American Resilience

One of the clichéd news stories that inevitably follows natural disasters of whatever kind – fires, tornadoes, floods, hurricanes – is the “resiliency” of the people of whatever community might have been afflicted – national, regional, state, or local – and how they pull together to help one another overcome the hardships and calamities and blah blah blah. It’s going on right now in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, which ended up not being the end of civilization as we know it as predicted by the media last weekend. But their search for disaster did eventually find flooding in New England, and so they abandoned their disaster stations along the Carolina coast and New York City (which turned out to be busts) and scrambled up with their waders and rain slickers into the floodwaters of Vermont and New Hampshire in time to cover the resilience of the residents in pulling together to bring their communities back to where they were and even more blah blah blah. And all this is couched in banalities about the “character” of the people, of the community, be that community the United States, New England, Vermont, Joplin MO, Greensburg KS, or wherever . . . at least in the U.S. We’re a resilient people. We pull together as neighbors. We help one another. Blah blah blah. The whole familiar meme is one of self-aggrandizement. Look at us, we’re so special. But I’ve looked around the world and I don’t think we’re all that special. We’re at best human. Communities across the globe and across time have come together in time of crisis and worked together to rebuild. It’s part of the warp and weave of civilization, of being human (and, truth be told, many nonhumans). Not the special trait of the American character. If there’s a special trait of the American character, at least as championed in the media, it’s the ability to hoist it up on its own petard.