Digby: 9/11 Symbiosis

I've been getting a few admonistions from readers who are upset that I'm not suspending my anger to observe this day with solemnity and seriousness. But I'm not going to apologize for being angry. I was angry that day five years ago and I'm still angry.

You see, I knew --- I knew --- that bin Laden had just achieved a huge victory, perhaps a decisive one. This was not because of the attacks themselves or even the possibility of more in the future, which as horrible and dramatic as they are do not in themselves represent any kind of existential threat. This was because as an observer of the zeitgeist and the political scene for over 30 years at that point, I knew that our government and media would react to this event in exactly the way bin Laden hoped and that we would do to ourselves what the Islamic extremists could only dream of doing: turn the country into a permanent state of faux crisis --- and enable the authoritarian right wing of this country, which was unfortunately in power at the time, to pursue a doomed military empire, create a powerful imperial presidency and build the American style police state they had longed for for decades. I knew that they would run with this "opportunity" and run with it they did.