Politicians understand that they will have to find new language and new arguments if they want to stay in the game. There is a dissatisfied center looking for a non-ideological approach to governing than neither of the two main parties has been supplying. It might prove satisfying to work together towards a common good.

The Homeland was Attacked. We are now fighting a war that is only partly an armed battle, against an adversary that is only partly named or partly located, with the terms of victory unclear. The threat requires America to look outward. We are no longer an island, everything is global. The two most powerful weapons in our arsenal, says former Colorado governor Richard Lamm, are the crystallization of national thought and perseverance. An amusement going around Washington is this prayer. “God, give me patience. Right Now.”