Said Donald Trump, explaining why he had bodyguards, to Tina Brown, on September 10, 2001.
Quoted in "Tina Brown: what Donald Trump said to me the night before 9/11/The night before, the magazine editor was at a fashion show chatting to the future president. The next morning came the horror of the Twin Towers, writes the commentator in an article first published in her Fresh Hell newsletter" (London Times).
Lots more at the link, ending with this summary of 9/11, which I think is the conventional wisdom: "That single moment of terror that brought us together splintered rapidly. We’ve institutionalized distrust and suspicion; we’ve cultivated paranoia. Paradoxically, perhaps, that period of outraged unification led inevitably to the seemingly insuperable partisan divide we now find ourselves facing. Not long after 9/11, Facebook was born, then YouTube and Instagram, and, at first, it felt as if these might become community-making phenomena, safe spaces. Instead, as the iterations of social media pile up and the voices on them multiply, we live in a cacophony of chaos. Celebrity culture, far from fading, has become the only culture we know, its ultimate expression now incinerating the White House."
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20 comments:
It is, as always, all about Tina.
What the hell does Donald Trump making a perfectly true and relatively innocuous remark about bodyguards to Tina Brown on 9/10 have to do with 9/11?
He is absolutely right about needing kieth
John Henry
There’s a purpose to every season. There’s a time for intelligent husbands and a time for wrist-breaking Keith.
"That single moment of terror that brought us together splintered rapidly. "
This may be conventional wisdom, but it is false. The attacks were on a Tuesday and by Wednesday activists in academia were already organizing teach-ins that Saturday to convince students the attacks were America's fault. This series were anti-American hate-fests which among other insanities included Ward Churchill's famous claim that the people killed were 'little Eichmanns" for going to work every day.
Left wingers want to pretend there was a period of unity so they can blame the fracture on Bush. But that is propaganda, there was never any unity.
There she was, right in the middle of it, and 25 years later she still can prove that she doesn't get it at all. What a talent.
"that period of outraged unification led inevitably to the seemingly insuperable partisan divide we now find ourselves facing."
Really? What I recall is it ended the "selected, not elected" refrain that was constantly repeated by Democrats throughout 2021. There was this sharp divide based on the results of one state, that suggested the whole of the country was right at 50/50 throughout 2020 and into 2021, and the only thumb on the scale was SCOTUS.
What's the argument today by Democrats? We should remake SCOTUS. When did that start?
"That single moment of terror that brought us together splintered rapidly."
The people decrying the divisions are the ones promoting it. "Never let a crisis go to waste."
The world was fine, and then social media came knocking on our doors. LOL. If only we could go back to the ye olden days of the top down, one monoculture, where people like Tina Brown could just talk among themselves and then broadcast the correct way to view things to the dumb masses.
We were all brought together for one moment, because we all felt we'd been attacked. And then once it became clear that this was just a one-off, and not the start of a series of massive terror attacks, we calmed down and went back to being separate splinters.
The thing that struck me about the aftermath is how the liberal/left really got upset at all those american flags. IRC, Dan Rather wore an American flag pin for a very short time or refused to wear one. And then said that he broadcast to the world - not just America.
And college adminstrators, after a short time, ordered USA flags to be gotten rid of because "the foreign students were upset". LOL. Yeah, they didn't want to see American flags - thats why they were in the USA.
Hello, while I'm in the USA going to college for 4 years, and may stay here and work, I was specifically promised "No American flags".
Looks like Trump is the new sexy girl in a bikini for the UK press.
…that’s some spry old woman gymnastics to blame Trump for 9/11…
Heck, before the day was out people were shrieking online that it was "an inside job!" directed by Chimpy McBusHitler.
It's 25 years on--and I really don't want to think about 9-11. I did my bit afterwards helping some of the victim's families. Scar tissue is best left undisturbed. It's also true that some wounds never heal.
Of course when much of the media acts like a poo throwing monkey, disturbance is what's on the menu today.
Immediately after 9-11 it appeared that we could unite. Not long after, it became clear that the mediaswine and their Democrats weren’t having any. Bush made mistakes, but they weren’t controlling, just an excuse for the usual sedition from the usual players.
How long did it take until Democrats were calling for Bush to be assassinated and making plays about it in Central Park?
The problems are due to people expressing themselves anonymously. The threat of a bloody nose used to keep us more civil. Maybe doxing is a good thing. Why did we ever decide it was bad? Because we all want to get away with being assholes.
This is so wrong: "Paradoxically, perhaps, that period of outraged unification led inevitably to the seemingly insuperable partisan divide we now find ourselves facing." No, it didn't. I never say "you are confusing correlation with causation" because it is so overused but 9/11 and the ensuing "outraged unification" did not causally create our current hyperpartisan divide.
The U.S. seemed unified because the media stopped amplifying Academia, which had been anti-America since the 1930s.
But the Woke inserted itself into every facet of public life. At this point, the only thing that can kill the Woke is Islam.
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