Yup. And the lies grow with the collective preference for delusions. The fact that Dick Cheney was never fingered for his “weapons of mass destruction” lie still leaves me outraged.
So much pomp and circumstance surrounds “remembrance” and fallen soldiers; yet no one dares (except Lucian 😉) to point out how reckless, meaningless and EXPENSIVE these Repug wars have been. NEW RULES: Repugs don’t get to claim “patriotism,” “conservative spending,” “National strength,” and “family values” as their platform. They represent fascist, corporate pigs like the KKKoch Gang of billionaires. Period. If Mitch McConnell pretends to speak “for the American People” again, someone with a large hook should yank him by the neck off his soapbox.
It’s horrifying and sickening to me that Dick Cheney made almost $40B from their two fake wars for fun and profit, which would not have been possible without the 9/11 attacks.
IMHO, if there’s ever a real investigation into how the 9/11 attacks were allowed to happen, the ‘Project for a New American Century’ should be Exhibit A. Search for the words “a new Pearl Harbor.”
Brilliant. I always thought the war on terror was an absurd pursuit. It should be a war on the CAUSES of terrorist acts: Inequality, injustice, cruel domination and disrespect on a weaker population.
4.0, LK. I wish there were more like you who had the intelligence to recognize the truth, the words to express it clearly and the courage to do so. This is one of the most important pieces of writing I have read in my 81 years on this planet. It should be carved into stone and placed in a prominent place in Washington. We're with you.
Yes, 9-11 birthed the Big lie, didn't it? After twenty years The Big Lie has morphed and grown so large that Truth has nowhere left to hide. (Just for the record: No, Saddam did not have WMDs.)Today's lugubrious celebration of 9-11, led by a political class whose ham-handed adventurism abroad provoked it, is embarrassing.
Thanks for writing, as you usually do, the simple, god-awful truth.
The challenge is, how do we get back to something that resembles our pre-9/11 nation?
First, I believe we Democrats will have to find someway to resoundingly defeat – even rout – today’s so-called Republican Party.
Then, I believe it will take a succession or series of Democratic presidents who are willing to speak the real truth about 9/11 and our subsequent actions.
Finally, I believe American needs to engaging the equivalent of a worldwide truth and reconciliation effort to, in effect, absolve ourselves of our errors or sins.
If we do those things, perhaps 20 years hence we will have removed some of the self-inflicted horror and stench we have endured and of which have been unable to cleanse ourselves.
Excellent piece. I agree 100%. What could we have built and accomplished with those wasted trillions...
As for The Former Guy, he's a lifelong liar but perhaps he was taught by his Nazi father and grandfather, or by the Nazi book he is reported to have kept by his bed.
After all, it was Goebbels and Hitler who really perfected The Big Lie.
Lucien, you’re dead on save one thing. The unraveling really began with Vietnam. We lost all faith in American institutions—for good reasons. I watched your own reaction to it when you were a cadet. It’s great to see that you’re now one of our genuine truth tellers. Bravo!
It’s difficult to think of how the so-called free press failed us during all those years. Don’t forget embedded journalists and their confusion over truth telling and their own notions of heroism. And remember too that we’re still listening for a few good straight shooters. Your followers right now continue to rise from the silence.
This meditation today is moderate, clear headed, honest, and sobering. Why oh why is it not front page news—or at least represented prominently as sobering reflection on our waywardness as a Nation? It calls to question the precarious and costly nature of our bumbling and fumbling. I want to add to that sentence “after truth,” but that wouldn’t be true.
Up to a point -- but I take issue with your "we". I think you're talking about relatively privileged white people. Another thing: As a young woman I was active in the antiwar movement, but it wasn't till the Gulf War in 1991 that I realized that for many USians -- most of whom, I believe, were white -- the shame of the Vietnam War wasn't that we were there in the first place but that "we" lost. Even now I get vertigo thinking about it.
I'm talking about popular opinion. I was traveling at the time so I ran into a lot of it. As with many things, the excesses tend to be committed by those with the least (if any) personal experience. I posted elsewhere about how the worst attacks on anyone who "looked Muslim" or "looked Arab" generally happened a long way from New York or D.C. It's like that.
You ask: "Lies began tearing us apart after the attacks on 9/11, and we have not regained our footing as a nation. The question hanging over us now is whether we ever will."
This is so brilliantly spot on and so depressing. I wonder if we might take a look at some other cult monsters (not Hitler this time) like Jim Jones, who murdered his own cult followers, to get an idea of how long it takes and how, aside from wiping out the entire cult, we might hope to regain our stability. I'm currently leaning toward wiping out the entire cult (or maybe just waiting until they wipe themselves out with Covid), since we cannot seem to rein in social media or Fox - those two all-powerful weapons aimed squarely against this democracy.
