The Day That Changed Everything
Sep. 11th, 2007 08:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
filkertomActually, it only changed some things.
First, it killed 3,000 people, horribly, live on TV around the world, and broke the hearts of their families, their friends, their country, their fellow humans.
Second, it allowed a very small-hearted man to proclaim a huge victory. He had tagged the giant, and the giant has been unable to strike back. Said giant lashing out at everything else in frustration is an unexpected bonus.
Third, it allowed another very small-hearted man and his small-hearted, big-idea cronies, led by the twisted philosophers of the Project for a New American Century, to launch this country into one war and lie us into another. This has, literally, screwed up the world, and continues to do so, and until the Dems in Congress find their spines and defund this madness we will kill and die in Iraq to no good end, we will drain our treasury, we will anger and offend and repel the world.
Fourth, it solidified a division in this country so profound and bitter that I fear it may never be healed. There are large numbers of people in America who believe large numbers of other people are, literally, traitors, deserving to be killed or incarcerated merely because they oppose the President. Many of those other people believe the first people are stupid tools, blind to everything except political loyalty, traitors in their own right for supporting blatant, admitted violations of the law and of the Constitution.
Fifth, lying -- at the very least, a heavy dose of denying reality -- has become standard operating procedure for a vast number of politicians and pundits, and for a lot more ostensibly smart people than I ever imagined. There is a big problem with that: reality doesn't care about your politics. You can fool some of the people all of the time, maybe all of the people some of the time... but you can't fool science, history, or sociology. You can, however, obscure them, and I guess those people hope that'll be enough. It won't.
Sixth, our legal and economic systems have been turned against us by people who apparently think the US system is inferior to feudalism.
Apart from that, not so much. "War On Terror"? Our "government" is doing everything it can to perpetuate terror, on every front. Without terror, they have proven time and again that they have nothing. The irony, of course, is that, if they're so good at thwarting terrorist attacks, if their political party is the only hope against new attacks, why do they spend so much time inciting new attacks, so much time telling us how many there are going to be? As AmericaBlog pointed out yesterday, Osama bin Laden can't be both "virtually impotent" and "regain[ing] a significant level of their capability".
The world has been changed, not by terrorists, but by fearing fear itself.
Anyway. I'm going away for a few days, to a place with little Internet connectivity. I'll be back by the weekend. A couple more quick posts this morning, and I'm outa here. I love you all, and I hope you have a good day and a better week. Any plans between now and the weekend?
First, it killed 3,000 people, horribly, live on TV around the world, and broke the hearts of their families, their friends, their country, their fellow humans.
Second, it allowed a very small-hearted man to proclaim a huge victory. He had tagged the giant, and the giant has been unable to strike back. Said giant lashing out at everything else in frustration is an unexpected bonus.
Third, it allowed another very small-hearted man and his small-hearted, big-idea cronies, led by the twisted philosophers of the Project for a New American Century, to launch this country into one war and lie us into another. This has, literally, screwed up the world, and continues to do so, and until the Dems in Congress find their spines and defund this madness we will kill and die in Iraq to no good end, we will drain our treasury, we will anger and offend and repel the world.
Fourth, it solidified a division in this country so profound and bitter that I fear it may never be healed. There are large numbers of people in America who believe large numbers of other people are, literally, traitors, deserving to be killed or incarcerated merely because they oppose the President. Many of those other people believe the first people are stupid tools, blind to everything except political loyalty, traitors in their own right for supporting blatant, admitted violations of the law and of the Constitution.
Fifth, lying -- at the very least, a heavy dose of denying reality -- has become standard operating procedure for a vast number of politicians and pundits, and for a lot more ostensibly smart people than I ever imagined. There is a big problem with that: reality doesn't care about your politics. You can fool some of the people all of the time, maybe all of the people some of the time... but you can't fool science, history, or sociology. You can, however, obscure them, and I guess those people hope that'll be enough. It won't.
Sixth, our legal and economic systems have been turned against us by people who apparently think the US system is inferior to feudalism.
Apart from that, not so much. "War On Terror"? Our "government" is doing everything it can to perpetuate terror, on every front. Without terror, they have proven time and again that they have nothing. The irony, of course, is that, if they're so good at thwarting terrorist attacks, if their political party is the only hope against new attacks, why do they spend so much time inciting new attacks, so much time telling us how many there are going to be? As AmericaBlog pointed out yesterday, Osama bin Laden can't be both "virtually impotent" and "regain[ing] a significant level of their capability".
The world has been changed, not by terrorists, but by fearing fear itself.
Anyway. I'm going away for a few days, to a place with little Internet connectivity. I'll be back by the weekend. A couple more quick posts this morning, and I'm outa here. I love you all, and I hope you have a good day and a better week. Any plans between now and the weekend?
