One day after the day that supposedly changed everything, I read this column by Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald that allowed me to breathe again, and gave me a sense of calm pride that We (by that I mean we Americans) could weather whatever storm was about to be unleashed. I am reposting it in its entirety (from a site where it had been reposted before) because I so desperately want to feel the way I felt the first time I read it.

By Leonard Pitts Jr.
Published Wednesday, September 12, 2001
We’ll go forward from this moment
It’s my job to have something to say. They pay me to provide words that help make sense of that which troubles the American soul. But in this moment of airless shock when hot tears sting disbelieving eyes, the only thing I can find to say, the only words that seem to fit, must be addressed to the unknown author of this suffering.

You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard.

What lesson did you hope to teach us by your coward’s attack on our World Trade Center, our Pentagon, us? What was it you hoped we would learn? Whatever it was, please know that you failed.

Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your cause. Did you want to make us fear? You just steeled our resolve. Did you want to tear us apart? You just brought us together.

Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome family, a family rent by racial, social, political and class division, but a family nonetheless. We’re frivolous, yes, capable of expending tremendous emotional energy on pop cultural minutiae — a singer’s revealing dress, a ball team’s misfortune, a cartoon mouse. We’re wealthy, too, spoiled by the ready availability of trinkets and material goods, and maybe because of that, we walk through life with a certain sense of blithe entitlement. We are fundamentally decent, though — peace-loving and compassionate. We struggle to know the right thing and to do it. And we are, the overwhelming majority of us, people of faith, believers in a just and loving God.

Some people — you, perhaps — think that any or all of this makes us weak. You’re mistaken. We are not weak. Indeed, we are strong in ways that cannot be measured by arsenals.

IN PAIN
Yes, we’re in pain now. We are in mourning and we are in shock. We’re still grappling with the unreality of the awful thing you did, still working to make ourselves understand that this isn’t a special effect from some Hollywood blockbuster, isn’t the plot development from a Tom Clancy novel. Both in terms of the awful scope of their ambition and the probable final death toll, your attacks are likely to go down as the worst acts of terrorism in the history of the United States and, probably, the history of the world. You’ve bloodied us as we have never been bloodied before.

But there’s a gulf of difference between making us bloody and making us fall. This is the lesson Japan was taught to its bitter sorrow the last time anyone hit us this hard, the last time anyone brought us such abrupt and monumental pain. When roused, we are righteous in our outrage, terrible in our force. When provoked by this level of barbarism, we will bear any suffering, pay any cost, go to any length, in the pursuit of justice.

I tell you this without fear of contradiction. I know my people, as you, I think, do not. What I know reassures me. It also causes me to tremble with dread of the future.

In the days to come, there will be recrimination and accusation, fingers pointing to determine whose failure allowed this to happen and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. There will be heightened security, misguided talk of revoking basic freedoms. We’ll go forward from this moment sobered, chastened, sad. But determined, too. Unimaginably determined.

THE STEEL IN US
You see, the steel in us is not always readily apparent. That aspect of our character is seldom understood by people who don’t know us well. On this day, the family’s bickering is put on hold.

As Americans we will weep, as Americans we will mourn, and as Americans, we will rise in defense of all that we cherish.

So I ask again: What was it you hoped to teach us? It occurs to me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If that’s the case, consider the message received. And take this message in exchange: You don’t know my people. You don’t know what we’re capable of. You don’t know what you just started.

But you’re about to learn.

Six years later, I shudder to ask what has been learned. The list of blunders committed in all our names since then is by now familiar enough to anyone who cares to hear it that it need not be repeated yet again. The opportunities missed and the goodwill squandered is too much to bear. Have we truly risen “in defense of all that we cherish”? I have seen no end to the “recrimination and accusation,” no real talk of “what can be done to prevent it from happening again.”

The “monsters,” the “beasts,” and the “unspeakable bastards” are still out there. We are still arguing over who strutted most bravely on that day, and who will fail to protect us the least.

