MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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Paul Krugman Defenders Attacked by Right Blogs
By AmericanDreamer on Tue, 09/13/2011 - 10:09pm |Article in Politico, which in my view has a pro-Republican bias, reports on reactions to Krugman's short blog entry Sunday:
Krugman, winner of a Nobel prize in economics, touched off an uproar when he wrote on Sunday, “The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.”
Prior to that closing sentence, Krugman wrote, in a blog entry titled "The Years of Shame":
Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?
Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.
What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.
A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?
One of the conservatives quoted in the article was Glenn Reynolds:
But conservative blog Instapundit urged conservatives to cool it. “Don’t be angry. Understand it for what it is, an admission of impotence from a sad and irrelevant little man. Things haven’t gone the way he wanted lately… he tries to piss all over the people he’s always hated and envied,” wrote blogger Glenn Reynolds.
Krugman wrote several things that were true and require bravery to say publicly, particularly for a pundit with his large public profile. But he also stepped on himself with some unfortunate or obtuse comments.
The commemorations were "oddly subdued" because the principle memories most people likely were focused on were the events of 9/11 itself, which were horrific and tragic as well as, in the case of those who tried to save lives and in many cases lost theirs, heroic. Not the political response following the relatively brief period when the country was about as unified as we ever get about anything, which Krugman did not refer to. That relatively brief moment of national unity was also an important memory for many who long for that now.
I don't see how the memory of the event has been "irrevocably poisoned" by what came after the brief national moment of relative unity. I think our own Doc Cleveland and A-man made much more discerning, and spot on, comments in their pieces the other day that were not needlessly and unnecessarily offensive or hurtful to readers.
Nor have the endlessly poor national decisions which followed the events of that day made the commemoration an occasion for shame. There is nothing which can turn the anniversary of an event marked by tragedy and immense suffering, on the one hand, and heroism on the other, an occasion for shame. Shame is an appropriate reaction in the face of dishonorable conduct. Few, if any, of the vast store of memories many of our fellow citizens have chosen to share from 9/11/01 itself are of acts thought to be dishonorable.
As Michelle Malkin's otherwise tasteless comment quoted in the article suggested, this was most likely an unfortunate case of Krugman hitting "send" before he'd reread what he'd written with a fully self-critical eye. I don't know if he has retracted yet any part of what he wrote, or if he is someone likely to retract, or apologize for, something he has written.
The other quotes attributed to conservatives bashing Krugman over this are the kind of small-minded, hateful stuff we've come to expect from so many right-wing pundits these days. If Krugman is "irrelevant" what word might accurately describe Glenn Reynolds on the relevancy front?
Anyone reading Krugman's blog post would realize that what he thinks is shameful are the terrible policy decisions--many of them dishonestly sold and portrayed--made following 9/11, the grievous damage those decisions inflicted on so many individuals and our country, and the, yes, shameful, vile, reprehensible exploitation of the events and memories of that day to poison the atmosphere for desperately needed but all-too-rare scrutiny of proposed policies.
He just wasn't careful how he wrote it, unfortunately.
URL:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/63404.html
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Comments
So tell me ... what part of Krugman's essay don't you understand? In my opinion, he's stating facts that everyone wants to ignore.
Yes, innocent lives were lost and livelihoods lost on September 11, 2001. But is it honorable to change the date of their deaths and losses to mere symboloy ... 9/11? Did we change the date of the attack on Pearl Harbor to 12/7?
NO! It's still December 7, 1941.
And Yes, the United States was under attack, but not from a nation on the planet. It was nothing more than a rag-tag bunch of rag-heads with an axe to grind against the United States for a perceived injustice to their region and religion. A lone assailant with hostages has nothing to loose ... they are more than willing to die and take as many with them as possible. There is no deterrent for such people unless you tear up the Constitution and Bill of Rights replacing it with a Police State ... which is where we are slowly heading.
And finally YES, the United States was unknowingly complicit in assisting the attackers on September 11, 2001. That the hijackers were able to carry onboard K-Mart Blue Light Special box cutters makes one wonder why it never happened before ... we were giving them the ammunition to shoot at us.
So September 11, 2001 brought to the front a lot of serious problems we were facing within our borders that we were neglecting simply because we never thought for a minute anyone would dare attack us.
And it's the immediate reaction after the facts that Krugman is addressing in his essay.
Politicians used the horror to juice up their political resumes while others used it as a necessary force to shove wedge issues, that would never have seen the light of day before the tragedy, into the political debate thus curbing individual rights for the sake of safety for all.
