Over the weekend we hit the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and pretty much every news organization and car commercial and weather forecast took the opportunity to remind us not to forget the people who died and I’m all for that, but let’s also not forget the damage the rest of us did to America because we were scared shitless.
Just in case you don’t recall…
Towns not important enough to have a McDonald’s franchise were worried that terrorists might target their water supply or bookmobile or some child’s lemonade stand just to show nobody in America was safe and that mood of fear and anxiety gave the Bush Administration and a variety of right-wing nuts an excuse to do some things that wanted to do before 9/11 ever happened.
Like pass the Patriot Act.
If the internet is to be believed (which is an iffy-assumption at best) the vote in the House was 357-66 and it passed the Senate 98-1 and anybody with the balls to say maybe we should actually read the Patriot Act before passing it was given the same treatment Kevin Bacon received in Animal House when he tried to assure a panicked crowd that:
“All is well.”
(And if you need an excuse to watch that movie one more time because you don’t remember Kevin Bacon being in it, you’re welcome.)
And just in case you don’t remember exactly what was in the Patriot Act, here’s a brief description that comes from a Cornell Law School website:
The Patriot Act is a shorthand name for The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act. The Act was passed shortly after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. It was signed into law on October 26, 2001 by President George W. Bush. The legislation was aimed at bolstering national security, with a special focus on foreign terrorism. Among other things, the Act:
Enhances domestic security procedures, including increasing funding for law enforcement agencies and the military
Enhances law enforcement’s surveillance capabilities, including foreign and domestic phone, wire, and computer tapping
Removes obstacles to investigating terrorism, including easing interagency communication and encouraging information sharing
Increases the penalties for acts of terrorism and expands the list of activities considered to be acts of terrorism
If you didn’t give it too much thought (and the Bush Administration was definitely hoping you wouldn’t) all that might sound OK, but those Constitutional-Stick-In-The-Muds – the ACLU – had this to say about the Patriot Act and what it allowed:
“Violates the First Amendment by effectively authorizing the FBI to launch investigations of American citizens in part for exercising their freedom of speech.”
If you want to read more about how the Bush Administration used the 9/11 attacks to push through a bunch of unconstitutional, far-right, Hey-We’re-Not-Exactly-Nazis-But-The-Gestapo-Had-Some-Good-Ideas law enforcement powers, here you go:
https://www.aclu.org/other/surveillance-under-usapatriot-act
OK, so that’s one way we helped destroy America and what it theoretically stands for, but what have we done lately?
Sent in the clowns
A while back the Kansas City Star Editorial Board wrote that as recently as 2014 the caucuses of both parties in the Missouri Senate came together to unanimously pass a mandate that students at Missouri colleges had to be vaccinated against meningitis because a couple kids died on campus and officials wanted to protect young people. Just seven years ago enforced vaccinations for the public good were totally acceptable to both parties, so what changed?
2016, social media and Donald Trump.
Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson (who gets nervous every time I mention his name and not without reason) drew cartoons that revealed an audience for quirky, dark humor that newspaper syndicates hadn’t realized existed B.G. (Before Gary) and instead of learning the right lesson (there are a lot of different audiences for different kinds of material and maybe you should find some audiences that remain undiscovered) newspaper syndicates just wanted more Gary Larson clones doing the exact same kind of cartoons and right now your local paper probably runs about five of them.
Which brings us back to Donald Trump.
Trump’s success revealed there was an audience for anti-science, homophobic, xenophobic blowhards and now other gutless politicians are trying to appeal to Trump’s audience. (So, yes, Gary – assuming you’re reading this – the current state of America is all your fault which I think you already knew somewhere down deep in your banjo-hating heart.)
Also, fuck Josh Hawley.
Balkanization and polio
Here’s a definition of “Balkanize”:
“Divide (a region or body) into smaller mutually hostile states or groups.”
The term came into being after WWI and was used to describe the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, which if you think about it, would be a great name for a furniture store, but now we’re getting off track and we should get back to the main point before I forget what that is.
Anyway…
When united, large groups can accomplish great things, but when they break up into smaller pieces and start bickering among themselves about the use of the Designated Hitter or whether Star Wars is better than Star Trek and who killed whose great, great, great grandfather in some war on another continent in a different century they can’t accomplish much of anything.
Case in point:
When we didn’t have social media and everybody didn’t have their own personal set of misguided facts, we did a better job of acting as a group and not long ago, Kansas City Star writer Dave Helling made the same point and used polio as an example.
According to Dave’s article the worst year for polio was 1952 with about 58,000 cases and 3,145 deaths.
People freaked the fuck out and decided something had to be done and according to an NPR article, in 1955 people had more respect for science so they took the vaccine and pretty much eradicated polio. But now that we’re so much better informed than those 1955 dumbbells, we just can’t get our shit together to do much of anything despite 659,696 dead Americans.
(Oops…that was yesterday’s number and since then 279 more Americans have died so if we can just keep it up we’ve got a shot at killing 101,835 more Americans in the next year.)
Here’s more on the polio epidemic and how it ended:
So for all the reasons I’ve cited I drew a cartoon that pointed out all the Red-White-And-Blue-Hating Terrorists had to do was scare the crap out of us and then we’d destroy America for them.
As Walt Kelly pointed out: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Never forget.
So how about those PEDs?
Count on Charles Barkley to speak his mind and here’s what he said recently about the COVID pandemic:
“The only people who are not vaccinated are just assholes.”
A number of pro athletes have declined to get vaccinated and not long ago I was reminded that some of the athletes who are so worried about vaccine side effects and just how many microchips Bill Gates has put in an average dose didn’t think twice when some sketchy doctor, trainer, equipment manager or teammate offered to shoot steroids into their ass in one of those highly-hygienic bathroom stalls.
Also, a number of athletes smoke marijuana to come down from the adrenaline-high of games (and the number is way higher than you think) and I’m guessing those athletes don’t have their weed analyzed in a CSI laboratory before they light up.
A very smart reader once made the comment that all my cartoons seemed to be about hypocrisy in one form or another and if “all” is too inclusive I’m guessing about 82 percent would be accurate.
OK, that’s it for today and as soon as possible I’ll get back to writing less depressing stories like dropping my reading glasses in the toilet or trying to avoid stepping in what may or may not be dog shit on Hollywood Boulevard.
Hang in there until we find something to laugh about.
The Patriot Act, polio and PEDs
This piece goes in my Lee Judge Hall of Fame folder if for no other reason than it yanked a Monday out of the toilet. You, good sir, are The Man!