It’s 9/11 and many of us have abiding memories – for me, I was in Europe (in Baden-Baden, actually), and we had to access internet at the public library to find out if a friend was on one of the planes.
He was.
Watching the events on my mother-in-law’s TV was compelling, but seeing the scene a few days later, after we landed in Newark and were taken by bus to Logan (in Boston), was more visceral. Everyone on the bus was very quiet.
A lot has changed since the end of the 1990s. Security theater, and lots of frothy bullshit around ideas.
…Wait, …maybe a lot has stayed the same…?
Of the many things that glimmered across my computer screen in the last couple of days, this (regarding the ousted asshat who’s trying to gather attention via book-burnings) stood out, however:
The problem is not the Web. Anti-JFK rallies “revealing” to every school child in Orange County, California that Communists planned to colonize the United States by the year 1970 drew bigger crowds than Tea Parties today, with nary a blogger among them. (source)
That’s from Rick Perlstein’s NYTimes article, When a Fringe Figure Becomes News. “…by the year 1970 …bigger crowds than Tea Parties today…”?
You have to wonder why we’re paying attention to scoundrels like that “minister.”
You have to wonder what we’re paying attention to (and what we’re ignoring), …and why.