It was when I first realized that an unacceptable proportion of news broadcasters were morons.
We were watching PBS for some reason, when the second plane hit the tower. And a reporter said, I swear, “I want to caution everyone not to jump to conclusions. At this point, there is no evidence that this is an attack.”
No, it could be just a coincidence that two passenger jets hit the same structure on the same day within minutes of each other. Sure. That makes perfect sense. Thanks, PBS, for your professional restraint and expert analysis.
Naturally, no one corrected him.
Yeah. Because by the time we knew it was an attack (the 2nd plane), we all pretty much “knew” who the perpetrators were going to be. And squish moral-free PBS reporters don’t want evil bigoted Americans to come to the conclusion (which was right by the way) that they were going to come to.
Prior to the second plane, I thought it was a terrible accident. Pilot error. The number of plane incidents, not least of which was the one that landed on the White House lawn while Clinton was President, had been high profile enough that it was at least possible.
After the second plane, everyone knew.
It was probably the last time an event coalesced in the public consciousness as a single moment of mass clarity.
As a communist is somebody who has nothing, and wants to share it with the world, so a journalist is someone who understands nothing, and wants to explain it to the everyone else.
This is good.
Chesterton has a saying along the lines of the following
“As a journalist I don’t know a lot, but I write to explain 20 different subjects each week.”
It’s better in the original, doubtless.
charles w abbott
rochester NY
It took 23 years and thousands of Americans dead for the US citizenry to realize we were at war with a segment of Islam. The current conflict with Iran is highlighting how some of us have forgotten that reality.
We did not and do not have to agree with how the war was and is being prosecuted to recognize we remain at war with this segment of Islam. And, given the chance, that segment of Islam would live up to their chants of death to America in figures much higher than September 11, 2001.
My favorite thing written about 9/11 after it happened is an article by the historian / Sovietologist / poet Robert Conquest.
I discovered it only years later. It’s still relevant.
“When ignorance isn’t bliss”
Especially apropos is the reference to Thomas Jefferson.
https://www.hoover.org/research/where-ignorance-isnt-bliss
= – = – = – =
come to think of it, I also like this essay which I heard read aloud to the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council probably before it was published finally. It’s by Alan Brody, who was a friend of many of the faculty at the University of Iowa.
alas, it’s now paywalled.
https://www.vqronline.org/winter-2008/essays/revisiting-afghanistan-conversation-najibullah
Nice essay. Hard to provide a synopsis that does it justice. Like a good essay, it meanders. Here’s my attempt to summarize.
The city was in ruins, with the flags of the Islamist forces flying from various shattered remains of buildings.
Najibullah was holed up in a part of Kabul not yet controlled by his sworn enemies–not free to leave, but safe at the moment from being tortured and executed by his blood foes.
The battles lines had suddenly shifted. Alan Brody (working for UNICEF at the time) is able to make a courtesy call on Najibullah with some chocolates. It’s Christmas or thereabouts.
During the conversation Najibullah (a now deposed communist strongman) says he regrets nothing, the Islamists are a menace, he wrote a letter to the first President Bush saying as much after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
“My Dear Alan,” he says, “You cannot imagine the destruction they will bring.”
charles w abbott
rochester NY
And in 25 years we have forgotten and bent over backwards so much that we are poised to elect several Muslim, communist, America-hating candidates. Really frightening.
In the post-9/11 atmosphere of uncertainty and fear, at 7:15 that evening, members of Congress gathered on the steps of the Capitol Building and sang “God Bless America”.
I just watched the video. Republicans and Democrats sang together.
On that day, we were all just Americans.
A few months ago, we met actor Martin Sheen who led his autograph line in singing “America the Beautiful”. It was a great moment, but I remember my Trump-deranged sister reacting with indifference when I mentioned it. I couldn’t help but wonder if the reaction would have been the same if I had pointed out that Sheen is also a progressive and probably would have been at the “No Kings” protest in Chicago that same day if he’d not been at the convention.
And that thought made me sad because she may think that singing patriotic songs is a tell only for the other side.
Once upon a time, we were all Americans.
When do we admit to ourselves the United States is no longer united and requires some thought about how we proceed into the future as opposed to hoping, somehow, the traditional past returns?
Put more bluntly, how many states or other governmental units are in open rebellion against the Constitution and how do we deal with them moving forward?