The Cult of 9/11 !!!!!

[Daanyeer]

............"It's high time to stop wallowing in our obsession with what is becoming the most overblown and shamelessly exploited event in American history. "

Source: Rocky Mountain News
August 14, 2007 Author: Paul Campos


When Stu Bykofsky, a columnist for The Philadelphia Daily News, wrote a column last week in which he openly hoped that America suffers "another 9/11," he merely had the poor judgment to say what many a right-wing politician and pundit is thinking.

Evidence for this is everywhere: in the fact that Bykofsky was invited to appear on the GOP's unofficial network, Fox News, to "explain" his comments; in the keen disappointment that ripples throughout the right-wing blogosphere every time the collapse of a bridge or a steam pipe explosion turns out not to have been the work of Scary Brown People Who Hate Our Freedoms; and in predictions such as that made by former Sen. Rick Santorum, that the GOP's electoral fortunes will improve as soon as there's another terrorist attack.

Indeed, at this point one can practically see these people wringing their hands in frustration at the apparent inability of "the terrorists" to kill a few Americans somewhere (preferably in a solidly red state, although New York or California would do in a pinch), so as to once again give war a chance.

Bykofsky's column is a nostalgic look back at the days immediately following 9/11, when the nation was unified by fear and anger, and a desire to find and destroy "the enemy." (Typically, Bykofsky doesn't bother to define who "the enemy" is. This spares him the effort of having to consider whether invading a country that had nothing to do 9/11 made any sense.)

Six years later, it's worth looking back on that terrible day with something other than a wistful longing for a repeat performance, in order to recognize a couple of obvious if unpleasant truths.

First, in the weeks immediately following 9/11, a lot of people said and did a great many ridiculous things. This was somewhat understandable under the circumstances. Still, it's important to recognize the cultural forces that made it mandatory to attack the likes of Susan Sontag and Bill Maher (Maher was actually fired for merely pointing out that, whatever else they were, the 9/11 terrorists weren't cowards) helped create a collective atmosphere of national hysteria.

Second, in the years since, we have been encouraged to develop a kind of narcissistic obsession with the events of Sept. 11, 2001 (indeed, the very term "9/11" reflects this.) "9/11" is invoked over and over again, as the day that "changed everything," and that therefore justifies everything from banning toothpaste on airplanes to wholesale spying on Americans without a warrant to torturing people who have been imprisoned for years without trial.

The narcissism at the heart of the Cult of 9/11 is captured by an episode of Larry David's mordant comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm. David meets with a rabbi whose brother-in-law was killed in uptown New York in a bicycle accident on the day of the terror attacks. When at the meeting's end David innocently exclaims "Let's roll," the rabbi is outraged: "You knew my brother-in-law died on Sept. 11! How dare you say something like that!"

A nonplussed David replies, "I didn't realize that if you died uptown it was still part of the tragedy."

The fact is that if you, like me, are one of the 99.9 percent of Americans who doesn't know anyone who was killed or injured in the 9/11 terror attacks, or in the subsequent rescue efforts, then 9/11 was at bottom a very disturbing thing that you saw (over and over again) on TV.

It didn't "change everything," and it didn't (and doesn't) justify the Iraq war, indiscriminate spying on Americans, extrajudicial renditions, torture, or any of the other immoral actions that continue to be done in its name.

It's high time to stop wallowing in our obsession with what is becoming the most overblown and shamelessly exploited event in American history.



Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado.

[Grant]

I have written replies twice to this, only to have them disappear. Hopefully, this time.......

Cheney/Bush may be liable for Iraq etc., but liability for the "Patriot" Act and the potential for future attacks on US soil goes much further back.

In 1997 I was recruited by a large corporate Lab in this area. I made an hourly agreement based on the usual assumptions, closed my own lab and moved out there. Once there I discovered they paid "propay", a per unit deal that paid by step and ignored overtime, split-shift pay, etc. They paid only once per step so that you had to do over without pay anything that came back from the doctor, regardless of the reason. Almost universally necessary corrections at the end had to be made without pay. My agreement with them was "temporary".

We were unable to get either the State or Federal governments to do one damn thing. They wouldn't even investigate the aliens working there. In the end we sued privately and were able to recover 1.312M in back wages, about a third of the estimate for the four out of roughly twelve years we were allowed to sue. There were no criminal consquences for the corporation. Even our lawyers did not feel the situation was "serious". They simply ignored Federal law and the California Business and Professions code.

I am led to believe that this sort of thing has been general rather than the exception. It has created a de-facto two-tiered economy in which small private employers have obeyed the laws, and corporations with inside information and legal departments have maneuvered to avoid paying legal wages. Leaving the borders wide open has been part of keeping corporate wages down. But of course now, nobody knows who is in the country or what their agendas might be.

This is one of those rare instances when I actually agree with the Far Right, and I can't emphasize how much I agree with Lou Dobbs on this. The first step in creating national security is closing the borders and enforcing the labor laws. We wouldn't be needing the "Patriot" act if the government hadn't already been pandering to the already rich. Corporate desires for another attack are both probable and despicable.

Uff and double uff!