What I remember most about the day, and its immediate aftermath, was the readiness of people everywhere to do something. An enormous, enormous opportunity to engage the entire American people was forfeited.
The money quote from Rich's article:
"... the key move Bush made after 9/11 had nothing to do with military strategy or national-security policy. It was instead his considered decision to rule out shared sacrifice as a governing principle for the fight ahead. Sacrifice was high among the unifying ideals that many Americans hoped would emerge from the rubble of ground zero, where so many Good Samaritans had practiced it. But the president scuttled the notion on the first weekend after the attack, telling Americans that it was his "hope" that "they make no sacrifice whatsoever" beyond, perhaps, tolerating enhanced airline security. Few leaders in either party contradicted him. Bush would soon implore us to "get down to Disney World in Florida" and would even lend his image to a travel-industry ad promoting tourism. Our marching orders were to go shopping.
From then on, it was a given that any human losses at wartime would be borne by a largely out-of-sight, out-of-mind, underpaid volunteer army and that the expense would be run up on a magic credit card. Even as the rising insurgency in Iraq began to stress American resources to the max in 2003, Bush doubled down on new tax cuts and pushed through a wildly extravagant new Medicare entitlement for prescription drugs to shore up his reelection prospects with elderly voters. David Walker, then the comptroller general, called it "the most reckless fiscal year in the history of the republic."
I was thinking along the same lines just recently. I heard news about Ron Paul saying that FEMA should be dissolved, and Vermont should be left to fend for itself (not sure about his stance on federal money helping Texas' drought). It struck me that, in all of my 19 years of living in this country, the feeling of isolation and hatred toward neighbors is at a peak right now.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first arrived in LA, it was right after the Rodney King trial and subsequent riot. Then I lived through the OJ Simpson trial. Then there were California propositions trying to throw Mexican illegal kids out of school. But, even that time was no comparison with what's going on now. American people are waving "Atlas Shrugged" like Chinese youths waving Mao's Little Red Book during Cultural Revolution, extolling the virtue of kicking your neighbors when they are down because they deserve it. Poor, unemployed Americans are willing to fight to the death for the rich to keep their last penny of their profit.