9/11 changed everything. Right? Everybody knows that. Until 9/11, America, having won WWII single-handed, was thought by its people to be impregnable. [= can't have children? Ed.] The idea of enemies, especially backward barbarians [= people with beards. Ed.] attacking and killing Americans on their own soil was inconceivable [= can't have children? Ed.]
Then 9/11 happened and the United States of America became what I call the Paranoid States of America. I am not alone in thinking that Americans panic easily. The late great George Carlin said those exact words in a bit about "germs", which he performed years before the Great Dempanic.
But this is not about the threat to the nation's wellbeing posed by the Wuhan flu or monkeypox or whatever health crisis comes along tomorrow. This is about how the Deep State used 9/11 to take control of the administration and take away Americans' freedoms, all in the name of "national security".
What follows is excerpted from The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth in Bush's America, by Frank Rich (Penguin 2006). Talking about the Great Anthrax Scare -- remember that? -- which began just three weeks after 9/11, Mr Rich writes:
Bush said little about it, delegating the problem to ineffectual Cabinet members like [Tommy] Thompson, the secretaryof health and human services, and the attorney general, John Ashcroft.... They were Keystone Kops in the costumes of bureaucrats, ready at any time to slip on a banana peel....
Ashcroft often shook as if he'd just seen not only great Caesar's ghost, but perhaps John Mitchell's as well. In his disregard for the law, Ashcroft often did seem determined to emulate the Watergate-era attorney general, though on a grander scale.
It wasn't enough for Congress to enhance his antiterrorist legal arsenal legitimately by passing the USA Patriot Act before most of those on the Hill had taken the time or the trouble to read it; the attorney general changed other rules without consulting senators or congressmen of either party at all.
He abridged by decree the Freedom of Information Act, an esssential check on government misbehavior during peace and war alike, and discreetly slipped into the Federal Register a new directive allowing eavesdropping on conversaqtions between some lawyers and clients.
If the administration was really proud of grabbing "emergency" powers at wartime, why was it doing so in the dead of night? Ashcroft refused repeated requests to explain himself before congressional committees. At one House briefing where he did show up, he told congressmen they could call an 800 number if they had any questions about what his department was up to.
Remind you of anyone? Sounds to me like Merrick Garland, answering for the FBI raid on President's Trump's Florida home! Getting back to what Mr Ashcroft did, supposedly to protect national security, Mr Rich continues:
Ashcroft's Justice Department seemed to be squandering time and resources on wild goose chases that pumped up arrest numbers without making any progress on tracking down terrorists.... But Ashcreoft had been zealous and then some about warning of other terrorism attacks while the anthrax threat was proceeding under his nose.
The first alert of a probable new attack was issued two weeks after 9/11. On the first month anniversary of 9/11, the attorney general and the FBI warned again that new attacks by terrorists either in America or overseas might happen in the "next several days." Bush endorsed this alert, but neither he nor anyone in the government explained how serious the threat was or what form it might take or when it might happen.
Before you say "So what? That's ancient history... and Bush was a Republican," please consider that the DOJ and other organs of the Deep State never gave back the far-reaching and unconstitutional powers they arrogated [excellent word -- look it up. Ed] to themselves in the aftermath of 9/11.
The Deep State and their bought-and-paid-for media say now that President Trump's keeping certain unspecified "top secret documents" mixed in with other papers at Mar-a-Lago represents a "threat to national security". I would like to know from whence comes that threat?!
Who is threatening the Paranoid States of America, now that Saddam Hussein has been killed, along with Obama Bin Laden and their successors. Who hates America and Americans enough to wage jihad against the Land of the Somewhat Free?
OK, it's the Islamic extremists, right, the ones who pulled off 9/11 but haven't really done anything horrible on American soil since. Is the DOJ seriously suggesting that Mr Trump is somehow colluding with the mad mullahs and will reveal to them our plans to start the Gulf Wars again?
If not the Arabs, then how about the Russians? The Dumbocrats already tried without success to portray Messrs Trump and Putin as co-conspirators against Democracy with a capital D. It didn't work. China, then? Couldn't be. China only does business with Hunter Biden and Mr. Big.
So I repeat... where is the threat to national security? If, anywhere in the three dozen boxes of papers which have now been taken away from the Trump residence, there is one single iota, jot or tittle of evidence proving that President Trump was planning to sell out or otherwise harm the US of A, I'd like to see it.
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