And the media just lapped it up currying favor with all parties so as to keep the doors open for access while ignoring the legislation being passed was another, but subtle attack on the public slowly and secretly depriving them of their right's
He's pointing out the follies of politicians and the media for the public to recognize they lost more those who died in the collapse of the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and passengers on the three hijacked airlines. That's what he's referring to as shameful ... what the politicians did, the media ignored and the public hasn't grasped.
by Beetlejuice on Wed, 09/14/2011 - 7:15am
What part of my comment on Krugman's blog piece did you not understand? Did you actually read it? Or just proceed directly to rant mode?
by AmericanDreamer on Wed, 09/14/2011 - 7:35am
I'm a day late getting back, however, Qnonymous, goes into more depth than I, but I believe we are both going in the same direction on slightly different paths. Perhaps you should reevaluate your position? Krugman is bringing to light something people don't want to see the light of day. Something in our political and public narrative that would be shameful if we were all to wake up and acknowledge it.
In short, YES WE WERE ATTACKED AND INNOCENT PEOPLE DIED !!!
But it's our actions after the fact that have been questionable to the point of shame. In my opinion, that's what Krugman is alluding to in his essay. You just have to be willing to see beyond borders of the box.
by Beetlejuice on Thu, 09/15/2011 - 8:12am
No, about Krugman and that particular piece, I continue to hold two thoughts, not remotely incompatible to my way of thinking: Krugman is great and made some outstanding points in his blog piece, which are not being made by nearly enough prominent commentators. And, Krugman got a bit hasty with parts of that piece, or else I just disagree with him on those specific points.
I had thought that kind of a dual "take" on something is allowed. But maybe as some see it, it's not: one must agree with and defend one's fellow team or clique members no matter what they say or do.
I'll use Monicagate as an example. What the Republicans were trying to do in using impeachment to try to dislodge him from office, and the constant harrassment that was their MO, was not just wrong, but disgraceful and shameful. And--and--Bill Clinton was an idiot for doing what he did. In attacking the party of impeachment's actions at the time, I saw no point denying the obvious in that situation.
Defending a person doesn't always mean defending every specific thing they say or do. In fact, sometimes one is better able to defend a person more generally on acknowledging they said or did something specific that was off base or wrong.
The people screeching ridiculous things about Krugman based on parts of what he wrote discredit themselves with the mindless, over-the-top drivel they wrote. But it's also true that on an extremely sensitive, highly charged subject, anyone with Krugman's profile needs to know they always have to be extremely vigilant and careful to try to say exactly what they mean and are willing to defend when--not if, but when--they are attacked. Because they're going to be.
Krugman is great, one of the very best commentators on public affairs in the United States. I have a ton of respect for him. I refuse to let that equate with feeling I am never able, or "allowed" by peers, to disagree with him on something specific he writes.
In the internet context more broadly, I have no use for the kind of "s/he's on my team, therefore everything they say I will support or defend, whether I privately agree or not" mindset, which is too prevalent in the blogosphere in my view. I think it is anti-intellectual and debilitating. As I see it--and this is one reason I hang here rather than elsewhere--dagblog is overall characterized by more candid, less canned discussion and exchanges of the sort one sees much less of on talking head major media shows, say.
The day I start writing as though I am a member of some self-formed clique which has an unspoken agreement they will always defend one another, and never publicly disagree with one another (no matter how gently or diplomatically) no matter what, is the day I think I should just stop writing. I can just write a short "so long" note permanently deputizing my clique to think and speak for me, with a catchall "what they said", and forget about trying to think for myself.
In some contexts I believe it is necessary to choose sides. Not here, at dagblog. Not in my view, at any rate.
Legally protected free speech is exceptionally valuable to protect ordinary people from authorities bent on suppressing dissent. But the free exchange of thinking it is meant to foster, when fully exercised, is also about creating a culture in which people feel psychologically and socially able to sometimes disagree with one another, including those with whom they usually agree. Only when this is not only possible, but actually done, is free exchange likely to lead to better thinking by individuals and groups.
by AmericanDreamer on Thu, 09/15/2011 - 11:47am
At the risk of being a prude, I get that you were being alliterative (or whatever it's called when you match beginning syllables and not just consonants), but I think the pejorative "rag-head" is unnecessary. Attack them for what they did, and even what they believe (not Islam per se, but their particular flavor of it), but not for being Middle Eastern.
by Verified Atheist on Wed, 09/14/2011 - 8:29am
I rarely disagree with you, AD, but this time is one of them.
