We are so far removed from 9/11 that it takes a memory prompt to remember that sense of national unity that must have prevailed in the weeks and months after, as we tried to understand the worst terrorist attack on US soil.
There were signs. Candlelight vigils, moments of silence. Wal-Mart sold 116,000 American flags on September 11, 2001, and 250,000 more the next day. We queued up to donate blood. Members of Congress, left and right, literally embraced. Extreme voices, left and right, were shushed by normal allies, at least for a moment.
There was respect and grieving for more than 3,000 people killed that day, including 400 police and firefighters, at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, Pa. The individual acts of heroism on 9/11 and in the aftermath will live forever.
After all the outpouring, after all the blood was donated and that last Wal-Mart flag had faded, all we were left with was ourselves. It’s a little sad, in a way, but not as much as I once thought.
The rush of patriotism and resolve after 9/11 was America. So, too, was our mobilisation against terror that would include war efforts in Afghanistan and then Iraq. So were the knuckleheads who attacked Muslims, for looking too much like terrorists, and even Sikhs, for looking too much like Muslims. Or the political hard-liners on both sides who tapped their feet impatiently, eager to put all this commonality aside for a headlong rush back to the partisan trenches.
I hope I’m not bursting your bubble, but does a unified vision, a national sense of purpose, in any way comport with your view of America and Americans? Then, now or ever? How is our latest national conversation on (please insert on your favourite topic) going?
Today, we ask, “What happened to that 9/11 unity?” The Associated Press cited the Gallup poll of our national pride, taken annually since 9/11, and found we had retracted to an all-time low. From a high of 70 % in 2003 who said they were “extremely proud” to be Americans, by June of this year it was down to 52 %.
Democrats who want to blame George W Bush can point to a drop to 58 % by the end of his second term. Republicans pointing a finger at Barack Obama can note steady declines over his two terms, with never a year of improvement.
They are our only post-9/11 presidents. One of them must be at fault, right?
And it’s a bit ironic to ask about unity this year, as we endure one of the most painfully campaigned presidential elections in history. Donald Trump’s weaknesses as the Republican nominee are well chronicled, day after day after day. Hillary Clinton’s failings as the Democrats’ nominee are less trod but no less striking.
To say they are talking past one another - and probably most voters - is an understatement. Not to mention their surrogates and spokespeople. I mean, a little incivility livens up the newspaper, but seriously.
But if unity seems far away now, how must it have seemed in the months before 9/11, when many had long since invalidated the Bush presidency over the hanging-chad election of 2000? That wasn’t too divisive, was it?
Or the Clinton impeachment era. Or Iran-Contra. Or Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, the 1960s and Vietnam and two world wars and on and on.
Without taking a side on any of it, apparently possible only in the hypothetical, can we agree that unity ain’t us? This isn’t a modern construct: Some of my more veteran colleagues remind me of a Civil War, among other issues of division; even older ones insist they were told that some colonists were perfectly happy to stay in King George’s orbit.
Politically, America today has been short-handed as a 50-50 nation, which is mostly true. I’d peg it more specifically at 40-40, with 20 % too busy with real life to care or dozing their time away.
Maybe 9/11 was, for a last, fleeting moment, that place we think we remember from days gone by, when a Greatest Generation linked arms to turn back the Nazis or a Silent Generation stood against Cold War communists. Unity and unanimity aren’t necessarily the same. (And if you want a little unity, take heart that roughly 9 in 10 Americans hold Congress in very low esteem.)
If you long for that post-9/11 feeling, consider that it would take an event at least as cataclysmic to stir in us similar patriotic fervour. And recognise that that would last about as long, which is not very.
America was conceived as a place to compete and succeed, to make a life and pursue happiness, to believe as we wish. I’m happy for you and everyone else to agree with me as you would be for me and everyone else to go your way.
So we won’t all run in the same direction, and that’s just fine. In fact, that’s the way it was meant to be.

*Mike Hashimoto is a member of the editorial board of the Dallas Morning News. Readers may e-mail him at mhashimoto@dallasnews.com