09.11.11
Preamble to national failure
Krugman notes the long outpour of reminisce and analysis over the ten year anniversay has been “subdued.” I have another word, lame.
And his blog post serves an introductory to a longer thing I’ll post later this morning PST.
From “Conscience of a Liberal” blog:
What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. [The] atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.
A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?
The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.
“Predator loans, iPhones and drones … plus we got lotsa crazy people! Exactly the right song for today. Whether we like it or not. The ten years following 9/11 did not honor the people who died. I wonder what some would say if saw what the country became.
Update:
Frank at Pine View Farm comes up with a pic from a local ATM machine.
It’s worth a thousand words, all describing the condition of “being contemptible.”