911 My First Day on the Job

He looks good in relative terms now, but I never did like George W. Bush. The whole John Kerry, Bush pere et fil, all in Skull and Bones. Arrogant pricks therefore. Made men. For no reason that I'm aware of, I watched Netflix' Turning Point about the Cold War. Then I watched Katrina: Come Hell and High Water. I learned about the 911 documentary from my son-in-law.

I find myself imaging what if we ever had a President who actually knew and understood our history. Of course I realize that such a thing is not in the job description. But for sure, Jesus Christ could never become president. Imagine someone wondering out loud why these people hate us as much as they do. What had we done to them? Imagine trying to understand motive, and trying to find a way to bind the world together instead of blowing it apart.

There was, according to the first Front Line documentary I watched, an actual opening for Russia to join NATO back when the Soviet Union dissolved. But we couldn't let go of our enemy. And then we couldn't understand why Bin Laden conflated us with the Russia which had destroyed Afghanistan. They knew our motive was oil. But it wasn't possible to be straight with the oil-addicted American people about that. They bunches up the imperialists in the same way we bunched up the terrorists. 

Imagine how much more peaceful the world would now be if there weren't cocky and angry Rumsfeld and Cheney cackling into feckless Dubya's ear. He did know his role to channel the anger and confusion of the American people. To call them terrorists would be to dehumanize our attackers against a background of good and innocent Americans. That's precisely the medicine which power requires.

No wonder now all we get from politics is hatred. All we get are angry and disgusting people on all sides. There is no-one left to call out the good. We the people ape our feckless leaders. Imagine that!

And now as I write, in a virtual sense since it takes me so long, Charlie Kirk is assassinated. I wish life were so simple that we could just kill off the bad guys as our leadership is programmed to do. All that ever does is to compound the victory of the so-called terrorists against us. The mayhem we exacted against ourselves post-911 is utterly astounding. Except there is no us anymore. We've clearly turned against ourselves, with almost no agreement about what our as-yet aspirational polity really means. 

I was nervous on my first job as a contractor for the Catholic Church. But shortly after my entry to the rectory which housed computers in distress, the women - churchladies - who ran the place called me in to watch the attack on the World Trade Center towers as it was happening on their little black and white TV. I'm pretty sure I completed my work, checking in with family along the way. The hour-long ride home was filled with a desperate search along the airwaves for why there was a plume of smoke over Buffalo. 

Finally, the local NPR station announced that it was an accident confirmed to be unrelated to terrorism. That heroic announcer slept at the station for at least two weeks after 911, so bound were we all to NPR. Yes, the very same network the Administration now seeks to silence. 

Since when did Conservatism become conflated with authoritarianism? Since when did it become OK to silence your political adversaries by way of the government? How can that possibly be American? Is drill baby drill (guns and machines) all we know anymore?

I'm asking.