Did you feel isolated after 9/11?

[gulliver]

I did. I felt like I had suddenly wandered into that town full of vampires in the movie Salem's Lot. For me, nearly everything that changed after 9/11 was due to people hysterically thinking everything had changed.

America had a nervous breakdown, I think.

That day on 9/11, Bush bunnyhopped around the country, making us all worry that we might soon be under nuclear attack. Most of the panic of that day could have been avoided. But Bush didn't reassure the country; he scared us all. He scared me too.

And then we started hearing about how there had been a "credible threat" to Air Force One, which turned out to be a black lie. We thought the bunnyhopping was bad, so they made up that lie to justify it. We didn't know at the time that Bush, informed that America was under attack, had sat there in a second grade classroom for seven minutes while a hijacked plane loaded with passengers made its way toward the Pentagon.

The next day Bush cried in the Oval Office on camera. A Rock of Gibraltar that guy. The leader of the free world broke into tears in an interview on live TV during a national emergency.

And I thought, "He's done. Bush is completely done. I have never in my life witnessed such a cowardly, feckless performance by any leader, at any level, in any country."

Then Bush talked tough through a megaphone and read a speech. The first polls came out, and he had a 90% approval rating. And I thought, "I must be surrounded by vampires. How can people give Bush a 90% approval rating? He friggin shut down the country. He bunnyhopped. He cried on TV!!"

At that point I think I realized that a lot of people were just supporting Bush in order to support the country. But that didn't help much, because Bush's supporters took the 90% at face value. And of course, the news did too ("This popular president!"). And pretty soon there was this strange (but probably largely false) presumption that only every 10th person in the country disapproved of Bush. And I was one of them.

On edit: Tears didn't actually flow. As I recall, he paused, his face broke. His eyes looked damp. And he said something like "I'm a loving guy," to recover. "Broke into tears" is an exaggeration, but it wasn't far from that if you saw it when it happened.

[Placebo]

1. I Can't Believe a Single Thing That Comes Out Of This Government...

anymore! And thats pretty sad, especially in this time of terror when you should at least be able to trust that your government and the administration in the white house ISN'T playing politics with our national security. Also, it's horrible because if there really is cause for concern we have no way of knowing if we should take the warnings seriously or not. it's the BOY WHO CRIED WOLF scenario on an almost unimaginable scale!

[lapfog_1]

2. "and soon, the people that knocked

these towers down will hear you"

But sir, they may hear us, but something got lost in the translation.

[Placebo]

4. Ever notice...

that he was pointing that megaphone directly into that poor firefighters ear? OUCH! dubya talk on a far too massive decibil level, oy.

[alphafemale]

3. I've pretty much been a proud 10% too...I wanted to give * wiggle room."

But he blew it.

He was so worthless and blatent in using national tragedy and grief to further his political bully-pulpit that I was almost immediately repulsed.

And when the Trifecta-Jokes stated? I was horrified when the media didn't hold him accountable.

[Proud_Lefty]

5. Outstanding recollection; wonderfully said

I felt like I was in a Twilight Zone movie and some strange force took over my close friends and family's bodies. They were cheering for a moron who couldn't keep his stories straight, for a war they believed shed little to no blood, for a so-called $400 per child tax cut that turned out to only be an advance, that our country is now safer (but not safe), etc., etc. I saw through all the lies from the very beginning and people I thought were smart showed their true colors - not able to think for themselves, or just not wanting to think.

I still feel very isolated and unsteady. I believe that this administration is capable of the worst scenario, so I fear each and every day that another, worse tragedy will happen (as promised). But every week, a head pops up out of the crowd to say "Bush is an asshole that needs to be replaced." They are almost all afraid to speak too openly for the fear of being called unpatriotic or, as Dennis Miller called Krugman tonight, a socialist.

[neebob]

6. He cried?

I missed that. I don't remember much between waking up on the couch (where I had fallen asleep the previous evening) on the morning of September 11th, wondering what the hell is this live news footage on VH1, and a day or two later, watching the chimp with his megaphone - which is the moment I knew for sure he was an evil lying sack.

[gulliver]

7. He didn't bawl like a baby.

His face and voice just broke, and he said "I'm a loving guy." Just what the nation needed to hear from its president...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A34090-2001Sep14¬Found=true

BTW, I thought the megaphone stuff was actually effective, if contrived. It just wasn't enough to make me forget what Bush did before that. Rudy Giuliani was all over the news, a hero. Where was George? Sitting in a classroom for seven minutes. Then bunnyhopping. Then crying on camera.

[neebob]

8. "I'm a loving guy."

It is all about him, isn't it. What an asshole.

[LearnedHand]

9. In the, oh, 5 nanoseconds it took me to realize ...

... the significance of the date (written American style), I was already furious as well as devastated. I couldn't friggin' believe it (not because it happened, but because it happened under this jackass). The I was totally isolated because, NO ONE ELSE believed as I did, that this idiot-in-chief was at the very least milking it for all it was worth.

And yes, ALL I could think about when he was up there with the firefighter was about that poor guy's ears.

[Zinfandel]

10. The bullshit was all over the TV screen..

One didn't have to look very hard to see the same set up as always...within hours they already had the faces of all the "hijackers" yet they couldn't stop it and were not aware of it...and then the Pentagon is supposely hit by an airplane (complete bullshit) and not one of our fighter jets are even in the air...give me a break...they found the typical dastardly foe's drivers license in all that rubble and fire at the WTC. etc. etc. This shit was being fed to us hour after hour by the "official" source???

"9-11 was done by terrorist with boxcutters, who hate our freedom" WHAT???? This took many years of planning...it was in the works for whom-ever became the next REPUBLICAN puppet, I mean president...9-11, thousands of pages of the Patriot Act already written and Congress and the Senate forced to sign it without reading it...(or they might look un-patriotic, and...they wanted that gas pipeline in Afghanistan, they got it, , they wanted the oil reserves in Iraq and a huge US Base, they got it, they wanted to control us via the Patriot Act, they got it, they wanted to make billions for the Carlyle Group, Halliburton and the rest of the greedy corporate republican donors, they got it, thank you 9-11 and they are going to steal this election right in front of us, AGAIN!!!

How can one be frightened when you see the bullshit unfolding right in front of your eyes???