Okay, can we get this out of the way? I know I'm a few days late, but I write when I darned well feel like it, so bite me. (No really though, I do things by my own cycles). I'm seeing a lot of 9/11 circlejerking this year, with this being the 20th anniversary of the event. I've already written about 9/11 before and I don't think my opinion has changed much since then. I believe it was an event that changed us, as Americans, for the worse, and that we left a huge trail of destruction that outweighs the event itself and eroded the integrity of our own institutions in its wake. And I'm just sick and tired of dragging it out every year, and going on about poor us, we were attacked, blah blah blah.
One particular line of discussion worth addressing that seems new, in a post Trump era and all of this "political division" that the patriotic "but but our institutions" circlejerkers go on about is about how a lot of people wish we were that united again. In the aftermath of 9/11, the country was united like we rarely see. Republicans and democrats temporarily put their grievances aside and rallied around the flag, and everyone was super patriotic, and on the same page. Don't you wish we had that again?
And I'll say it plainly. NO.
And here's why. I'm a free thinker. I support diversity of opinion. I support freedom of speech and thought. And the kind of unity we had after 9/11 was the kind of unity that I deem harmful. It was the kind of unity that got us in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where dissenters were tarred and feathered as unpatriotic. it was the kind of unity that led to us passing the patriot act and eroding our civil liberties. It was the kind of freedom that led to us suspending civil liberties and mistreating prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. And don't get me started on the Bush revisionism. Post trump, all of the sudden George W. Bush is now rehabilitated by the democrats as one of the good guys, and acts how a president should act or something. Okay, the dude wasn't as flagrantly abusive of norms as Trump, but the dude got us into two wars, one of which under false pretenses and the other arguably didn't need to be fought, and caused all those other bad things to happen. I'm sorry, but Bush is a piece of crap, and his presidency should be seen as a legacy of what not to do in response to a national crisis.
And no, to go back to unity. if you have the level of unity we had after 9/11, you also have some sort of authoritarianism leading to that happening in a lot of cases. Something has happened where dissent to the status quo is pushed out of the overton window. Now, in some rare cases this isn't a bad thing. During FDR for example, people were relatively unified at resolving some issues with capitalism and that led to some good things. The conditions got so bad people united for change. But for the most part, unity is inherently authoritarian, and no, I don't desire unity where 90% of americans agree on everything. Unless we reach some sort of utopia where that number is because we've all decided that every other way of doing things is bad and inferior. But even that realistically can never happen as dissent will always exist, in any system.
So no, screw unity.
To backtrack and contradict myself, I think we can agree that maybe things should be slightly more united than we are now. I mean, we should all at least agree on things like basic facts and scientific literacy. The fact that we are in a country where half the people are refusing to take a vaccine to stop a deadly virus is a problem. But, I also don't believe in trying to force people to change their beliefs. I might believe in mandating the vaccine in various forms as a matter of public health, but I stand firm that those people who believe in not taking it should be able to express their opinions, even if I believe such opinions are bad and even if I believe in mandating it. They should be able to speak out against the mandate at least.
Anyway, that's just my view on this whole "dont you wish the country was united?" and other similar sentiments. No, actually, no I do not. While I believe people were less ignorant, I believe that people should be free to believe what they want and disagree and express such disagreement. I don't care if people are united as I see unity as an inherently authoritarian virtue.
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