“President Bush’s speechwriter referred to 9/11 as a “teachable moment,” which is a time when people listen to their leaders in ways they do only when they’re ready to be led. I agree. Fear makes people seek the protective reassurance of a leader, who intuits when it is right to comfort, to challenge, to ask for sacrifice. There is an outpouring of caring, support, national unity. It is at such moments that a president can put his imprint on history. He can fit his dreams for the country to the opportunity the tragedy presents, as Johnson did in 1964, in the wake of JFK’s assassination.” – Bill Bradley, The New America Story, p.46.
What did Bush give us?
George W. Bush: “I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you.”
[George W. Bush brandishes a golf club]
George W. Bush: “Now, watch this drive.”
Bush told us to go shopping. Then he went about rallying his base.
George W. Bush: “What an impressive crowd: the haves, and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite, I call you my base.”
What have we learned?
Ice Cube, of the inestimable NWA, put it best in the aptly named, especially for our president, “Gangsta Gangsta”
Cus really that’s all these people are: gangsters. Every last one of them.
What have we learned?
Bush ain’t no Johnson.
It’s too bad Bradley dropped out of the presidential race.
Don’t mean to take up all your bandwidth, but W is a moron. The lesson of 9/11 is that big oil companies learned Americans would pay $3.00 dollars for a gallon of gas..As a few gas stations were gouging people on 9.11 & 9.12.
I tried, but I can’t get through it.
Choose your leaders well.
Only…we have NOT learned that.
Not all of us.
Not MANY of us.
Not yet we haven’t.
My own sad guess?
My own sad guess is that too many of us will learn this lesson somewhere between the moment that we hear the big boom and the moment when the shock wave takes us up, up and away from this vale of tears.
I hope that I am wrong.
You know that old “Be careful what you wish for” saw?
Yup.
Be careful who you allow to be (s)elected.
You might get him.
AG
We learned that the “Bully Pulpit” can be used for good or ill. What a waste! To have squandered the good will of the world, after September Eleventh on the altar of political expediency.
I am so ashamed.
what have we learned?
one might better ask: what have we forgotten?
we’ve forgotten what it means to be free and take responsibility for that freedom, what it means to be aware, informed and active, what it means to have a government of, by and for the people….we have forgotten everything that really made a difference.
h/t to jf…l’d never have found it…parallel universe, indeed.
it would appear, that 220 years later, we are not up to the task.
lTMF’sA
clik images for info