A tale of two eras

On the drive down here to greater Palm Springs, I played a number of CDs in the car, various album collections on the randomizer. Occasionally a tune would pop up that was written/recorded in 2002 or so that directly or obliquely referenced 9/11. Stuff like Melissa Etheridge's "Tuesday Morning," Springsteen's "Into the Fire," that kind of thing.

Those songs are a manifestation of the collective outrage of both the public and the government over a terrorist attack that was deadly and horrific, yes, but also blunt and spectacular and shocking (we'll leave aside the questions about whether or not GWB and company should have been shocked or not; the point is, the public was). Not for the first time, I was struck by the massive difference in the American reaction to 9/11 from the American reaction to President Convicted Felon's regime of terror and incompetence.

Bin Laden and his minions killed 3,000 Americans with a stunt designed to get everyone's attention and scare us. The reaction was, probably as intended by bin Landen, outsized and detrimental to the American public, but it was swift and massive in the name of defending the United States and our free democratic republic.

Felon47, when he was merely Fraudster45, presided over three million deaths from a pandemic he so grossly mismanaged and, in fact, abetted. As Felon47, his regime has already killed untold millions around the world with the destruction of USAID. He's outright murdered 57 people and counting on the open seas. He's created a secret police force to terrorize Americans and non-citizen residents of his own nation, disappearing people to secret gulags and tear-gassing residential neighborhoods. His Department of Homeland Security thugs—an agency misguidedly and foolishly created in the overreaction to 9/11—are nothing more than mob enforcers abusing people for the sole purpose of making people scared. You know, terrorism.

This country is under a threat so much greater today, from the alleged President and his evil henchmen—and I do not exaggerate when I call them that—an existential crisis brought on by, yes, terrorists with the stated intention of destroying the U.S. Constitutional order and replacing it with a dictatorial regime of oligarchical rule. In the early 2000s, Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were such a threat that the American public collectively lost its mind, elected officials were so frantic in their attempts to protect the country that they basically ran around screaming and bouncing off the walls while passing poorly-considered rush legislation to prevent further damage. Here in the 2010s and 2020s, the entire Republican party has thrown in with the terrorists and the American public is either shrugging its shoulders or cowering in fear.

At least, it seems that way. It feels that way.

The No Kings protests gave me some hope that the majority of us really are trying to resist and push back against the terrorists. But this threat has been here now for ten years, the consequences of it continue to escalate and continue to metastasize with such tepid defiance that I find myself just aghast at the contrast.

9/11: An attack in spectacular fashion from elsewhere that killed thousands, resulting in near-instant panic and fervent defense of America as a concept as well as a territory. Trump: An attack in slow-moving idiotic fashion from within, aided by Russians under cover of night, that killed millions and counting, resulting in the complete abdication of the Congressional majority and the corrupt majority of the Supreme Court as a despotic regime takes over the nation and plunges us into a dark age while the public just sits and looks at Instagram.

Wake the fuck up, people.