It's Wingnut Christmas!

[Sue U]

What with all the hurricanery and whatnot, I almost forgot to Nevar Forgit that today is Wingnut Christmas! Happy 9/11 everyone!

[Lord Jim]

today is Wingnut Christmas! Happy 9/11 everyone!

"Wingnut Christmas" ?

"Happy" 9/11?

Must be a left-wing blog thing...

[rubato]

What with all the hurricanery and whatnot, I almost forgot to Nevar Forgit that today is Wingnut Christmas! Happy 9/11 everyone!

Coupla odd balls.


yrs,
rubato

[RayThom]

Ah, yes... 9/11. I remember it well. Those were the days my friend.

[BoSoxGal]

today is Wingnut Christmas! Happy 9/11 everyone!

"Wingnut Christmas" ?

"Happy" 9/11?

Must be a left-wing blog thing...

I assume this refers to how 9/11 gave a giant gift to racist right wing xenophobic cretins to fly the hate flag high and proud.

[Econoline]

• Americans' sustained fear from 9/11 has turned into something more dangerous

• by Alvin Chang on September 11, 2017
  
  In 1995, two men bombed a building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. It was the largest terrorist attack on American soil at the time.
  
  A few days later, pollsters asked a simple question: How worried are you that you or someone in your family will become a victim of terrorism?
  
  More than 40 percent said they were very worried or somewhat worried.
  
  But over the next few years, without another mass bombing, that number steadily dropped.
  
  Then 9/11 happened. The number spiked to 58 percent.
  
  Much like with the Oklahoma City bombing, people calmed down in the following days, and the numbers began to drop. After a month, it was at 40 percent. It looked like fear would continue to dissipate until it got to pre-9/11 levels.
  
  That's not what happened, though.
  
  Instead, our fear levels stayed elevated
  
  People's fear never got as low as it was before 9/11. In other words, we're just as afraid of being a victim of terrorism as we were one month after 9/11.
  
  "There is almost no waning of fear, even before the rise of ISIS," says Ohio State political scientist John Mueller, who pointed out these trends in his book Chasing Ghosts: The Policing of Terrorism.
  
  It's been 16 years since the attacks. There hasn't been an event remotely close to the scale of 9/11, and if you look at the number of terrorism fatalities in the US, they are a minuscule threat compared with things like car accidents, which kill 34,000 people a year. All evidence points to 9/11 being an "aberration, and not a harbinger," as Mueller puts it.
  
  But year after year, when Americans are asked about how worried they are about terrorism, this evidence doesn't matter. And even if most Americans don't think it'll happen to them, most do think there will be a mass terrorist attack in the near future.
  
  
  This dissonance between the threat and the fear is incredibly important. President Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending travel and immigration from Muslim-majority countries and barring nearly all refugees from entering the United States — and he did it in the name of national security. Opponents have pointed out that immigrant terrorism is a minuscule threat in this country, but there's a reason that fact doesn't matter to those who support the ban: they are still scared.
  
  This is where it gets really hard: If there were an actual threat, we could remove it. But when the threat is in our heads — and when it's partially driven by residual fear from 15 years ago — alleviating the fear becomes much harder.
  
  Why it's hard to extinguish fear of terrorists and witches
  
  There are a few historical analogies to this elevated fear, like the Red Scare and Japanese internment, and they are all instructive.
  
  But the most interesting analogy is Salem's witch hunt.
  
  In 1692, three young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, began having violent fits. Townspeople believed the devil instructed witches to curse these girls. So they hunted down three women whom they suspected of being witches.
  
  One of them confessed in hopes of a lighter punishment.
  
  This affirmed a common Puritan narrative: that the devil wanted to infiltrate their community to destroy Christianity — and that witches were the devil's instruments.
  
  In other words, this fear already existed.
  
  This meant the devil had arrived and had to be exterminated.
  
  This happened at a time when Salem's economy was struggling. King William's War in upstate New York and Canada forced an influx of refugees into Salem, causing economic pressure and social unrest. So Puritan villagers saw this as a sign of the devil's progress in destroying Christianity.
  
  Meanwhile, the idea of witches existed in England long before colonists had settled in North America, so the character of witches was already baked into this narrative.
  
  After one person confessed, villagers began wondering who else could be a witch. They accused elderly women, devoted churchgoers, and even a 4-year-old girl. Once the villagers tracked down potential witches, they put them on trial, and eventually executed 19 people.
  
