Politics didn't change on 9/11. It paused, then, little by little, resumed as before: increasingly polarized and venomous, a trend well underway even at the time of the first, failed attack on the World Trade Center in early 1993. These days, the sort of invective on display below (especially from agnostic, Hunter, and joelgp) is, sad to say, common.
As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym.
Bill in Portland Maine: 9/11 united America, then divided it
...Sunday is the tenth anniversary of the attacks of 9/11. I don't feel the need, really, to go into how I reacted on that day---the feelings, as they say, were pretty mutual among us all, so you can probably make a good guess. But eventually Americans seemed to diverge---as we so often do---on two paths. The right-wing path led toward fear and loathing of Muslims generally. The left-wing path, as usual, led to a fact-based, clear-eyed, and compassionate view of the situation...
Agnostic: 9/11 TV specials will drive right-wingers to murder
...Instead of being patriotic, instead of reminding us of our loss (as if we forgot or can ignore it), this kind of overdone, faux Patriotic display makes us weaker and more vulnerable. It teaches future terrorists that we are easily deluded and confused, that we can be easily scared with the slightest of threats, and that we are weak, ineffective, and impotent as a nation.
Even worse, it will drive the idiots among us, the racists, the anti-Muslim Christian cultists and functionally illiterate, gun toting TeaBaggers into acts of domestic violence, simply because their targets have darker skin, speak with a mid eastern accent, and cherish their god with a different name. Too many brews, too little brains, and an IHOP in Atlanta can soon be the site of death, even against loyal, patriotic Arab-Americans. It has happened before. It will happen again...
Hunter: Perry's like Dubya, only dumber and meaner
...Rick Perry is the spitting image of George W. Bush, but with all remaining nuance stripped out. He is the Bush id, with any pretenses at compassion or sincerity stripped away, leaving just the dumb, mean-spirited parts.
I suspect that will have more appeal to conservative die-hards than pundits are currently willing to admit. There is a hunger for mean, among the conservative base, and a hunger for punishing the nebulous other, whether that means the unemployed, the poor, the sick, the old, union workers, public sector workers, immigrants, disaster victims, Muslims, or anyone else. Rick Perry may suit them in a way that a Bachmann, Santorum, or Cain could not. He is just as fringe as any of those tea party favorites, but he has something each of them lacks: He looks like a Republican president. Specifically, he looks like their most recent Republican president...
MinistryOfTruth: The GOP's 2,000-year-old role model
...[A]s far as healing the sick or feeding the poor or loving thy neighbor, you know, the kind of stuff Jesus talked about all the time, well, Republicans aren't having any of that. No, the real question Republicans seem to ask themselves in their quest to find the cruelest policies and the cruelest candidate for President possible is "What would Pontius Pilate do?"...
MinistryOfTruth: The right hates the free market
...Conservatives hate democracy...because rich people hate the idea that the vast majority of citizens who "surround them" might be able to govern their reckless actions or force them to not rob us or contribute anything to society, Conservatives prefer a system where only the rich have power and choice comes down to which one you prefer, crumbs or nothing, and if the rich could get rid of water and replace it with Brawndo: The Thirst Mutilator they would, because water is cutting into Brawndo's profits...
joelgp: The Tea Party are successors to the Confederacy
...The fact that a black man is actually in the white house is driving them nearly insane. So they celebrate when a Joe Wilson says ”you lie.” They feel empowered when Rush Limbaugh sings “Barack the magic negro.” They celebrate Boehner for his pettiness in making the president wait a day to give a speech...
...[T]his is not about “conservative” policy -- never has been, never will be—this is about hate...
...[T]hey’ve always been willing to destroy America to have their way. They literally burned America over slavery and assassinated Abe Lincoln, JFK, Robert Kennedy and MLK to maintain the old southern way...
