9/11 Memories: Deny Reality, Exploit Tragedy

What I remember most about 9/11 is when the second plane hit the towers I yelled out 'Al Qaeda." My co-worker at this magazine said 'what?' I explained that all throughout the 1990s Al Qaeda was the biggest threat to America but b/c it was under a Dem president, Republicans denied that reality and accused Clinton of fear mongering and trying to distract people from the real crisis: his zipper. Time and time again, Al Qaeda struck American targets or had very elaborate plots broken up at the last second by the CIA and the FBI. Time and time again, Fox News and Republican politicians screamed 'hey, stop trying to Wag the Dog with this Al Qaeda crap.' Clinton bombed chemical factory in Somalia run by Al Qaeda and tried to assassinate Osama Bin Laden and the right-wing howled with indignation. The very real threat was non-existent to them. Until...

...tragedy happens on their watch due to incompetence. Due to not reading the actual intelligence and warning signs and plans left in place for 'dept of homeland security' that the Bush administration threw away at the start of 2001, a preventable tragedy happened that we now honor every year. At the start of the Bush administration you know what they did after a decade of threats? You guessed it: they passed a massive tax cut for the wealthy people, ran up the debt, and cut gov. But once 9/11 happened and I screamed 'Al Qaeda' the right-wing machine went into high gear to erase its denial of history in order to begin...exploiting tragedy. Exploit the tragedy for more money and power. And that's exactly what they did. On top of the largest tax cut for the wealthy, they cranked up the military industrial complex through Dick Cheney's DynaCorp and other contractors and simply drained the money directly out of the US Treasury. They drained healthcare, environment, infrastructure repairs, FEMA...all of it went into the trillions spent to pay contractors to fight a remote control war and to give rocket launchers and TANKS to local police departments who were so brainwashed they thought they were keeping the home front safe from Al Qaeda by walking around with bazookas for traffic stops. Then an understaffed Army Corp of Engineers was so overwhelmed by all our wars that their plans to fix New Orleans' drainage system were scrapped in time for... Hurricane Katrina. And then 20-30,000 Americans died every year b/c they couldn't get healthcare. A dozen 9/11's every year due to insurance greed. And then our undertrained overarmed police force continued their abuses.  

The machine presses on with the same angle: deny reality and exploit tragedy. Coronavirus pandemic denials followed by tax cuts for the rich in 2020, using school shootings to spread open-carry gun laws, terrorist attacks to bilk taxpayers out of more money, using white fear to demonize black people saying 'my life matters' to accuse them of being the 'real terrorists.' 

Again and again, the record plays. We have been living in the post 9/11 media reality for most of my adult life. It's an Alice in Wonderland upside-down world where we honor the incompetent and reward the greedy for every tragedy. People will post about their 9/11 memories today. They will lower flags and share their tears. But the real horror is this: those ppl didn't have to die...but their deaths were capitalized to make the rich richer, the poor poorer, distract us from the truth, and ensure the the same cycle repeat itself in all walks of life.