Is there a sentient person over the age of 12 who believes our health care problems are as serious as the peril facing America after 9/11?
At least one person whose belief in this has been confirmed, though I suspect many others drawn to MSNBC think likewise.
Here's Princeton political science professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show," where she is a frequent guest, on Sept. 10 --
HARRIS-LACEWELL (referring to Glenn Beck's "9/12 Project"): It's not necessarily wrong to take a moment of great national tragedy in order to reflect on, who were we? What does it mean? What was that moment of possibility? That in and of itself is not exploitive, but the idea that who we were on Sept. 12, 2001 is who we want to be right now, people who were terrified, people whose cities were burning, people who had a vague sense of an enemy but not knowing who that enemy was, mothers and fathers still waiting for their children to come home and spouses hoping that their partner would call. I mean, is that really what Glenn Beck is calling us to be again?
Minutes later, Harris-Lacewell contradicts her description of Americans rendered powerless by fear after 9/11 as she unintentionally confirms Beck's premise about the nation's response to al Qaeda savagery --
MADDOW (initially referring to a pre-9/12 march on Washington rally and Obama's speech to Congress on health reform): What's the connection between disrupting the president in a speech to Congress about health care and the day after 9/11?
HARRIS-LACEWELL: Well, it's a particularly odd connection because if there's anything that we all were on Sept. 12, it was rallied behind our president, regardless of ideology, regardless of party. You know, I sometimes mention that African-American men were in the city of New York while Rudy Giuliani was still the mayor and they were wearing NYPD hats, right? So despite everything that had happened on questions of race and that mayor, people were willing to, you know, really look to our national leadership.
If there's a connection to be made between 9/12 and our current situation, it ought to be that our health care crisis is similarly facing down our country, that we are in a serious time of crisis and so it's a time for kind of somber reflection and for supporting your president, regardless of your ideology, finding the common ground on which Americans stand.
"... supporting your president, regardless of ideology" ... You know, kinda like Democrats did for about three weeks after 9/11 -- until American troops began actually killing al Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan. After that, Democrats' noble support of a commander in chief from the opposition party gave way to backbiting over the Patriot Act, growing anger at Bush after bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora, allegations of detainee abuse at Guantanamo, and sordid other manifestations of Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Still, we'll always have those three weeks.
More from Harris-Lacewell on America responding to 9/11 -- " ... people who had a vague sense of an enemy but not knowing who that enemy was ..." Until sometime in 2002, when many liberals and Democrats concluded that the Bush junta, not militant Islam, was the enemy. Everything left wingers have done since flows from this pathological delusion.
Do you see what the good professor does here? Harris-Lacewell inaccurately characterizes Beck's interpretation of our collective response to 9/11 -- followed by her unintentionally parroting it. "If there's anything that we all were on 9/12 ..."
Which dovetails neatly with the 9/12 Project's mission statement --
The 9-12 Project is designed to bring us all back to the place we were on September 12, 2001. The day after America was attacked we were not obsessed with Red States, Blue States or political parties. We were united as Americans, standing together to protect the values and principles of the greatest nation ever created.
Imagine the response from liberal shills had Bush invoked 9/11 to sell the Medicare drug benefit or privatizing Social Security, warning of grave risk to seniors if Congress failed to act. A vein-bulging Keith Olbermann would have run a month's worth of "Special Comments" (what I call "Precious Moments").
