Today’s my birthday. The eleventh of September.
I find it strange but not traumatizing to share this date with the tragedy that befell this nation five years ago today. I suppose if I were in my teens or twenties, I might feel otherwise.
Obligatory where-was-I: In the master bedroom, Vicki just having come home from an early morning workout, hearing at the club about the first plane in Manhattan. Surely an accident, but shocking nonetheless. Then I went to work, and the TV was on all day in the cafeteria, as it soon became clear that this was deliberate.
This attack was carried out by international criminals, and the planners ought to have been pursued appropriately. Bush allowed it to happen, did nothing to prevent it, stayed in that damned classroom while people died. Our air defenses that day were strangely inept.
Worst of all, he exploited this tragedy to play deeply upon our paranoia and fear and to lie us into an unprovoked act of aggression against Iraq for their oil. Bush is no war president, however much he pretends to fancy himself such, for the sake of seizing dictatorial powers and continuing his assault on our freedoms.
But he is a war criminal. The whole pack of them are war criminals. Cells in The Hague await them and they cannot occupy them fast enough.
When this national nightmare is over, we need a means of efficiently ousting sociopaths, failing the means to identify them prior to their being nominated for high office, and not having to suffer harm to our nation by their persistence in the seats of power. Britain’s vote of confidence might do the trick.
We need a Republican Party out of the hands of right-wing whack jobs, not afraid to impeach and remove from office one, or more of their own, for the sake of the Constitution.
We need an opposition party bold in its opposition to policies and practices that run counter to American ideals.
And we need a corporate media dedicated to rousting out the scoundrels who betray the people’s trust.
Failing a viable third party, we must vote Democrats into office in overwhelming numbers and they must embrace the best of their core philosophy and put into practice our highest ideals.