Experts discuss how political landscape has changed

Anyone who is old enough to remember it knows how it felt.

They know what it was like to hear that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers in New York City, the emotions that stirred when a second plane crashed into the other tower.

They know what it was like being glued to their televisions all day on Sept. 11, 2001, watching news coverage for updates of what was transpiring. They know the paralyzing disbelief of realizing the country was under attack.

And they know what it was like for an entire nation to come together to grieve and fight back and honor those we had lost.

They know how it felt to see the country’s leaders, Republican and Democratic members of Congress, join on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to pray and sing. What it was like to watch President George W. Bush, wearing a Fire Department of New York jacket, defiantly and confidently fire a strike on a ceremonial opening pitch to kick off game three of the World Series at Yankee Stadium.

They remember the cathartic feeling of watching the world’s biggest bands join together for the Concert for New York, an event for first responders where firefighters and police officers in the crowd held up pictures of colleagues who had perished in the rubble.

All of that took place 20 years ago. Things look quite different today.

For those looking at the state of the country in 2021, it might be hard to believe that such scenes ever unfolded. It can seem an impossibility that the nation was ever so cohesive, that all those feelings of patriotism and harmony and solidarity were very real, very strong and very widely felt.

The country is in many ways now fiercely separated, with political rhetoric hitting unheard of crescendos and public discourse filled with more and more vitriol. People are picking sides and digging in, often villainizing and dehumanizing their chosen opposition.

In two decades America has seen the unity of post9/11 vanish, replaced with something much more dark and much more divisive.

So what happened? How did we drift so far apart? Where did the unity of the post-9/11 country go, and will we ever be able to find it again?

An unforgettable day

Tim Holden remembers it all so clearly.

Back in 2001 he was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives serving Pennsylvania’s 17th Congressional District, which back then included parts of Berks County.

On the morning of Sept. 11, the Schuylkill County Democrat started his day just like he did most mornings when he was in D.C. He headed to the gym inside the Rayburn House Office Building near the Capitol, joining the 25 or so regular “gym rats” typically there for an early workout.

Holden was on the elliptical machine, right next to New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer jogging away on a treadmill.

The pair watched a television in front of them with interest as news coverage broke of a plane that had crashed into one of the Twin Towers.

“Like the whole world, when the first one hit we thought it was a Cessna plane that was misguided or something,” Holden said. It wasn’t.

As the coverage continued, Holden, Schumer and the rest of the gym crew began to realize something much bigger was going on. As the small crowd gathered around three TVs, they saw the second plane hit.

“I remember the Capitol Police, who were never in the House gym and were always courteous, they came flying in yelling and screaming to get out now,” Holden recalled. “They were using very descriptive adjectives. They meant business.”

Joe Pitts remembers that day clearly, too.

The Chester County Republican was, at the time, representing the 16th Congressional District, which included parts of Berks.

He was having breakfast at a restaurant with the ambassador of Algeria when the waitress told them that one of the towers had been struck by an airplane.

“We assumed it was a small plane that had some kind of accident,” he said. “And then she came back a little later and told us that the second tower had been hit. And that’s when we realized that this was a really serious situation.”

Pitts ended the breakfast meeting quickly after receiving that news, got into his car and set out for Capitol Hill. During that car ride, he called his staff members to see what they knew and as he was driving toward his office he saw a huge plume of black smoke hanging over the George Washington Memorial Parkway.

“A few minutes later I could see that the smoke was pouring out of the Pentagon,” he said. “My staff was watching the TV and confirmed that a plane had hit the Pentagon and that there could be more targets.”

When he finally arrived at the office, Pitts told his noticeably shaken staff to get home as quickly as they could. He stayed behind to watch the events unfolding on TV.

He spent the rest of the afternoon glued to the news.

He called his children to tell them that he was safe and returned calls to local news outlets that had left messages seeking his comment on what was happening.

Eventually, Pitts decided to leave for the day.

“I remember walking out of the Capitol as they were putting the flags at half-mast and seeing an occasional fighter jet streak across the sky,” he said. “The whole city was silent in a strange way. There was this somber feeling that hung over everything.”

The unifying force of tragedy

The hours and days that followed the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were something truly unusual and unique. The U.S. had been hit hard, and would respond with a single voice.

“It was total unity,” Holden said. “We were like, ‘We’re going to get them.’”

By the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, Republican and Democratic members of the House and Senate were already showing signs of that unity, gathering on the steps of the Capitol to pray and sing “God Bless America.”

Pitts wasn’t there for that show of unity, but on Sept. 12 he led members of Congress who had gathered again on the Capitol stairs to sing “God Bless America” in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

“It was one of the most incredible moments of all my time in office,” he said. “It really felt like we were all in this together, like our family had been attacked. And everyone was very considerate.”

Holden and Pitts said D.C. took on a different feel following the attacks, at least for a bit.

“For a while, there was no partisanship,” Pitts said. “We all felt like we were under attack and we had to pull together. It was amazing there for a while.”