I imagine that you heard or read media reports to that effect. I don't
personally remember his being a superlative leader at the time
. He received honors and awards after 9/11 because he was mayor of New York
City at the time of the attack which implied that he'd done something special.
But that was nonsense. However, when catastrophes occur, it is natural for
populations to turn to their leaders and people have a psychological need to
see their leaders as strong and dependable and indispensable. That is why the
people who oppose Trump are concerned that he will start a war just before the
election. They believe that if he does that, the population will be so
frightened that they will be afraid to vote in a new president. In 2001, the
people who lived next door to me were an Irish Catholic family, traditionally
members of the Democratic party. The father was the President of the New York
City Fire Fighters' Union. Their youngest son was a New York City fire fighter.
On the morning of 9/11, he and his friend, also a neighbor and also a fire
fighter, were off work. They were helping out at a primary voting location in
the city. When they heard the news of the attack, they rushed to the site to
volunteer their help. Both were killed when the second tower collapsed. The
family was devastated and for days, they were surrounded by fire fighters and
police officers from the city, helping them mourn. They became during those two
weeks avid supporters of President Bush, a man for whom they hadn't voted, and
Mayor Giuliani, a Republican mayor whom they hadn't previously supported. It
was a psychological response to desperate grief. It was unrelated to anything
that Bush or Giuliani were doing or saying. That family changed radically.
Their personalities, their demeanor, and within a year or so, they moved away.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Andy Baracco
Sent: Saturday, September 12, 2020 9:32 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: 3,000 Dead on 9/11 Meant Everything. 200,000
Dead of Covid-19 Means Nothing. Here's Why.
I doubt that anyone could have done a better job than juliani getting you
through the 9/11 tragedy.
Andy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, September 12, 2020 6:27 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: 3,000 Dead on 9/11 Meant Everything. 200,000
Dead of Covid-19 Means Nothing. Here's Why.
Hardly. I can't imagine how, reading this article, you could come to that
conclusion. We in New York, know that Juliani is a manipulator and a crook.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Andy Baracco
Sent: Saturday, September 12, 2020 8:55 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: 3,000 Dead on 9/11 Meant Everything. 200,000
Dead of Covid-19 Means Nothing. Here's Why.
We need someone like Rudy juliani, in other words, a politician with balls!
Andy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl Jarvis" <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, September 12, 2020 5:48 PM
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: 3,000 Dead on 9/11 Meant Everything. 200,000
Dead of Covid-19 Means Nothing. Here's Why.
Boy, are we Americans in deep doodoo.
Carl Jarvis
On 9/12/20, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
3,000 Dead on 9/11 Meant Everything. 200,000 Dead of Covid-19 Means
Nothing.
Here's Why.
By Jon Schwarz, The Intercept
11 September 20
To America's leaders, our lives have value only insofar as they can
be used to create a desired panic.
Lots of people have ridiculed President Donald Trump for telling
journalist Bob Woodward that he "wanted to always play [Covid-19]
down . because I don't want to create a panic." That's hilarious,
because Trump obviously loves creating panics - about Mexican
immigrants, antifa, single-family zoning, and, scariest of all,
low-flow toilets.
But Trump was, as he often does, telling us by accident something
profound about American politics.
Nineteen years ago today, a group of men from Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates hijacked four passenger jets.
They successfully flew three of them into the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon. All in all, they murdered 2,977 people in one day.
By March 19, the day Trump explained his reasoning to Woodward, the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had already predicted that
the coronavirus would kill hundreds of thousands of Americans and
possibly as many as 1.7 million.
In the first situation, George W. Bush, then the president of the
United States, actively fomented panic. Americans could not sleep
safely in their beds unless we invaded Afghanistan. The FBI should be
able to obtain the bank records or internet activity of citizens
anytime it wanted without a warrant. Saddam Hussein was hiding
anthrax in his mustache.
In the second situation, one that was objectively much more
frightening, the president of the United States openly acknowledged
that he played the danger down. This goes not just for the danger of
Covid-19 itself: His administration has also played down the
continuing economic danger to tens of millions of Americans.
What accounts for the glaring disparity in reactions?
History shows the answer is as obvious as it is bizarre: Reality
often has nothing to do with gigantic government actions. Instead,
politics is mostly about illusions that leaders strive to create
inside our heads.
In the case of 9/11, the Bush administration did not attempt to
respond rationally to the actual events. Instead, they used it as a
justification to do what they had always wanted to do but couldn't
get away with. An influential think tank, the Project for a New
American Century, had explained the year before that "the United
States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf
regional security," a goal that "transcends the issue of the regime
of Saddam Hussein." Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told an
aide just hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the
Pentagon that he wanted to "go massive - sweep it all up, things
related and not," including Iraq if possible. Both Bush and his
national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, soon explained that they
saw 9/11 as an "opportunity."
By contrast, Covid-19 really did demand a large-scale government
response, but there was little that Trump wanted to do. So Trump has
delivered hours of a TV show in which he starred, but not enough PPE
for doctors and nurses, or contact tracing, or desperately needed
funding for states and cities, and people thrown out of work. Bush
wanted a pretext to do a lot of things that were unnecessary, such as
invading Iraq, while Trump wanted an excuse to do nothing when, in
fact, a lot really needed to be done.
Any look at history shows that this is how the world works.
Governments decide what they want to do, and then search for some public
rationale.
On December 16, 1989, Panamanian troops shot a U.S. soldier and
threatened to rape the wife of a Navy officer. But in the world of
political illusion, President George H.W. Bush explained that this
meant that we had to invade Panama, which we did, killing hundreds or
thousands of people (the precise toll is disputed). An anonymous
member of Congress accurately said at the time that "the December 16
incidents were the excuse, and not the reason, for the invasion."
There was no actual connection between the attack on Panama and what
had happened to the American troops, which would have been totally
ignored if Bush hadn't wanted a war to oust the country's military
leader, Manuel Noriega, who had once been a CIA asset but had turned
into an antagonist to U.S. interests.
On August 2, 1964 the U.S.S. Maddox exchanged fire with North
Vietnamese ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. No U.S. sailors were killed;
the Maddox suffered a single bullet hole. Then on August 4, nothing
at all happened, although the U.S. dreamed up an imaginary second
attack on the Maddox. In the world of political illusion, the U.S.
used these events as justification to escalate a war that ended up
killing millions of people in Indochina.
This isn't just an American thing.
In April 1980, members of Islamic Dawa, an Iraqi Shia organization
opposed to Saddam and backed by Iran, threw a grenade at Tariq Aziz,
the deputy prime minster of Iraq. According to Saddam, this meant
that Iraq had to go to war with Iran, which it did, leading to the
deaths of a million people on both sides.
In June 1982, Palestinian terrorists attempted to assassinate the
Israeli ambassador to the U.K. in London. According to Israel, this
meant that it had to invade Lebanon, leading to the deaths of
thousands and the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
In September 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, who was Jewish, shot a German
diplomat in Paris. According to the Nazi Party's SA paramilitaries,
this required them to carry out Kristallnacht.
Today more than any other, we should understand how much Trump's
berserk honesty tells us about life on earth. Our lives have value
insofar as the powerful can use them to create whatever "panic" they
desire. If not, we Americans will die quietly in a void, as a
thousand of us are currently doing every day from Covid-19.