Thank you, Lucian. I’m sure this dose of Reality is in stark contrast to all the bilge that will be intoned by sober and pious empty suits today in their homage to all those “Heroes” who perished twenty years ago and since, because…those responsible for ‘911’ “….just hated us for our freedoms.”
My first thought once I understood what had happened on 9/11 was "Chickens come home to roost." (I had a pretty good grasp of the history of the U.S. and western European countries in the Middle East.) Watching the war-mongering that followed, and the suppression of civil liberties embodied in the PATRIOT Act, I came to believe that this was a massive freakout on the part of the mostly white, mostly male governing class. What they had routinely done to others was now being done to them -- which is to say, "to us." This time around, we -- the people on the planes, the people in the Twin Towers, and all the first responders who have died early deaths since then -- were the "collateral damage".
The white male governing class was *scared*. They reacted, predictably, by trying to prove that they weren't scared at all, they were *in charge*: by retaliating against the people who scared them (who mostly weren't the people who had done the damage -- notice how no one suggested going to war with Saudi Arabia?).
Today many speakers and commentators, and quite a few of my friends, have spoken a little wistfully of how "we" came together on 9/11. In NYC and other places that does seem to have happened, but what I remember most clearly was the way some USians physically attacked anyone who "looked Muslim" or "looked Arab" to them. It did seem that the further you got from NYC or DC, the uglier people got to anyone who didn't look like them. I believe that the rhetoric of the freaked-out privileged white men pulled a lot of people along with them (sound familiar)?
I've heard some intelligent people argue that Trump wouldn't have happened without 9/11. I'm skeptical -- I don't have much trouble drawing a line from Trump back to Nixon's "southern strategy," maybe with a spike around 9/11 but maybe not. But it's worth discussing. All in all, I don't believe for a moment that we as a nation (assuming that we really are a nation) have come to terms with 9/11.
Yup. And the lies grow with the collective preference for delusions. The fact that Dick Cheney was never fingered for his “weapons of mass destruction” lie still leaves me outraged.
So much pomp and circumstance surrounds “remembrance” and fallen soldiers; yet no one dares (except Lucian 😉) to point out how reckless, meaningless and EXPENSIVE these Repug wars have been. NEW RULES: Repugs don’t get to claim “patriotism,” “conservative spending,” “National strength,” and “family values” as their platform. They represent fascist, corporate pigs like the KKKoch Gang of billionaires. Period. If Mitch McConnell pretends to speak “for the American People” again, someone with a large hook should yank him by the neck off his soapbox.
This is the best explanation I’ve heard yet, and it’s heartbreaking.
Excellent analysis, as always.
It’s horrifying and sickening to me that Dick Cheney made almost $40B from their two fake wars for fun and profit, which would not have been possible without the 9/11 attacks.
IMHO, if there’s ever a real investigation into how the 9/11 attacks were allowed to happen, the ‘Project for a New American Century’ should be Exhibit A. Search for the words “a new Pearl Harbor.”
Brilliant. I always thought the war on terror was an absurd pursuit. It should be a war on the CAUSES of terrorist acts: Inequality, injustice, cruel domination and disrespect on a weaker population.
I developed my description of the Trumpster combining the Trump era thusly:
Fox fed brain dead racist birther morons.
This is a 10 year blight, about half of Hitlers's run of 20 years.
4.0, LK. I wish there were more like you who had the intelligence to recognize the truth, the words to express it clearly and the courage to do so. This is one of the most important pieces of writing I have read in my 81 years on this planet. It should be carved into stone and placed in a prominent place in Washington. We're with you.
Lucian: The best piece you have written. The best. This was spot on. Every single thing you wrote... spot on.
Yes, 9-11 birthed the Big lie, didn't it? After twenty years The Big Lie has morphed and grown so large that Truth has nowhere left to hide. (Just for the record: No, Saddam did not have WMDs.)Today's lugubrious celebration of 9-11, led by a political class whose ham-handed adventurism abroad provoked it, is embarrassing.
Thanks for writing, as you usually do, the simple, god-awful truth.
The challenge is, how do we get back to something that resembles our pre-9/11 nation?
First, I believe we Democrats will have to find someway to resoundingly defeat – even rout – today’s so-called Republican Party.
Then, I believe it will take a succession or series of Democratic presidents who are willing to speak the real truth about 9/11 and our subsequent actions.
Finally, I believe American needs to engaging the equivalent of a worldwide truth and reconciliation effort to, in effect, absolve ourselves of our errors or sins.
