2011 September « Not Your Sweetie

Two of my daily go to blogs, The Confluence and Crowdad Hole had posted reactions to the Paul Krugman piece The years of Shame with varying degrees of disapproval. Me, I loved it

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. Te atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

My favorite piece on this comes from the Onion

Remembering 9/11 A Pleasure For Nation Compared To Remembering Past 10 Years

Of course, this morning I checked Newseum and I saw every newspaper in the country with the big ass flags all over them – just like the good ol’ Ceausescu days I came here to avoid.

The reactions reminded me of the cartoon of the angry TV watcher wearing a T-shirt: “9.11. I saw in on TV and boy, am I pissed”

As I defended Krugman from the fag wavers, I was told that flag waving was somehow a way to heal.

As I recounted the peace vigils in the Union square that Giuliani forbid and the mockery from the parks department tool “if you are singing ’60s sogs you are out of touch” I got a

Boo-hoo. A day without hippies singing.

Since, I was called “blinded by my hatred of Bush” I also fund out that it wasn’t Congress which dragged its feet approving the puny indemnification of the 9.11 responders. It was the unions and the new yorkers who are somehow at fault, in spite of the thousand points of light (charity).

angienc, on September 11, 2011 at 1:34 pm said:

And you know who’s to blame for that, right? NEW YORKERS AND THE NEW YORK FIRE DEPT. UNIONS. Plenty of Americans who do not live in NYC and whom it seems you are saying have no right to comment or “feel” anything about what happened on 9/11 because THEY WERE NOT THERE gave a lot of money to organizations designed to help these men & women’s families.

I think I need to rethink my hangouts on line these days.

NYC felt like it was under occupation when Bush, at the end of the week, felt he no longer needed to fear the wrath of New Yorkers and came with his bullhorn, kept the EMT responders from their rescue operations for hours and then finally climbed on human remains with his megaphone.

On the bright side, digging into the memories, I also remembered the Thurdsay afternoon when I went to Union Square to bring items for the Emergency responders: gloves, bottles of water, changes of clothes, food. Bill Clinton stopped by and there was a collective hugging and tearing up. After he left, people were smiling.

There. I have something good about that time.

Even today it had its poignant moment when the firefighters at the firehouse across the street came in uniform at 9:35 and saluted their fallen . People on the street saluted to. It all lasted under one minute.

Because while it may be argued that it was a day of shame, it certainly was NOT a day of pride.

And feeling all alone about it – quite appropriate too.

And time to review my hangouts on line.

One more thing: I did have a revelation today in those exchanges: I DO HATE Bush. All these years I thought I hate the system he was a figurehead for. But when I do remember the interview in which he describes how he went to bed at 9 on 9.11 (all the bunker running tired him off), how funny it was when the secret service woke them up to move them in the basement and Laura had fuzzy slippers, how he declared he was running out of the harm’s way and ESPECIALLY how there are idiots who LOVED his speechifying on top of the human remains

- I liberate myself by admitting – I do hate that man. Not blinded by it – but it’s actual hatred. Also, I am so irritated by the flag waving that any of my facebook friends that posts slogans today is automatically unfriended.