Gary Kamiya: The Real Lessons of 9/11

This, to which AbjectFunk directs me, is mightily worth a read.

I don't agree with everything in it--and, in fact, my eyes roll heavenward whenever somebody comes close to talking "gender studies" gobbledygook, as Kamiya comes close to doing at one point. But overall, I think he's hitting the nail pretty much on the head.

I appreciated--painful as it was--Kamiya's clear, poignant statement of the relevant facts: the Bush administration has shamelessly used 9/11 to appeal to our worst instincts as a nation, and used them to lead us into something very much like a disaster.

If your liberal instincts are like mine, you think that you can reason with anyone. Consequently, you can easily be led into discussions in which you will find yourself acting and speaking as if defenses of the administration's actions since 9/11 are sane and serious. But they are not. An insane, nightmarish, farcical error is still an insane, nightmarish, farcical error, even if a million bloggers spend a million years creating a million baroque arguments to the contrary and confidently asserting their conclusions. It's scary, in fact, how easy it is to find people who will passionately defend the indefensible, and scary how easily such people can skew the center of gravity of a discussion. Enough passionate defenders, and even the flat Earth theory gains a veneer of respectability.

Anyway, read Kamiya's piece to remind yourself that madness is, in fact, madness, and not another thing.