Apologies in advance for psycho rant
Can someone make this fairly common sentiment make more sense to me? So we united along nationalistic lines on 9/11-9/12, waved the flags, sang the songs, did the candlelight vigils. I see the appeal of this and the feelings it produces. But doesn't what actually happened as a result matter even more?
After uniting the American people, we largely approvingly (for quite a while) watched our government (who lied to us about a lot of different things the whole time) kill hundreds of thousands of people who had nothing to do with 9/11 (including refusing the Taliban's offer to give up Bin Laden so we could ultimately unsuccessfully pursue regime change). We further destabilized much of the middle east including being entirely responsible for creating the Iraqi insurgency, and committed a few war crimes in the process. We willingly became a mass surveillance state at home, and strengthened our alliance with Saudi Arabia who we eventually found out actually provided support for 9/11. The we seemingly never gave most of this second thought (excluding cranks like me) other than to remember how proud and united we were to see America's mayor deliver a punchline on SNL and George Bush throw a strike for all of us in Yankee stadium. The unity was gone by the 2004 election but we followed the path our unity led to for years and years after the unity vanished.
I'm not saying a repeat of the disastrous middle east wars is what has to happen if we find ourselves in a situation where we feel united like after 9/11 for whatever reason but I really think my last paragraph are things people should remember and consider when they pine for the unity in the early aftermath of 9/11.
If we want more unity in a secular (thank goodness) society, we don't have to let old money elites pick some type of enemy nation or institution for us to unite against. Perhaps we should stop demonizing and eradicating the types of public institutions that have largely been a massive success in improving the lives of common people and work hard together in good faith to fix the issues that arise within them not because of a lack of profit motive but because because things change and people are imperfect and corruption exists everywhere (especially in private enterprise). Rather than scrapping the idea of having public institutions providing valuable, essential services, we could unite around working to improve their shortcomings so we might one day boast about people receiving world class education without going into debt, having an infant mortality rate that's not completely embarrassing when compared with our closest peers, not having families lose their homes/file bankruptcy/ruin their credit over medical debt.
If that stuff cannot unite us, but war can, we are fukt
Can someone make this fairly common sentiment make more sense to me? So we united along nationalistic lines on 9/11-9/12, waved the flags, sang the songs, did the candlelight vigils. I see the appeal of this and the feelings it produces. But doesn't what actually happened as a result matter even more?
After uniting the American people, we largely approvingly (for quite a while) watched our government (who lied to us about a lot of different things the whole time) kill hundreds of thousands of people who had nothing to do with 9/11 (including refusing the Taliban's offer to give up Bin Laden so we could ultimately unsuccessfully pursue regime change). We further destabilized much of the middle east including being entirely responsible for creating the Iraqi insurgency, and committed a few war crimes in the process. We willingly became a mass surveillance state at home, and strengthened our alliance with Saudi Arabia who we eventually found out actually provided support for 9/11. The we seemingly never gave most of this second thought (excluding cranks like me) other than to remember how proud and united we were to see America's mayor deliver a punchline on SNL and George Bush throw a strike for all of us in Yankee stadium. The unity was gone by the 2004 election but we followed the path our unity led to for years and years after the unity vanished.
I'm not saying a repeat of the disastrous middle east wars is what has to happen if we find ourselves in a situation where we feel united like after 9/11 for whatever reason but I really think my last paragraph are things people should remember and consider when they pine for the unity in the early aftermath of 9/11.
If we want more unity in a secular (thank goodness) society, we don't have to let old money elites pick some type of enemy nation or institution for us to unite against. Perhaps we should stop demonizing and eradicating the types of public institutions that have largely been a massive success in improving the lives of common people and work hard together in good faith to fix the issues that arise within them not because of a lack of profit motive but because because things change and people are imperfect and corruption exists everywhere (especially in private enterprise). Rather than scrapping the idea of having public institutions providing valuable, essential services, we could unite around working to improve their shortcomings so we might one day boast about people receiving world class education without going into debt, having an infant mortality rate that's not completely embarrassing when compared with our closest peers, not having families lose their homes/file bankruptcy/ruin their credit over medical debt.
If that stuff cannot unite us, but war can, we are fukt
