the rix mix

I know it's unpopular to say, but one lesson of 9/11 is that it demonstrated we probably couldn't have handled another major terrorist attack.  It showed we  don't have the cool or resiliency or long view of the British. We panicked, & badly. We're still isolationists at heart. We spent  trillions of dollars & thousands of lives & put our Constitution at risk  because we thought 19 lunatics with a whack religious belief were capable of tearing down our civilization.  Our response was to start tearing it down ourselves. We became enamored of scientific & historical  ignorance. We worshiped  ideology even as we fought Islamic ideologues & let homegrown ideologues paralyze our government. We fought a bunch of  secretive, conspiratorial medievalists with the full brunt of our military power, cost no object,   as if they possessed armies & navies & air forces. We  were so frightened that we handed over our government to a cabal of international bankers & militarists & let them drain our treasury, kill our young people, & ruin our economy. Then we blamed it on Social Security, Medicare, teachers,  science, gays out of the closet,  the old standby of commies in the closet, anyone & anything  except following the money, which we should have done beginning 9/12/01. Meanwhile, Germany, China, India, Brazil, & a bunch of other powerhouse nations naturally took advantage of our obsession with Muslims & willingness to bankrupt ourselves & undermine our own Constitution. Our President  advised us ignore the wars as much as we could & shop our way out of crisis. Then millions of formerly middle class Americans couldn't afford to buy anything. There was no back up plan.

I don't think I've ever said anything more cynical than that anyone who supported the excessive measures we took & the endless war we've waged in response to 9/11 & failed to personally profit materially from them is an All-American sucker. Just ask the folks who turned the redevelopment of Ground Zero into a multi-billion dollar white collar criminal enterprise,  passed the outrageous costs on to everyone else as toll & transit fare increases - lying about why those hikes were necessary. Instead of going to jail they get  to stand on the podium on Sunday, weeping crocodile tears.  But a tiny slice of the 9/11 bonanza.