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Ten Years Later.
Sep. 11th, 2011 10:54 amThis was our era's Reichstag Fire.
After reading the responses, and being asked privately, "Does that mean you're a 'truther'?", I feel the need to restate this more clearly:
The events of 11 September 2011 more closely resemble the Reichstag Fire than Pearl Harbor, most significantly in our response to them as a nation.
Certainly, it is not a one-to-one congruence -- but the "Pearl Harbor" comparison is bandied about far more often, with few objections, and the correspondence is no more exact.
The sticking point for most respondents seems to be the identity of the perpetrators of the Fire. That's a niggling detail, irrelevant to the thesis. I find the nature of our national response to be a matter of far greater importance, because we, lashing out in terror for a decade, have done far more damage to ourselves, to our freedoms, and to the world than the people in those planes ever could have.
The Most Significant Point of Similarity is not whether or not it was an "inside job", but in the fact that it allowed the ugly strain of authoritarianism that had been seeping into into our national political culture for years to finally consolidate its power and win the hearts and minds of the public.
If you want more discussion of "the nature of our national response", feel free to consult Mr. Hicks for his opinion thereon.
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Have you ever closed the door on an opportunity or a relationship in order to open another door, only to realize you made the wrong choice?
oh, for crying ...
Yes, okay, yes. I woke up to that running through my brain this very morning: sometimes it seems like every single time I've had a binary choice, I've picked the wrong one. On the rare occasions that I do make the right choice, I manage to screw it up somehow with later choices.
I reiterate my conclusion from the last "life of regrets" Writer's Block I answered, less than three weeks ago:
You can only do something about where you're going.
Rassin' frassin' LiveJournal Drama Llama stereotypes. There should be a cap on how often Writer's Block can ask the same kinds of question in a single month.
Have you ever closed the door on an opportunity or a relationship in order to open another door, only to realize you made the wrong choice?
oh, for crying ...
Yes, okay, yes. I woke up to that running through my brain this very morning: sometimes it seems like every single time I've had a binary choice, I've picked the wrong one. On the rare occasions that I do make the right choice, I manage to screw it up somehow with later choices.
I reiterate my conclusion from the last "life of regrets" Writer's Block I answered, less than three weeks ago:
Shoulda-Woulda-Coulda is toxic.
You can't do a damned thing about where you've been.You can only do something about where you're going.
Face Front.
Rassin' frassin' LiveJournal Drama Llama stereotypes. There should be a cap on how often Writer's Block can ask the same kinds of question in a single month.
Tags:
- bohica,
- coast guard,
- divorce,
- feed your head,
- fill in the blanks,
- good idea bad idea,
- grab a mop,
- hanlon's razor,
- jobquest!,
- life,
- love,
- magnum opus,
- me,
- metaprogramming,
- moral imperative,
- motivation,
- optimism,
- pessimism,
- pontification,
- quelonzia,
- roleplaying myself,
- separation,
- snafu,
- state of the dragon,
- stfu,
- tagsplosion,
- turing test fail,
- veteran,
- writer's block
Earlier today, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ceruleanst pointed out an article about a wounded American soldier whom the U.S. Army subjected to enhanced interrogation torture, until he signed a paper indicating that he had a preexisting personality disorder when he enlisted, and thus was ineligible for health benefits or disability.
This is, as it transpires, part of a continuing effort to misdiagnose wounded soldiers as having preexiting personality disorders specifically to deny them care and benefits.
Shortly after reading the first article, above, I discovered another article about the suicide rates among military personnel over the last decade, which is larger than the death toll from either the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq. Last year alone, 330 active duty suicides were reported.
That doesn't count the deaths among veterans, who are considered civilians; the VA estimates the suicide rate among veterans at around 6,000 per year.
I wonder how many of those vets were denied health care because of their "personality disorders"?
ceruleanst pointed out an article about a wounded American soldier whom the U.S. Army subjected to This is, as it transpires, part of a continuing effort to misdiagnose wounded soldiers as having preexiting personality disorders specifically to deny them care and benefits.
Shortly after reading the first article, above, I discovered another article about the suicide rates among military personnel over the last decade, which is larger than the death toll from either the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq. Last year alone, 330 active duty suicides were reported.
That doesn't count the deaths among veterans, who are considered civilians; the VA estimates the suicide rate among veterans at around 6,000 per year.
I wonder how many of those vets were denied health care because of their "personality disorders"?