If we do those things, perhaps 20 years hence we will have removed some of the self-inflicted horror and stench we have endured and of which have been unable to cleanse ourselves.
I truly wish your columns were carried by every major newspaper.
Excellent piece. I agree 100%. What could we have built and accomplished with those wasted trillions...
As for The Former Guy, he's a lifelong liar but perhaps he was taught by his Nazi father and grandfather, or by the Nazi book he is reported to have kept by his bed.
After all, it was Goebbels and Hitler who really perfected The Big Lie.
Lucien, you’re dead on save one thing. The unraveling really began with Vietnam. We lost all faith in American institutions—for good reasons. I watched your own reaction to it when you were a cadet. It’s great to see that you’re now one of our genuine truth tellers. Bravo!
It’s difficult to think of how the so-called free press failed us during all those years. Don’t forget embedded journalists and their confusion over truth telling and their own notions of heroism. And remember too that we’re still listening for a few good straight shooters. Your followers right now continue to rise from the silence.
This meditation today is moderate, clear headed, honest, and sobering. Why oh why is it not front page news—or at least represented prominently as sobering reflection on our waywardness as a Nation? It calls to question the precarious and costly nature of our bumbling and fumbling. I want to add to that sentence “after truth,” but that wouldn’t be true.
Up to a point -- but I take issue with your "we". I think you're talking about relatively privileged white people. Another thing: As a young woman I was active in the antiwar movement, but it wasn't till the Gulf War in 1991 that I realized that for many USians -- most of whom, I believe, were white -- the shame of the Vietnam War wasn't that we were there in the first place but that "we" lost. Even now I get vertigo thinking about it.
For me it had nothing to do with loss. I was a white man who was in the war. You might think about recalibration.
I'm talking about popular opinion. I was traveling at the time so I ran into a lot of it. As with many things, the excesses tend to be committed by those with the least (if any) personal experience. I posted elsewhere about how the worst attacks on anyone who "looked Muslim" or "looked Arab" generally happened a long way from New York or D.C. It's like that.
You ask: "Lies began tearing us apart after the attacks on 9/11, and we have not regained our footing as a nation. The question hanging over us now is whether we ever will."
This is so brilliantly spot on and so depressing. I wonder if we might take a look at some other cult monsters (not Hitler this time) like Jim Jones, who murdered his own cult followers, to get an idea of how long it takes and how, aside from wiping out the entire cult, we might hope to regain our stability. I'm currently leaning toward wiping out the entire cult (or maybe just waiting until they wipe themselves out with Covid), since we cannot seem to rein in social media or Fox - those two all-powerful weapons aimed squarely against this democracy.
Thank you, Lucian. I’m sure this dose of Reality is in stark contrast to all the bilge that will be intoned by sober and pious empty suits today in their homage to all those “Heroes” who perished twenty years ago and since, because…those responsible for ‘911’ “….just hated us for our freedoms.”
My first thought once I understood what had happened on 9/11 was "Chickens come home to roost." (I had a pretty good grasp of the history of the U.S. and western European countries in the Middle East.) Watching the war-mongering that followed, and the suppression of civil liberties embodied in the PATRIOT Act, I came to believe that this was a massive freakout on the part of the mostly white, mostly male governing class. What they had routinely done to others was now being done to them -- which is to say, "to us." This time around, we -- the people on the planes, the people in the Twin Towers, and all the first responders who have died early deaths since then -- were the "collateral damage".
The white male governing class was *scared*. They reacted, predictably, by trying to prove that they weren't scared at all, they were *in charge*: by retaliating against the people who scared them (who mostly weren't the people who had done the damage -- notice how no one suggested going to war with Saudi Arabia?).
Today many speakers and commentators, and quite a few of my friends, have spoken a little wistfully of how "we" came together on 9/11. In NYC and other places that does seem to have happened, but what I remember most clearly was the way some USians physically attacked anyone who "looked Muslim" or "looked Arab" to them. It did seem that the further you got from NYC or DC, the uglier people got to anyone who didn't look like them. I believe that the rhetoric of the freaked-out privileged white men pulled a lot of people along with them (sound familiar)?
I've heard some intelligent people argue that Trump wouldn't have happened without 9/11. I'm skeptical -- I don't have much trouble drawing a line from Trump back to Nixon's "southern strategy," maybe with a spike around 9/11 but maybe not. But it's worth discussing. All in all, I don't believe for a moment that we as a nation (assuming that we really are a nation) have come to terms with 9/11.
Joe Gobbels said it: You tell the Big Lie enough and it becomes truth.