9/11

In 2004 a Bush aide (widely believed to be Karl Rove) chided a New York Times journalist for working in the "reality-based community", meaning people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality … That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do".

Karl Rove is a fine individual and I do not mean to single him out, but he provides an exemplary display of being out of touch with reality in this attributed quote. Ever since 9/11 - and quite possibly for a while before - we have been out of touch, and it is getting worse.

For a long time I was very negative in my outlook, while everyone else slapped a big smile on their faces and marched off to Iraq... a war not really won and barely paid for. It's easy to be negative: look how many people have picked it up now! Everywhere one turns, one may hear a doom and gloom from someone making comments in the media.
Now I like to emphasize all the positive possibilities.

It takes no brains, strength, nor insight to be negative when everyone is negative.
It takes even less brains to be mindlessly positive about very dubious adventures.

If we are going to memorialize 9/11, we had best memorialize the firemen and police and disaster responders and forget the horrors... we have more suffering ahead of us, so I see no reason to dwell on our past suffering. And we have better not memorialize the Rove attitude of being totally in some different universe from the rest of mankind.
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