Up front, I want to note that I'm as jubilant at the thought of frog-marches for Rove & Libby, and maybe even Cheney. But I thought this was a good time for a reminder of what we've lost.
On September 11, 2001, this country was attacked. New York -- my home city -- was stabbed in the gut in a cowardly attack on thousands of innocent, helpless civilians. A less vile but no less painful attack was also waged on the Pentagon, and were it not for the heroic passengers of Flight 93, we probably would have lose either the Capitol Building or the White House as well.
On September 12, there were no politics. Publicly. On September 12, we mourned as one. We gave blood as one. We swore to seek justice as one. The world's suspicion of our nation vanished. "We are all Americans" was the rallying cry, first emanating from now-hated France of all places. For all the pain, for all the loss, for all the death, there was one brief moment of light in the darkness.
This, we believed, really would change everything. Somehow, we would find common cause. Americans would become civil again; there would be no red states or blue states, but people with different ways of getting to the same dream: liberty and justice for all. Even our politicians embraced this impulse. Publicly.
Privately, the Rove/Cheney axis had other ideas.
Where we saw Pearl Harbor, they saw the potential for a Reichstag fire. To them, September 11th was not about pulling together and finding common ground, but making America theirs, putting liberals to the rhetorical sword and creating a neocon/theocon hegemony that would slaughter American liberty and establish a New American Century immune to petty concerns like democracy.
In the weeks that followed, the rest of us worked together in the spirit of unity, a few Cassandras (note: Cassandra was always right, it's just that no one ever listened) trying to remind us that Bush was still the Dauphin, not Henry V, but the rest believing that this was the moment to heal our wounds, both old and new. Like a phoenix, America would rise from the ashes of Ground Zero and the 2000 election alike. It would a stronger place, a wiser place, a better place. For one moment in time, it looked like that was what would happen.
That was the potential facing the Bush cabal. That was the faith and trust an America that had not voted for them, that on September 10th looked askance at Bush's vacant style and his so-called policies, gave the president and his administration. Just don't be evil traitors or be incompetent fools, we told them, and you will become legends.
They chose evil and treason. They remained incompetent fools. Infinite potential and endless goodwill were pissed away for mad crusades in the wrong country, bigger 'weapon' waving at countries they didn't like, a huge middle finger for any and all compromise with the global community, and an obscene quest to destroy what remains of the Bill of Rights.
Four years ago, they had the chance to change the world. They did. Now we live in the world they made. All our sacrifices for 'homeland security' are useless in the face of a threat with almost a week's advance warning -- and a major American city is almost wiped off the face of the earth. All our efforts to 'support the troops' get them trapped in a sand pit without adequate protection, with 2000 dead and counting (and that's just ours) for no good reason. All our trust betrayed as a man who had the temerity to speak out against their lies is attacked...through his wife, an actual American hero who was working to do what they only claimed to -- prevent deadly weapons from killing thousands of Americans. The irony of the 'criminalization of politics' meme is that there's truth to it -- the Republican brand of politics is advanced by committing crimes.
Now, the attacks on September 11th are all but forgotten in public discourse, with the occasional exception of Bush trying to squeeze the last milliliter or two of exploitation out of the dead. It is ultimately for them, however, that 'Fitzmas' must be prosecuted. What all of this -- Wilson, Iraq, the Patriot Act, New Orleans, all of it -- boils down to, is this regime using a monstrous crime against a deep blue city to justify its own radical, poisonous, divisive agenda while deliberately ignoring everything that might actually deal with the problems made manifest on that terrible day.
Bush is right about exactly one thing. This is the September 11th administration. That's because everything they've done since September 11th has been in pursuit of one goal. Ironically, it's the same goal Osama bin Laden is after: the end of America as we know it.
It's time they paid for it.
Merry Fitzmas. >eg<
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(/) Roland X
Fiat justitia, ruat coelum!
"Let justice be done, though the heavens fall!"