There was much talk, that September, about how 9/11 would change our national character. The external effects of that day were obvious and enduring — the overseas wars, the nationalization and hardening of airline security, the rebranding of the presidency of George W. Bush. But I’m not sure there were any lasting internal effects on American culture whatsoever. At the time, some writers actually speculated that irony had died, that we would henceforth be kinder to one another, that everyone had been forced to realize that we were all joined up in the same grand, pluralistic project. Flags were pasted on every subway train. Perhaps, said some on both the left and right, we should institute a mandatory national-service program to cultivate patriotism in our young people.

A year later, Gawker.com debuted, and Americans eagerly discovered a frisky new pastime: setting out to destroy one another’s reputations on the Internet. Around that time, variations on the joke, “If X, then the terrorists have won” began to appear — “If we don’t go to this cocktail party, the terrorists will have won,” “If you don’t share that meatball sub with me, the terrorists will have won,” etc.

I’m glad irony survived, and I’m extremely glad that the Bush administration and Congress did not conspire to create a nightmarish national-service program that would have set fire to untold quantities of time and energy that properly belong to young individuals, not the state. America remains a rumbustious, quarrelsome, and unruly place, characterized by an especial lack of interest in collectivism, and we have retained our world-leading position in irony. I don’t think 9/11 reprogrammed our character at all. If it had, then the terrorists really would have won.