Sickened

So today is the 7th anniversary of 9/11. It dawned on me earlier today that the last time we were attacked in such a way - Pearl Harbor - we handled things a bit differently. Seven years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, we were already more than three years past the end of World War II. Pearl had long since been rebuilt, many of the ships sunk that day had been raised, repaired, and returned to service. We had vanquished our enemies.

It sickens me that this time, instead of keeping our focus on the people who were responsible for the attacks, the criminals in the Bush Administration lied to us about an enemy that we had already contained within their borders. You know the rest, if you’ve been paying any attention for the last 5+ years.

It sickens me that there are still people in this country who believe that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11.

It sickens me that today, seven years later, there’s still a hole where the towers stood.

It sickens me that the huge amount of sympathy and support we had from the rest of the civilized world was squandered on an adventure we never should have embarked upon in the first place.

And it really sickens me that the Republicans had the gall to play a 9/11 tribute video at their convention. As if they were the only ones who suffered or lost family and friends on that day. As if they’ve cornered the market on grief, or revenge, or whatever the hell else they were trying to do with that video. As if it hadn’t happened on their watch, after they’d been warned. But I guess that shouldn’t surprise me, as the Republicans’ behavior of late has been anything but honorable.

I think I’ve always disliked the GOP more than the Democrats, or at least as long as I’ve paid any attention at all to politics. Granted, the Dems have plenty of their own problems, some of which I’ll cop to here as I ramble and rant. There was a time when they were more a tax-and-spend party than the Republicans, but those days are gone. Obama doesn’t want to raise your taxes any more than McCain does; as a matter of fact, if you make less than a quarter million dollars a year, you’ll actually pay lower taxes under Obama’s plan than you will under McCain’s. Whether that’s a good thing - considering our blinding, spiraling debt problem, thank you very much, Bush - is another question.

But the Reps (or at least those leading them) have always seemed to me to be somehow more inherently evil. Part of it is the pandering to the  evangelicals and the bible-thumping whackos on their fringe. Those poor souls took way too long to realize they were being played for the saps they are and when the idea finally started to dawn on them it only took the nomination of Sarah Palin - former Catholic, new Evangelical (oh, and a secessionist) - to start pulling some of them back to the fold. Never mind that Palin won’t have any real power unless septaugenarian, four-times-cancer-riddled McCain should happen to snuff it between 2009 and 2012.

Another factor that adds to the Republican’s evilness is their willingness to use the most egregious campaign tactics — slander and outright lies — to further their agenda, while always retreating behind their supposed “American values” and “Patriotism.” Oh, that’s another thing: their constant painting of anyone other than themselves as “America-hating liberals” and “commie socialist pinko bastards.” Or whatever. You get the point. Theirs is the politics of division, of us-against-them, of it’s-totally-our-way-or-the-highway. While they’re busily shouting about “liberals hating our freedoms” they’re also busily eroding the rights of ordinary citizens.

I guess in general it’s the cognitive dissonance that bothers the shit out of me. And that, of course, sickens me as well.

Edit: At the moment, it appears the McCain campaign is already ratcheting up their caging campaign.