It has been noted how different the times are now, when on 9/11 the nation "came together"...

[Silent3]

...in mourning, and even came together behind George W. Bush.

However, while it's true that today's Trumpist Republicans are a much nastier bunch than the Republicans of 2001, I sincerely doubt the "coming together" would have happened with a President Gore in charge.

With Gore in charge, of course, a memo stating "Bin Laden determined to strike the US" would have actually received due attention, and the attacks of 9/11 might never have happened.

But if the attacks happened anyway, vehement recriminations of Gore would soon have followed. Perhaps not quite as quickly and reflexively as today, when the political attacks on a Democratic president would begin in five milliseconds, but soon.

[lucca18]

1. So true!

[applegrove]

2. I remember months after 9/11 book sales at the airport included a number of nonfiction

Last edited Sat Sep 11, 2021, 06:42 PM - Edit history (1)

books on Islam. We were tempering ourselves to not knee jerk and be islamaphobic (unlike Trump who was islam-a-phobic in a sales like way during his campaign in 2016). 9/11 was a long time ago. A lifetime.

[doc03]

3. I think so far Bin Laden is winning. Just as he wanted he

got us into another ME war. We have lost more lives in the wars than we lost on Sept. 11. The country is more divided today than back in 1860. We are maybe one election away from a fascist dictatorship. Russia went into Afganistan as the USSR and collapsed. After a very short time as a democracy they are now a fascist dictatorship. What have we accomplished?

[betsuni]

4. Republicans would've used it to their political advantage, they and the press

relentlessly attacking Gore for allowing it to happen and then not doing enough to find out who was behind it. He wouldn't be reelected.

[brush]

5. Bush, Cheney and the PNAC warmongers were itching for war.

They weren't satisfied with driving Bin Ladin and Al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, which was justified. They had to pivot to Attacking Iraq which turned the Muslim world against us and spurred our domestic anti-war movement, dividing us in process.

It was downhill from there. And years later came the orange buffoon monumental exacerbated the big divisions in our society in so many ways.