RANDOM THOUGHTS

ANGER THERAPY


I have a couple of related questions for my readers. There's something that I've been kicking around in my head for a couple of days as Bush parades around the country as the "9/11 president". I'd like you all to think back five years ago, in the days and weeks following 9/11, were any of you toeing the line of "standing behind the president"? Did you put the partisan politics of the day beside in order to stand with the Bush as Americans, and not Democrats and Republicans?
I didn't. I know that some of you might think that I'm probably just remembering things the way I want to because of how I feel about him now, or have felt about him for the past few years. I considered that myself, but ultimately I realized that I was one of those 10% who didn't stand behind Bush in the days and weeks after 9/11. At the time, I thought that this was all nice theatre, what with Congress singing Kumbaya or whatever it was they sang in front of the Capitol, but I just was not nibbling on that bait. Back then, I had a sinking suspicion that when the inevitable investigations began, that Clinton would get the blame for it. I knew that, having been in office for less than nine months, it would be a sufficiently short enough amount of time to give Bush sort of a plausible deniability and essentially absolve him of the responsibility of that day. At least, that's what the Bush supporters would push over the coming months, with varying degrees of success.
I looked at images of Bush in that classroom in Sarasota and thought that this is the president we had, one of freezes up when the chips are down, regardless of a couple of prepared statements he delivered during and after the disaster. He was completely and utterly out of his element. He had absolutely no idea what to do when faced with a true crisis. It's probably best that he spent his Vietnam years in Texas and Alabama because if he had been in country, he probably would have gotten his fellow soldiers killed due to his inaction at the moment when his brothers in arms needed him most.
Back before Bush became [s]elected I felt that he was offensively unqualified for the job of president. After the 9/11 attacks, that thought stayed in my head - this is too big for him. He is not mentally capable of making the right decisions. The man who many thought it'd be cool to have a beer with is not the man we needed at that time in our history. Even now, after over five years of on-the-job training, he seems painfully awkward and ill-prepared in the role. To me, Bush as president is like a bad actor in a high school play - he tries to go through the motions and he sometimes knows his lines, but he has never convinced me that he is the president, that he truly understood the role.

For five years, I did not watch a single 9/11 documentary or special. I couldn't. I was too angry. Angry at a lot of things. Over time that anger coalesced into an anger at Bush for using 9/11 as a political tool and an excuse to carry out his agenda. Watching a 9/11 program only made me angry that Bush hadn't captured bin Laden; it made me angry that he fought against the formation of a 9/11 commission; it made me angry that he wouldn't stop using 9/11 as a campaign prop no matter what subject he was talking about.
Finally, during this "9/11 season" I actually started watching a couple of programs on the Discovery Channel and the History Channel. Not coincidentally I started writing this blog, which leads me to believe that I finally had an outlet for my anger. By writing this blog, I was able to begin the hear the stories of that fateful day; the people's stories, the forensics of the buildings' collapses, the history that led to 9/11, all of the stories. I did so without becoming angry. I'm glad that I finally did sit down and watch them. There are many important stories that came out of that day and very few had anything to do directly with Bush so to finally experience them has been cathartic. Of course, I've got over five years of anger to vent through this blog, so expect me to be around for a while.