The Federal Aviation Administration has now acknowledged that the third of the four planes seized by the 19 men with box cutters had already hit the Pentagon before the FAA finally called there to say there was a problem. The FAA lied to the 9/11 commission about this, then took two years to ascertain the facts – a 51-minute gap in defense – and released the finding on the Friday before Labor Day, an excellent burial site for bad news.
So America is not the secure fortress we grew up imagining. Perhaps it never was. What protects us is what has protected us for 230 years: our magnificent isolation. After the disasters of the 20th century, Europe put nationalism aside and adopted civilization, but we have oceans on either side, so if the president turns out to be a shallow, jingoistic fool with a small, rigid agenda and little knowledge of the world, we expect to survive it somehow. Life goes on.
Oh, how I wish I’d written that. This is the kind of thing – and by the way the whole essay is great – that comes from sitting and thinking and writing with patience. One of the reasons my blog isn’t better – and my writing in general – is that I rush it. I’m rushing this now. More on that later, when I have time. Suffice it to say, I’m glad we have real writers of focus like Keillor … and Molly Ivins.
Metaphor 