Getting Through September 11
We made it. Some of the TV programming about 9-11 -- the part about the real people who were caught up in the catastrophe of the World Trade Center -- was fascinating. But of course it was a big opportunity for the corporate media to have a propaganda bonanza. ABC Disneyworld News orchestrated some major propaganda for the Bush administration, dramatizing how heroic "The President" was throughout the crisis and its aftermath, though I have never been able to figure out what they mean about that. I see nothing whatever heroic about any of his behavior September 11 or any other time.You got to hear all their lies again, Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and all the president's men, about how no one ever imagined before that anyone would ever drive planes into buildings. You got to see Bush's travels around the country running from danger on September 11, disappearing during the nation's greatest crisis, and it was portrayed as heroism. And you got to see Cheney who could never look like he was telling the truth even if he ever did.
And then there was "The Presuhdent's Speech." Yes sir, that cowboy addressed the nation. He stared into those teleprompters and read that speech like he'd been doing it all his life. He looked so damn pleased with himself. His face kept twisting into that bizarre smirk that breaks spasmodically into his expression at the oddest moments. It's one of his most Nixonian characteristics. Maybe he was making faces at someone in the audience, if there was one. He's really on a roll now. He's beginning to believe that he really is the president, that those "approval ratings" really mean something.
September 11, 2002
Notrandom Notes
That takes a little of the sting out of it, being able to write that date without it meaning something really horrible. That is, if we get through the day okay, God willing.Actually maybe it's not good to invoke any deities right now. It's a serious controversy when people start invoking their gods in time of war. Check out Mark Twain's "The War Prayer"". It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism...
in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener...
"O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
(Mark Twain)Well if there is a true and just god, who is the god of all people, not just Christians or any other religion, but of all life on the planet, then I plea: God save America. From the dangerous path it is going down.
Other September 11 dispatches
Democrats.com posted a piece by Mark Crispin Miller that found words to describe the monumental deference to power expressed by the major media in the United States. He calls it "Demented Caesarism".Tonight I saw some blurbs from the much-touted Bush interview to be aired September 11. The trailer itself was nauseating. There was Bush just dripping with haughty arrogance. He is so full of himself now he's about to explode into a thousand fragments. And the reporter was mooning for him -- in the old sense, like one struck helpless with infatuation. He appeared to be genuflecting before a holy relic. He was the personification of obsequiousness. It was beyond preposterous, it was slapstick. And yet you have to believe that some people will actually take it seriously.
buzzflash.com posted some amazing selections from Colin Powell's autobiography My American Journey. Powell says of the Vietnam War, "I am angry that so many sons of the powerful and well placed and many professional athletes (who were probably healthier than any of us) managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to our country."
This is mind boggling. This statement is soulful and eloquent. Of course even George W. Bush manages to pull together some good quips from his writers using words like "democracy," which he obviously abhors. But even in Bush's phony autobiography he would never get anywhere near a statement like that. Obviously. He was the exact person Powell described bitterly. Why then would Powell serve under Bush? It's a tragic trade-off, to sacrifice your integrity to put yourself in a position in which you could theoretically "serve." It just never seems to work out that way. He could serve better by being on the outside where he could speak his views and influence some people. Polls show he is vastly more respected than any of the rest of Bush's rat pack.
September 11, 2002
Why Still Unexamined?
Jim Dwyer writing in The New York Times says "One year later, the public knows less about the circumstances of 2,801 deaths at the foot of Manhattan in broad daylight than people in 1912 knew within weeks about the Titanic, which sank in the middle of an ocean in the dead of night."Why is that? Is that not a singularly strange fact in a modern, allegedly "open society"? Apparently no one in a powerful position in government was vulnerable to embarrassment over the Titanic disaster, so investigations were not halted at the highest levels back in those quaint days of the early 20th Century.
September 11, 2002
Not to be Trusted
On WBAI's "Wake Up Call" this morning I heard Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights respond to a question whether or not the government's alerts -- like today's Orange Alert -- are being used to work people into a state of fear and anxiety that can be manipulated into willingness to go along with the Bush administration's plans for war and the curtailment of civil liberties. Ratner's reply was to the point. "Well the present administration is made up of war mongers and corporate thugs," he said. "Of that there can be no doubt. And they cannot be trusted, not with the alerts or with anything else."
September 11, 2002
The Howling Winds of Hoboken
HOBOKEN, N.J. -- Today is sunny and beautiful in Hoboken, as it was one year ago today in the town on the waterfront right across the Hudson from where the World Trade Center used to be. The sunlight is at the same late summer angle, providing unconscious cues that seem to transport one back to that day. But now those memories infuse the beauty of the day with an undertone of menace. It was a perfect day that day, and today is also warm and bright, but today the winds are blowing powerfully, violently, blowing debris around the streets, changing direction. "The spirits are restless today," a woman said. And indeed, it does feel that way.A memorial was held on Pier One for the 60-odd citizens of the Mile Square City who had perished in the WTC attack. Roses were placed in tall vases, one for each of the deceased. The ceremony came off well, except for the winds which were blowing everything around, creating noise and havoc. Strangely, the tall vases were somehow exempt from the wind, and remained standing steadfastly. When it came time for the reading of the names of the victims, suddenly the vases began to give way to the winds and fall over.
-- By David Cogswell