Meanwhile on the International front....

I was starving as I wrote this
So sue me if I just drop dead

 

The Great Idaho Airlift commences.

 

no surprise here

Israel Secretly Targets U.S. Lawmakers With Influence Campaign on Gaza War

 

Well I woke up this morning
We couldn't make potato bread
The potato crop is falling
I think we've heard this song before
Try to flee from our starvation
Find some way to stay alive
So tonight we're gonna forage like it's 1845

 

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/06/politics/biden-d-day-american-leadership/index.html

For most of my life, WWII was the quintessential American moment, not only a turning point in a critical time for the world, but the time when the US really became the dominant force in the world. Trying to think of a similar "turning point" in our history since then - I really hope we aren't amidst it right now.

 

Spencer Ackerman’s 2021 book “Reign of Terror” makes a pretty compelling argument that America’s initial reaction to 9/11, to believe with righteous fury that we were attacked for our freedom instead of geopolitical reasons, and the cascading effects were that moment. He traces a direct line from those neocons straight to Trumpism.

The longer we get from it, the more I think in the long, long term, the 2000 election will be the moment. The facade of a Republic where both sides put country over party collapsed. Nothing has ever felt as legitimate.

 

Sounds like a great place, a nation on the rise. Why does everyone want to leave?

 

I kind of disagree. For one, the neo-cons (namely Cheneyites) are virulently anti-Trump. Second, Trumpism rose as a "counter" attracting GOPers who grew tired of the lies and failures from the GOP establishment types, whether we are talking about Iraq and Afghanistan, Hurricane Katrina, Repealing Obamacare, etc. So they went with Trump - who actually delivered something on Roe, and was tough on immigration - two things the establishment GOP talked a good game on, but never delivered.

And finally, we're not 25 years removed from 9/11 and we really don't talk about it much. Maybe because we "lost" in Iraq and Afghanistan, they've both more or less returned to whatever they were before. It's like 9/11 was a fluke, but it has changed our country for sure. We've become a lot more cautious domestically and internationally.

 

I chalk it down to six words:

"Islam is a religion of peace."

Obviously, everyone experienced and understood 9/11 differently, but I think a significant portion of American culture (ironically, much of it hundreds and thousands of miles from Ground Zero) saw a terror attack by Islamic fundamentalists as worthy of something of a holy war, that it justified something between a disproportionate "boot in your ass, it's the American way" reprisal and carpet-bombing Mecca. Frankly, I have found myself going back to the spring of 2002 often when I think about Israel and Gaza in the present day. They're not the same situation, but I think there were a lot of people then who wish we would have done then what Israel is doing in Gaza now.

But soon after, you heard GW use those six words repeatedly in the aftermath. I think he was trying to offer nuance to the situation, if for no other reason that there are hundreds of thousands millions of Muslims around the world who had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, but I think a lot of those people from the previous paragraph say that even the Republicans were too "politically correct" to do what they thought must be done.

 

That's fair, though I think it was more like hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world who had nothing to do with Al Qaeda.

 

Sorry, typo. I wasn't quite sure if they had enough for "billions" and I kind of skipped "millions" in between. Je me dénonce.