John Down

The Stars and Stripes are out from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and the sense of desecration is palpable 2,550 miles from Ground Zero. America's 'civic religion' has given its people's grief a very particular dimension.

'No, honestly I've considered it for years. This has just been the catalyst.'

Joshua grimaces and stares into his espresso. We are sitting outside a San Francisco coffee-house at 11.00 am, and he has just told me that he will be quitting his lucrative post at IBM to join the US Navy as an officer in a non-combat role. 'I just can't justify staying in a dead-end job when the country needs protection.' This statement is not lacking in irony for, despite being both physically and intellectually fit for the job, the twenty-nine year-old Joshua is also flamboyantly homosexual. Regardless of this fact, Bloody Tuesday's horrific images of a wrecked Pentagon and passenger aircraft dissolving into the World Trade Centre has energized him to do what is usually unthinkable in his community: to brave the Pentagon?s Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell policy in order to defend what he sees as dear.

Across the street, about two dozen people are gathered in vigil against the whitewashed wall of a Bank of America branch. A portrait of an openly gay priest killed in New York is tacked to the building. All around, people are lighting candles and placing flowers on the sidewalk, many in tears, all silent. This is to be a final sombre view of San Francisco, for I am journeying down to Los Angeles today, leaving this mourning city veiled in its characteristic mist.

I say my goodbyes and head to the car. Within thirty minutes the fog of San Francisco has given way to the blistering sun of Silicon Valley as I head south down Route 101. But there is something appallingly amiss. As I roar past the hundreds of low-rise factories and offices, monoliths to the new economy, everything is wrong. An American standard hangs at every bridge, placed there for the traffic to see as it sweeps under.

Occasionally there are cardboard signs or graffiti, usually reading 'God Bless America', or a similar sentiment. Every radio station has an appeal running for the victims of the disaster. Every flagpole has a flag at half-mast. One in ten vehicles that I pass has the Stars and Stripes displayed either from the inside or on the exterior. The whole scene is astounding, not only because of the spontaneity, the completely uncoordinated outpouring of grief through collective action, but also because as I leave Silicon Valley behind for the emerald plantations of Monterey County, I am 2,550 miles from Ground Zero.

Three hours later, and I start my descent out of the hills towards the coast. San Luis Obispo could not stand in greater contrast to San Francisco. A mid-sized, 60,000-strong community, it sits cradled by a sweep of jagged, parched hills in the center of rural California. Middle America rarely gets more middle. It is here, on a meal-stop during the mid-afternoon, that I randomly meet Junie, a retired civilian worker with the local police department. 'I feel violated,' she states in a low, strong voice. 'We've got to go in and let them know who they are messing with when they are destroying these innocent souls.'

Her deep sentiments of rage are shared by Daniel, a thirty-eight year-old software engineer, originally from New York. 'What made it so devastating was that they hit shrines,' he says. 'The World Trade Centre is a shrine to capital, and the Pentagon is a shrine to the military.' He mourns his hometown. 'The towers were such an essential part of the geography that I can't visualize Manhattan without them.' There is no doubt that their anger moves beyond a simple grief for those killed. Hearing them talk further, it becomes evident that it is the symbolic destruction that hurts the most, and the accompanying feelings of vulnerability.

Further down the coast, the sun starts to set and the hills are haunted by the hollow light of dusk. In Santa Barbara, the gas stations have sold out of flags to stick to car windows. Joan and Jeff, two local teachers, offer a different perspective. 'It's because they struck at what we understand to be America that makes it such a world-changing event,' Jeff states. 'It's true,' his wife concurs. 'It's not just the horrible number of people dead, it's the fact that it is something with which we identify that has just destroyed me.'

It is thirty-five years since Robert Bellah wrote about the concept of 'civic religion' within the society of the United States. He codified this civic religion as the core beliefs, symbols and rituals that are inherent within the very fabric of the US national community. Beliefs that are seen to identify as being specifically American, such as the Declaration of Independence or the elusive American Dream, form the bedrock of this value system. These beliefs go hand in hand with traditional symbols - from the Stars and Stripes to the Lincoln Memorial - and rituals like the Fourth of July or the Pledge of Allegiance. It is argued by Bellah and others that these formal structures created within the United States a consistent, non-denominational, religious-esque moral community that broadly shadowed traditional definitions of Christianity.

The result of this is a national character that, even in normal times, is more morally charged than other Western democracies, especially in regards to moral issues occupying a higher level within politics. Indeed, this thesis led the noted political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset to state that 'Americans are particularly inclined to support the elimination of evil,' compared to other societies. Even in peaceful times, he continues, the dominant political posture is one of 'outraged virtue'.

When one takes into account that Tuesday's assaults destroyed both American symbols and innocent civilians, one can see why the nationwide reactions of grief and horror were so spontaneous and widespread. America as an institution, it seems, has not been so much attacked as desecrated.

On the approach to Los Angeles, it seems that almost every motel, auto dealership or supermarket with frontage to Route 101 has erected some sort of sign of mourning - be it a standard at half-mast, or a message written on company billboards. The grief and the accompanying call to action are everywhere, from the gay ghettos to Silicon Valley, from rural towns to coastal resorts, from New York City to California: every segment of American society has been saturated by the tragedy. The people with whom I speak feel violated by an unseen evil, and George W. Bush has already spoken in such terms about the prime suspect, Osama Bin Laden.

As I drive on into the urban sprawl that is Los Angeles, I realize that America is gearing up for an unprecedented moral crusade propelled by the fabric of its society, its civic religion, one that may lead the US further down the path of retribution that may well sow the seeds of a future terrorism. Since Tuesday, I have prayed for those killed in the past atrocities. Saturday evening was the first time I prayed for a future peace.