  But the problem is that killing some witches doesn't necessarily get rid of witches
  
  Instead, it just makes you think there could be more of them. Anyone could be taken by the devil's influence, just like anyone could be a communist or a terrorist, and there's no way to know if the enemy is fully gone.
  
  "What you're getting is a connection to a spooky foreign agency of sorts that you really can't tie down," Mueller says. "It's about ideology. You can't extinguish it, just like you can't extinguish witches."
  
  So even after US troops killed Osama bin Laden, Americans returned to believing that the government wasn't doing enough to prevent further terror attacks. When the number of terrorism-related fatalities dropped to microscopic levels, we still didn't believe the threat was gone — especially since there continued to be smaller attacks.
  
  And when it's unclear how to pin down an enemy, it's easy to overreach.
  
  In 1944, after Japanese forces bombed Pearl Harbor, a poll showed that 13 percent of Americans believed we should exterminate all Japanese people, as if that would somehow make the country safer. Instead, the US incarcerated 120,000 Japanese Americans, many of whom had never been to Japan.
  
  In short, ideas like a travel ban targeting Muslims have always resonated with some Americans in times of fear.
  
  It's not just about the fear, though. It's about tying the fear into a story.
  
  The Oklahoma City bombing elicited a spike in fear, but there was no greater narrative that developed and allowed us to frame it as part of something bigger. After 9/11, though, an implicit narrative developed out of the reaction.
  
  While politicians, advertisers, and journalists didn't try to create this underlying fear of terrorism, Mueller says, "They find out what people are afraid of and take advantage."
  
  That process results in cultural touchstones and national moments that weave together a bigger story. Some examples:
  

  • After 9/11, the consumer version of the Hummer, the H2, became available. It was a vehicle that was marketed as a "don't mess with me" car, implying that an external threat existed. In the book The Responsive Chord, advertiser Tony Schwartz talks about how these implicit cues allow audiences to complete the message, which makes it far more effective.
  • On news broadcasts, virtually every terror-related event is covered as if it were part of a much larger narrative of Islamic terrorists slowly destroying America — and these broadcasts almost always have spectacular ratings.
  • The federal government tells us that we are still in a state of emergency, 15 years after 9/11.
  • During the election, both Trump and Hillary Clinton suggested that their opponent's national security strategies could lead to the downfall of America, which implicitly suggests that terrorists are at the brink of destroying the country.
  • Meanwhile, there have been smaller terrorist attacks and videos of ISIS beheading Americans.
  • And now, Trump is taking action to defend against this threat — implying that this threat exists on the scale of his reaction.

  "The events can create raw fear, but the storytelling makes it refined fear," says NYU's Clay Shirky, who wrote Here Comes Everybody, a book about how groups organize themselves. (Full disclosure: I took a grad school course with Shirky about how to design spaces for group conversations.)
  
  President Obama has tried to point out that our reaction to ISIS is actually harmful, because it's not as big of a threat as we make it out to be. But that didn't change the way Americans felt. So in the presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton tried to steer the conversation away from terrorism.
  
  Because otherwise, what could she say? That our fear is unjustified? That even though 9/11 is the most resonant moment in American history, it was a fluke? That we should stop being afraid of things that scare us?
  
  "You don't want to seem to be contemptuous of something that really frightens the American people," Mueller says.
  
  Thinking about the narrative strengthens the narrative
  
  Once you have the story, it gets repeated again and again.
  
  It's the propaganda strategy Adolf Hitler coined in Mein Kampf, where he talks about concocting a lie so big that no one would believe it could be made up.
  
  "'These people are our enemies' — repeat it over and over again — that they're not real Germans … and many people will believe it," says David Altheide, an Arizona State University sociologist who studies fear in media and politics.
  
  And now, the place this narrative is repeated is online, specifically social media.
  
  NYU's Shirky, who studies network effects, says that just a few years ago the news media would publish a story and the social media conversation would take time to catch up. But now more people use Facebook and Twitter to share reactions, as opposed to just the news story.
  
  "When someone shares a link to Twitter, they are posting their reaction to it. Their reaction, not the headline, is where it gets metabolized," Shirky says.
  
  The reaction to an event can frame it as part of the greater narrative in which America's way of life is under attack. No matter the event, if it can be fit into the narrative, that in itself becomes the news — not the actual singular event. In that kind of reframing, if a Muslim person commits a crime, it's not just that crime; it's an attack on America.
  
