This is supposed to be a day of remembrance. Remembrance of the attack, remembrance of the national unity which followed it.
Most important of all, remembrance of the dead.
But 9/11 has become…… a brand name.
A Republican campaign slogan.
Propaganda of the lowest form.
9/11 has become… 9/11 **with a trademark logo.**
9/11 (**TM**) has sustained a president who long ago should have been dismissed, or impeached. It has kept him and his gang of financial and constitutional **crooks** in office without - literally - any visible means of support.
9/11 (**TM**) has made possible the greatest sleight-of-hand in our nation’s history.
The political party in office at the time of the attacks, at the local, state and national levels, the party which **uniformly** ignored the warnings — and the presidential administration already through twenty percent of its first term and no longer wet behind the ears — have not only thus far escaped any **blame** for the malfeasance and criminal neglect that allowed the attacks to occur, but that presidency and that party, have managed to make it seem as if the **other** political party would be solely and irredeemably responsible for any similar catastrophe in the future.
Thus, Senator McCain, were you able to accomplish a further inversion of reality at your party’s nominating convention last week.
There was the former Mayor of the City of New York — the one who took **no counter-terrorism measure** in his seven years in office between the first attack on the World Trade Center, and the second attack.
Nothing, except to insist — despite all advice and warning - that his Emergency Command Center be moved directly **into** the World Trade Center.
Yet there was this man, Sir - Rudolph Giuliani — quite succinctly dismissed as “A Noun, a Verb, and 9/11,” and repudiated even by Republican **voters** — transformed into the keynote speaker, Senator McCain — at **your** convention.
And his childish, squealing, braying, Tourette’s-like repetition of 9/11 (**TM**), was greeted not as conclusive evidence that he is consumed by massive guilt - hard-earned guilt, in fact - but rather as some kind of political tour-de-force, an endorsement of your Vice Presidential nominee, a rookie governor — a facile and slick con artist.
The blind endorsing the bland, to a chorus of 9/11 (**TM**), 9/11 (**TM**), 9/11 (**TM.**)
Your ringing mindless cheer of “We’ve Kept You Safe Since Then”…
While nobody asks “doesn’t **then** count?”
All of this, sadistically disrespecting the dead of New York, and Washington, and Shanksville…
**Endorsed**, Senator McCain…
**Exploited**, Senator McCain…
**Trademarked,** Senator McCain… by **you.**
And yet of course **the** exact moment in which Senator McCain’s Republicans showed the nation exactly how far they have fallen from the Better Angels of Mr. **Lincoln’s** Nature, came the **next** night.
The television networks were told that the Convention would pause, early in the evening, when **children** could still be watching, for a 9/11 **Tribute**, and they were encouraged to broadcast it.
What we got was not a tribute to the **dead** of 9/11, nor even a tribute to the responders, or the singularity of purpose we all felt.
The Republicans gave us sociological pornography… a virtual **snuff film**.
Years ago, responsible television networks, to the applause of the nation, and the relief of its mental health authorities, voluntarily stopped showing the most graphic of the images of the World Trade Center, except with the strongest of warnings.
And yet, the Republicans, at their convention, having virtually seized control of the cable news operations, showed… the worst of it.
This is **all** anyone with a conscience can show you of what the Republicans showed you.
The actual collapse of the smoking towers.
A fleeting image of what might have been a victim leaping to his death from a thousand feet up.
And something new.
From this angle, ground-level, perfectly framed, images — of the fireball created when the second plane hit the second tower.
It was terrifying.
After all its object **was**… to **terrify.**
Not to commemorate, not to call for unity, not to remember the dead.
But to terrify.
To open again the horrible wounds, to brand the skin of this nation with the message — as hateful as the terrorists’ own — that you must vote Republican or this will happen again and you will die…
And just in case that was **not** enough, to also dishonestly and profanely **conflate** 9/11 with the 1979 **Irahn** Hostage Crisis — to stoke the flames of paranoia about **another** Middle Eastern Nation.
This **was** a 9/11 Tribute.
Not to the dead, nor to the unity.
But a tribute to how valuable 9/11 has been as a political tool for the Republican Party.
9/11… (**TM.**)