"There is nothing which can turn the anniversary of an event marked by tragedy and immense suffering, on the one hand, and heroism on the other, an occasion for shame."
In my home area, I recently read about a site just a mile down the road from our farm where 24 young British soldiers were set upon by French forces in the night, and slaughtered in their beds. It's an event one would think would be well-noted in such a pro-Anglo area, but there is no monument, and I had never before heard mention of it. Except that this event happened just before the Explusion of the Acadians, wherein (we) Brits performed acts of grotesque immorality against an entire people, the local French Acadians.
But the initial slaughter is unmarked because of the latter shame.
Europe is full of the same thing. There were thousands of events of great courage and herosim which happened to have occurred amongst the Nazis-supporting groups within Germany and across Eastern Bloc, and thus, were erased. Similarly within Soviet Russia and China and Japan with their histories.
It is no different with America. It is just not so used to dealing with violent adversity occurring on its own soil.
That said, and turning to Krugman's larger point, I found it almost impossible to even attend to the 9/11 commemoration this year. Not because I do not sympathize with those who lost people on that day. But simply because, it feels as though the events which followed have still not been taken seriously enough. For example, people still debate whether it was "legal" to go shock and awe on Afghanistan. After all, the Afghans hosted al Qaeda, right? And AQ entered the US and killed thousands. With the effective consent of the Afghan Government. Thus justifying the American response in Afghanistan.
Whereas the people of Iraq, who were attacked and killed in their tens (hundreds?) of thousands, under cover of a thin tissue of lies - that is, who were just as innocent as the Americans bombed in NYC - by a nation which had the effective consent of its own "democratic" government, what recourse do the Iraqis have?
Would THEY also have the right to inflict shock and awe on Americans, to ten times the amount they have suffered?
So 9/11, for those who lost people, will always remain a terrible thing. But once the American Government, media, economy and populace then agreed to EXPLICITLY tie it to a series of wars, of national security impositions, of messages about who the United States of America is, then the connection is made.
When an entire country agrees to link events in this way, and the latter events become noted as shameful - and perhaps evil - then the shame becomes attached as well.
It's important to try to disentangle these events, I agree with you on that. Those who died on that day, or acted heroically, should be given their just due, as separately as is possible from those who came after and did less well. But that shame smears.... well, that's the story of human beings.
And from where I sit, I rather wish the sense of shame smeared rather more widely than it appears to at present.
by Qnonymous (not verified) on Wed, 09/14/2011 - 10:57am
Thanks for your comment, q.
That connection is made by whom, you are suggesting? You and I are, I think, disentangling what happened on 9/11 from the responses to it which followed. Aren't we?
When I wrote "There is nothing which can turn the anniversary of an event marked by tragedy and immense suffering, on the one hand, and heroism on the other, [into] an occasion for shame", I was referring to the memories of those directly affected, or affected at one or two degrees of separation, so to speak (say, a relative, a friend of a close friend, or a work colleague as in my brother's case--although they did not directly work together, Todd "Let's Roll" Beamer worked for his company and my brother and his wife had just met Todd and his wife Lisa at a company event days before flight 93).
I see those as, first and primarily, private memories. They took on a public character because they occurred in the context of an extremely rare, devastating, and graphic direct attack on the U.S. homeland. I do not know, but I strongly suspect, that for those directly affected on that day, the character of those memories is overwhelmingly private and nonpolitical--not experienced much, if at all, as the prelude to all sorts of hideous, wrong, and idiotic mayhem which others perpetrated in response to what happened.
I see no justification for any sense of shame among any of those remembering or mourning on a personal level because of the public actions taken, by others, in the aftermath.
Perhaps some who were directly affected who read this can speak for themselves on this by responding to this point, if they care to.
So I thought Krugman's comment was kind of, I don't know, imperialistic(?) in the sense that I thought he was trying to assert a single meaning--his meaning, although obviously not his alone--to what 9/11 meant, apparently meant to crowd out or even de-legitimize the non-political meanings others attach to it. Which also seem to me perfectly legitimate.