  Altheide says this creates a narrative that is almost like a religion. It is unquestionable, it can't be falsified, and it's reaffirming.
  
  In other words, no matter what happens, there becomes a way, always, to explain how the witches were involved. That's where we are now: We're trying to fight a threat that doesn't exist, but a fear that does.

[Gob]

Wingnut?

[Big RR]

And even if most Americans don't think it'll happen to them, most do think there will be a mass terrorist attack in the near future.

So? What's the big surprise? In the 60s I always thought there would be some sort of nuclear attack (even if it were something unintentional from our own side) in my lifetime and I still do (maybe as part of a coordinated attack of a foreign power, maybe a madman seeking world domination (a la James Bond movies), maybe terrorists, maybe a big accident--who knows?); I don't think I'm alone with this. Likewise, whatever we do, I think in the future some major political figure(s) will be assassinated, major weather events will cause devastation in the US, and some major successful terrorist attacks (which may or may not be inspired by the middle east problems and may or may not include people from there) will happen, a mass murderer will kill dozens of people. Chaos reigns, and whatever we do, we are never safe.

And our vulnerability has always been exploited throughout our history--this is just more of the same. We have always been at war with Oceania.

[Crackpot]

To all the remember 9/11 posts I see on Facebook today:

It has taken every bit of self restraint to to say "I remember it like it was yesterday"

I have always found the forced rush to formalize the day into a holiday to be tacky at best. Not to mention "patriot day" forces a framework onto the day that is ill suited to the somber rememberance the day calls for.

[Sue U]

Honestly, I am grateful for the hurricanes this year, if only because it crowded out all the mawkish and nauseating 9/11 crap from much of the media.

Every year when 9/11 rolls around, I think, what is it exactly that we are supposed to "Never Forget"? What's the point of these flag-waving memorials? To gin up unquestioning nationalism and militarism, and to promote the endless "war on terror"? To fear and mistrust the "other"? What are we being conditioned for? Doesn't anyone ever stop to think what they are stopping to think about, and why?

9/11 is "Wingnut Christmas" because its memorialization promotes a grotesque indulgence in national victimhood and xenophobia, propagating a mythic false narrative that panders to the basest fears and most bigoted delusions of the far-right.

"9/11" could be a great educational and public policy tool, if it were analyzed as "9/11: What Happens to Democratic Values When A Nation Panics," or "A Case Study in Cynical Exploitation of Irrational Fears for Political Gain." Instead, it is destined to become a day of mindless patriotic fervor, barbecues and retail sales.

Gah, it all just makes me ill.

[Big RR]

And the sad thing is, shortly after the original attacks, it was a time when much of the world came together to stand with the USA in its time of tragedy. Of course, we'd have none of that and insisted on going our own way after the much feared and hyped "WMDs", leading back tot he divisions. We could also analyze it as "How to piss off your neighbors who were willing to stand with you and help you". Just another wasted chance at a better understanding.

[Sue U]

Also too:

https://wonkette.com/593819/wonkettes-a ... le-911-art

[Big RR]

What a collection.

[RayThom]

What a collection.

"Schlock and Awe" comes to mind. Ephemera that will last a lifetime. Sadly, it sells.

Lest we forget:

[BoSoxGal]

I saw this on Facebook yesterday, and it pretty much sums up how I feel. It's from a year ago, and now that we have Trumpenfuhrer in the WH, it's even more chilling to consider the expanded executive powers that 9/11 wrought.

Dear 9/11: I’m Breaking Up With You Because I’m Ready To Forget You
September 11, 2016 James Schlarmann Commentary

Hey 9/11,

It’s our 16th anniversary today.

You’re probably reading this letter, expecting to find one of five-squintillion missives about where people were on that momentous day. What they were doing when they heard the news, or even looked up and saw in the Manhattan skyline on their way to work at the World Trade Center that day? You’ll read reminder after reminder of your influence on our day to day lives, and how things have never ever been the same since you came into them. We’ll be all told how important it is to “never forget” you, and you know it seems like they are bound and determined not to let any of us “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” you out of our brains. So I’m sad to say that I’m left with no other option.

I’m breaking up with you, 9/11.

