That morning.
Holy SHIT
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7 responses to “Holy SHIT”
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Today, I sent my cousin and his family (who live in the US) a message saying that today was “a sad anniversary” and that our family was thinking of them on this day. They thanked us.
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Twenty-five years ago yesterday, Americans and Canadians only needed to show a birth certificate or citizenship card to cross the US- Canada border. It’s been all downhill since then. Pretty soon, it’ll be visas.
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And you just know that those firefighters rushed into the building.
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And you just know that those firefighters rushed into the building.
And some of them didn’t come back out.
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I’m not going to make any friends with this post, and I may make some enemies, but if that’s how it is then sobeit. Yes, 25 years ago there was an event in New York that resulted in the destruction of some buildings and the deaths of more than 2000 people, but there was no revolution, no change of government, no death of a major public figure, no threat to the stability of the USA, etc.
On 11th September 1973, also a Tuesday, also on a bright sunny morning, there was an aerial attack that resulted in the death of a democratically elected President, overthrow of the democratically elected parliament, and installation of a military dictatorship that lasted until 1990. As an attack on democracy it had more immediate and more lasting effects than the event in 2001, but who remembers it today if they are not Chilean?
There are people, both in Chile and outside, who think the coup was orchestrated by the CIA, but that is unlikely. The CIA did try to organize a coup the preceding June, but it was planned with typical incompetence (even without Hegseth’s supervision) and was a humiliating failure. Augusto Pinochet thought he could do better without CIA involvement, and he was right. Nonetheless, the coup was welcomed enthusiastically by Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon.
People are inclined to think that Donald Trump is wholly responsible for today’s problems, but it’s not as simple as that. Guatemala in 1954, Cuba from 1958 and still not resolved today, Chile in 1973, Nicaragua in 1979 and afterwards, Venezuela in 2026, and others that don’t immediately occur to me: all these are consistent with USA policies since 1945: Latin American countries are allowed to have elections if they like, but only if they elect governments that the USA likes. Donald Trump is just the latest (and perhaps worst) example of a consistent policy.
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Athel, I’m not sure why you think you’ll make enemies with that post. I suspect most of us here know that, and if someone doesn’t, probably won’t be upset to be informed(unless upset because they didn’t know it already, or upset about what happened).
I’ve often said that Trump is not the point where the end of democracy began; he may be the point where the end of democracy ends, though. I was not surprised by his election, nor by his re-election. Living in the heartland, it seemed almost like a foregone conclusion, and none of my most progressive friends would vote for Hillary; they had completely different excuses for why they wouldn’t vote for Kamala.
His administration is one that I predicted in stories I wrote back during Dubya’s administration. Dubya was a bit more (okay, a lot more) politics as usual, but I could hear the people around me, and the people on the news, and see the flip flops the journalists made to avoid saying the truth: Dubya lied. They had done it with Reagan. They had done it with Nixon. Prior to that, I am a little youngish to remember any administration to that level of knowledge, but I presume it was done with other presidents, as well, and my studies of history suggest that was the case.
I agree, the policy has been consistent. Only now they’ve let the cat out of the bag, and Trump says right out loud what the goals are. Unfortunately, a lot of people aren’t listening, and many who do consider it ‘fake news’ – even those on the liberal left. There is an ‘it can’t happen here’ attitude, never mind that it can happen here. In fact, I would say this is one of the places most ripe for it to happen. We have a Hollywood version of tough guys, and elected someone who pretends to be a tough guy. We have, at best, a grade school knowledge of the constitution, if that (that is an average, of course. I don’t imagine it includes many on this site, though perhaps some of those who live somewhere other than the US). We have a narcissistic view of our own greatness. And we have a stubborn idea that we have a right to do any damn thing we want to do…which doesn’t, of course, apply to our neighbors, unless, of course, they want the same things we do.
And we have a strange demand for purity in thought and action that causes us to purge allies from our midst if they say or do one thing we disagree with. The right has used the force of money to silence the dissent; if you don’t go along with the platform, we’ll primary you, we’ll not support you, we’ll make you pay. The left just kicks you in the tail so you go flying out the door…even if the door is closed.
This was the ultimate outcome of many years…perhaps centuries…of policy that actually probably predates the US. I have been reading a lot about Tudor England lately, because I suspect a lot of it started there, with the religious wars and purges that ended up sending a lot of people over here.
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Athel, I for one remember it today. I was furious about it at the time, and haven’t changed my views. I once went to a local bookstore chat thing starring a hungover Christopher Hitchens, who was always fiery on the subject and did not disappoint.
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