So I ask again, what have the unspeakable bastards learned about us? What have we learned about us?

I’m sitting at Austin Bergstrom Int’l Airport at the moment, and I have a new idea for a drinking game. I’ll call it the TSA Drinking Game.

Every time you hear the words “suspicious behavior,” drink.

Trust me, you won’t be able to make it to your flight, or even stand up, if you play this game.

I’m not sure if the original article is even available anymore, but I wouldn’t link to it even if it were–discussion of it is available here and here.

By elevating popular fancy over truth, Democracy is clearly an enemy of not just truth, but duty and justice, which makes it the worst form of government. President Bush must overcome not just the situation in Iraq, but democratic government ….

That’s someone named Philip Atkinson from somewhere called “Family Security Matters” (clearly an irony-free area), arguing that Bush is hamstrung by the whims of the American electorate, and that the real problem with Iraq is that we did not kill every single person there:

If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestige while terrifying American enemies.

Perhaps I am naive, but I do not automatically associate the extermination of an entire nation (whose people, I might add, did nothing to us) with greater morale and poluarity in the U.S. military. It gets even better:

He could then follow Caesar’s example and use his newfound popularity with the military to wield military power to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court.

This actually makes a military coup sound kind of quaint, almost.

I’m sure this is nothing more than another case of right-wing penis envy, given that the host website has apparently eliminated everything related to this guy. There is probably a greater chance of people like this holding actual sway in Washington than of the mythological fear of Islamists seizing power there, but still not likely. I suppose the question to ask is: Is Atkinson’s view the kind of America we want?

Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast:

The weaselly Democrats are too fucking frightened to take on this lunatic [Bush], even if it means that thousands more American families receive the knock on the door that no one wants to hear. No price in American lives is too much to pay for them to keep their jobs and not have to expend the effort to explain to the Fox Noisebots in their districts what’s really going on. God knows the Republicans won’t do it; they’re too busy getting off — and making money — off of the war effort.

That leaves the military. We know that Congress won’t live up to its Constitutional duty to remove this guy from office before he can do any more harm to the Constitution and to our country. We are now left with only the hope that the military will rise up and say “Enough.”

A military coup — that’s what it’s come to, folks. Because that’s the only thing that will rescue us form the clutches of this monster.

A few minutes later, she posts the ominous news that “[m]embers of the 1st Battalion 265 Air Defense Artillery have mobilized and are on a plane headed first to Ft. Bliss, then for federal active duty in the capital region.” Although it’s probably nothing, I am a bit concerned about calls for a military coup of some sort. They don’t always go well.

Seriously, though, I have generally figured that if anyone has the capability to call Bush on his bullshit, it is the military leaders. I will never advocate any sort of military coup, just based on knowledge of history, but it may not come to that. (Fred Kaplan did offer an interesting argument last year that “a military coup in this country right now would probably have a moderating influence.”) The U.S. may just run out of combat-ready troops soon, anyway, which presumably would force the civilian leadership to pay more attention to the military leadership.

First off, thanks to Mikey for his contribution to my earlier Ted Nugent post.

I also have to share these thoughts from Gordon at Alternate Brain:

I’m forced by way of disclaimer to say that I used to kind of like Ted Nugent. I knew he was a wingnut, but I liked his stand on the 2d Amendment and the fact that he eats what he kills. I don’t do it myself, but I think hunting is fine.

That said, fuck him.

Newshounds has the story (via the Rutland Herald) of how Sir Shits-a-Lot repeatedly crapped himself to avoid service:

(Nugent claims) that 30 days before his Draft Board Physical, he stopped all forms of personal hygiene. The last 10 days he ingested nothing but junk food and Pepsi, and a week before his physical, he stopped using the bathroom altogether, virtually living inside his pants caked with excrement and urine. That spectacle won Nugent a deferment.

It’s probably worth a quick review of what Herr Nugent said and did.

I concur: fuck him.