Please, don’t misunderstand. I’ll never forget the thousands of innocent lives that were lost so uselessly that day. I’ll never forget the images of selfless human beings rushing into the towers, regardless of their own fate, to try and rescue as many people as possible. There were in fact so many life lessons that I was either taught that day, or that I have come to learn in the year 13 years since, that are not the cliché, bumper-sticker bullshit that you have been reduced to. So, this break-up isn’t from any of that; it’s from your value as a cultural artifice of paranoia, blind and stupid nationalism, and tragic hypocrisy that I’m breaking up with.

I’m leaving you because I’m thinking that you’ll never stop being used as cheap and obvious propaganda. You’re going to be like The Nazis one day, you know. People will just invoke you as something other than a passé and irrelevant warning against something that we cannot bomb or kill our way to halting. Terrorism is a product of many factors, but clearly swinging a blind fist connected to a samurai sword at the end of it in a room full of bad guys surrounded by orphans is not the most effective way of containing, reducing, or eliminating its potential threat, nor can they really do anything to threaten it on an existential level.

I’m dumping you, 9/11, because you already fundamentally fucked things up for my life in the 20’s and gave my government a dangerously large, blank check with wish to purchase high-powered, secret legal counsel that have helped craft sneaky detours around the Constitution. And this is thanks to the Legislative Branch rolling over, writing laws that give the Executive sweeping powers and enable the intelligence and military agencies within the government to pretty much operate with zero oversight.

That oversight, in case you are wondering, is supposed to be performed by Congress on the citizens’ behalf. How very kind of them to abdicate that responsibility in the name of “national security.” But let’s face it, 9/11, you were the poster child for the War on Terror. It’s not your fault. The bastards who did that to you are vile, cruel, war mongering, mendacious, untrustworthy cunts of the highest order. History will pitch them right into the same bin of assorted rapscallions of particularly evil repute as Napoleon and Rasputin. They are historically evil, and that is not to be denied, nor is it in any way something I blame you for.

But I gotta get away, man. I really, really do. It’s just too much. You’re too much.

I’m tired of the goddamned flag lapel pins. Nationalism is not a trait humanity needs to survive, and frankly you’re the one who brought about that whole craze. It was understandable for a time, but at this point it’s become just another reminder of the trillions of dollars wasted and the thousands more lives that were cut short needlessly than anything else. And that’s really the heart of this break-up letter, 9/11.

Whether your fault or not, you were the reason we were given for going into Afghanistan. It made sense, because the man who made you happen was in there, or at least near there, and were all understandably a little emotionally raw. But then while we were still hunting that fucker down, you were again dragged out into the public square and used as duplicitous and simply false justification for not only taking our eye off the ball when Bin Laden had just smacked one over our heads into the gap in right-center, but to just dumping so much of our collective worth and value into a goddamned garbage incinerator.

There literally are not enough words in any language to properly frame just how terrible the Iraq War was and will be forever. Maybe a ton of us can glop on a thick coat of national pride and “these colors don’t run” over our acknowledgment of just how bad the war was, but I can’t anymore. I’ve done the whole, “calm, reflective inner-searching” over our anniversary and your meaning in my life. The first couple anniversaries were definitely like that, and I think with good reason. Now, though, I’m half surprised we haven’t started seeing “9/11 Remembrance Party” merchandise at Party City.

And you know what? I’d be totally stoked if that’s eventually what you became. After all, let’s stop messing around and remember that we celebrate Independence Day because that was the day we sent a letter to the British government telling it to go fuck itself…royally. And that the result of that letter was a stern “fuck you” in reply, and that the quarrel between our two countries wasn’t settled over a meal and drinks. It was settled with cannons, muskets and bayonets. The Fourth of July is a big ol’ firework spectacular extravaganza that we only get to have because a bunch of people killed a bunch of other people over a taxation dispute (among other things, you finger-wagging smarmy historian types you!).

9/11, I would love for you to follow-suit with the Fourth. I mean, it’s not like you hear Congress types getting up on the floor and demand we do something about the Lobster Backs anymore. The Gentleman from the Great State of Kentucky does not rise to demand that we fund our Navy to protect ourselves against the threat of British invasion. I mean, kooky Tea Party types will invoke those days in protest of taxes, but they’re kooky Tea Party types, so enough said, really. But you’re not a cliché capitalist distillation of bloodshed and violence, and you’re not a passé collection of bumper sticker patriotism one-liners yet, and that’s why I have to dump you.