I think I would have had an analogous thought in response to anyone trying to assert a monopoly for the more or less purely "private" meaning of 9/11 if I felt they were discounting and dismissing the history of what has followed that moment so far--all the further, sickening misery that has ensued, including the ways we have let an obsessive and counter-productive response to 9/11 weaken our country, in ways Articleman's piece in particular gave appreciated weight to.
by AmericanDreamer on Wed, 09/14/2011 - 11:53am
I feel like it's more important to cut Krugman slack in saying something this brave, than to adjust and add qualifiers to his blog. I mean, if I wanted to be a stickler, I would point out the difference between him saying "has been poisoned" and "is poison;" and is an "occasion for shame" versus "is shameful." See, in my mind, 9/11 HAS had shame attached to it, HAS had poison mixed in.
And I think it's even more important to be clear that this is EXACTLY the sort of connection, smearing, merging, that the Right worked very hard to do. Political groups TRY to take ownership of events. And for the nation as a whole, they succeeded.
If you read Krugman, it's clear that he's talking about the wider, national, public and political consequences. Perhaps he needed to take his time more and say, "except for those directly connected to those who were lost that day," but.... have we asked this of the 10,000,000,000 other speeches and references to 9/11?
And I think this happens - this making and taking of history - though it's often deeply upsetting for those involved. One's history, one's lived experience, one's own actions, can become smeared into wider/larger events, and come to be spoken of in ways one can barely recognize - or silenced altogether.
Because 9/11 itself... was hijacked. For all the talk since, there's been no new national consensus formed on it. Hell, there's barely been any sensible national discussion about it - why it really happened ("they hated our freedoms"), what else might have been done (e.g. in Afghanistan), what needs to change "(Homeland Security?).
The whole nation got hauled into the shit, into sin and shame, and the whole damned nation has just finished an orgy of "commemoration" for those tragically and bravely lost, and all this with ABSOLUTELY NO CORRESPONDING COMMEMORATION OF THE MUCH LARGER, AND MUCH MORE CONSEQUENT, EVIL ACTIONS WHICH FOLLOWED IN ITS NAME.
Which is all a bit repulsive, eh? There were a lot of voices out there who would now claim they were hoodwinked and bullied and smoothed into going along with the lies, and who still wish to claim some similarity or connection to those killed on 9/11, yet who still refuse to own the fact that they then sent thousands more to their deaths.
Krugman. Not a wordsmith. But - for an economist - not doing too badly at speaking some hard truthes.
by Qnonymous (not verified) on Wed, 09/14/2011 - 3:37pm
Krugman not a wordsmith? Could have fooled me. He is in my view one of the clearest U.S.-based writers on public affairs, made more difficult by the subject matter of his columns.
I wouldn't know. I didn't watch any of the media coverage or attend ceremonies on the event. Like others here, I, too, very much wish to move on if we are going to continue to decline to learn anything from 9/11 that will make us stronger and better instead of weaker and more callow. Without being insensitive or callous or curmudgeonly in failing to acknowledge the personal meanings that day had for many of our fellow citizens, having little or no political content and having little or nothing to do with what was done in its wake.
I didn't think I was particularly harsh on Krugman. If you've read me enough to note a lack of frequent disagreements with what I write, you probably know I think very highly of him. I think I understand what he was getting at. But I also lament the unwelcome attention parts of what he wrote has brought to one of our leading lights. Anything he says or does--including some inapt wording in a piece which did, as you say and as I also said, voice some important truths--which gives people easy excuses to try to discredit him in toto is lamentable from my standpoint. And not least because it tramples upon and tends to drown out the very important and powerful and brave things he did say in that piece.
by AmericanDreamer on Wed, 09/14/2011 - 5:53pm
I seem to recall that was the reputation of the Politico editors in their newspaper careers.
Otherwise I have nothing to add to what's already been said. Rather too emphatically .
by Flavius on Wed, 09/14/2011 - 8:43pm
A country that lets an administration exploit the deaths of thousands of its citizens to lie the country into an aggressive war, a war that a Nuremberg prosecutor said Bush should stand trial for under international law, such a nation should be 'subdued' about the event that triggered the cascade of death. And where were the right wing Krugman critics when George W. was ginning up his war, when he was dragging the reputation of America through Saddam's Abu Ghraib prison, a palace of torture, and when he was refusing photo's of the returning flag draped coffins of those he had sent to their deaths?
Some also wonder, if a President so eagerly and without UN sanction, sent tens of thousands of Americans to be wounded or killed in his illegal war 'of choice', would such a President lift a finger to prevent the deaths of Americans in a terror attack that he so readily exploited to justify his bloody war?
by NCD on Thu, 09/15/2011 - 2:20pm