. Here is a columnist who compares President Bush to the September 11th hijackers, and the American people to their victims. This obscene column was published, not in
, but in the Minneapolis-St. Paul
.
This elusive summer played out against a backdrop of despair. The simple pleasures of bare feet in cool grass or sweet corn popping against teeth were muted by nearly daily accounts of young soldiers in Iraq being swatted like flies on a hot sticky wall, with no end in sight.
And there’s the real reason for despair. No end in sight. This administration, drenched in its own sense of righteousness, has squandered any global goodwill gained by the horrific assault of 9/11, just as it has squandered the robust economy it inherited. Three million jobs have disappeared during the Bush presidency and, according to the Economist, unless those numbers change and the economy picks up, George W. Bush will go into the next election with the worst economic record since Herbert Hoover.
Now Bush intends to squander more resources — money and lives to rebuild a nation, unfortunately not ours. The underpinnings that made America the envy of the world — public schools, health systems, power grids, transportation links, job security, national parks, civil liberties — are crumbling before our eyes.
Some days it feels as if I’m wandering in a country that I no longer recognize: a movie-set country with false fronts and 10-cent deputies delivering scripted lines that belie what we know to be true. Don’t push or shove, or it will all tip over.
The recent 9/11 anniversary, with its replays of those devil-driven jets, careening at top speed into the World Trade Towers, made me think again of what those passengers must have endured. It is such a heart-searing image that the mind cannot linger on it for long.
But at times I feel a similar helplessness, as if our whole country is hurtling toward disaster, the cockpit commandeered by a proud and zealous crew that won’t listen and won’t change course.
Like the passengers in three of those four jets, we’re frozen in our seats, obeying the unwritten protocols of captivity.
But then I remember the passengers in the fourth jet, the one thought to have been headed for Washington, D.C. They didn’t stay strapped in their seats. They had the onerous advantage of learning by cell phone what had happened to the towers and to the Pentagon, and they had the time — and the courage — to act. They stormed the cockpit and lost their lives, but undoubtedly saved hundreds of others, and probably the symbolic heart of the nation.
It’s shameful to rehash this tragedy for political gain, but no one does it more often than President Bush. So I hope I can be forgiven for borrowing it just this once.
Luckily we are only figurative captives on a metaphoric flight, but we too have the advantage of information and time. We know this flight’s been hijacked, and we have over a year to act. There’s an election on the horizon, and it’s our only chance. With all due respect, let’s roll.
[Susan Lenfestey, “Bush team is squandering economy, goodwill and lives, with no end in sight,” Star Tribune, September 21, 2003.]