When Up Is Down

Has anyone else noticed some fairly startling and swift changes in our collective national thinking recently? The terrorist attacks and ensuing hostilities quickly turned countless givens, assumptions and long-held views upside down. Which may be discomfiting but, when you think about it, isn’t always bad.

The Pakistan government, shunned because it developed nuclear weapons and seized power illegally, is now a close U.S. ally with $900 million in new aid from Washington. Russia, a former evil empire, now seeks NATO involvement. Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, once a KGB spymaster plotting against the U.S., now arranges for American military bases in former Soviet republics and passes Afghanistan intelligence to the CIA. Russian helicopters, once the target of Stinger missiles supplied to Afghan rebels by the CIA, now ferry arms to some of the same rebels who shot at them for 10 years. The American military, which ignored Afghanistan for a decade, now drops bombs on Taliban positions, nutrition packets on cities and feed grains for Northern Alliance packhorses.

Given the unrest of its Afghan neighbor, Iran emits discreet signals of, if not friendship, at least reduced hostility toward Americans. The United States, recently way behind in dues to the United Nations, is now paid up and seeks a greater U.N. nation-building role. Ten months after President Bush was elected without a popular national vote majority, he wins 90% approval in opinion polls. Once seemingly bent on a unilateral foreign policy, the Texan now skillfully manages a diverse international coalition as if its members were co-owners of some Texas baseball team. Putin arrives at Bush’s ranch today for barbecue.

Americans, busily perfecting self-absorption on Labor Day, suddenly start studying foreign cultures and religions and discussing the rules of Ramadan. Workers who couldn’t be bothered to go upstairs for the office blood drive wait hours to bleed into plastic bags for terror victims they will never meet. Then they collectively donate hundreds of millions of dollars for victims’ families in suddenly beloved New York City and Washington, D.C.--and somehow make the Yankees into World Series underdogs. New York’s sometimes loopy leader, Rudy Giuliani, who seemed to be in an end-of-term spiral of self-destructive spats, becomes America’s favorite mayor for his inspired leadership and consoling.

Television and the media, formerly consumed with historic personalities like Rep. Gary A. Condit (D-Ceres), become stately conduits of fairly reliable tragedy and war information for a rapt, nervous nation. Hollywood’s leaders, few known as Bush backers, eagerly meet a presidential envoy to jointly devise an improved American message overseas.

Of course, not every change is positive; we may never think of skyscrapers and airline safety quite the same. But Americans are proving adept at digesting a dizzying array of new issues and frightening events erupting quite quickly. By the way, remember those anthrax and smallpox scares that dominated talk way back--when was it?--last week?