In honor of the horrifying memory from 23 years ago.

However, outlandish unabashed asshole seeps in from last night’s debate disaster (h/t image via Digby):

A somewhat perfect picture of the T-Rump, uninterested in the solemn remembrance of those killed in the Sept.11, 2001, attacks against the Twin Towers, the beginning of a horror run of war from the Republican-led government. Yet so criminally shitty has the T-Rump/MAGA influence become on the Republican party, those assholes — GW Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and a shitload of others — have been forgotten in the face of corrupt, immoral outrage performed in the nowadays.
Even the T-Rump’s hypocritical stance today seems to characterize the situation.

Anthony L. Fisher at MSNBC this morning pieced it together:

Almost 3,000 people were killed in the attack. The Taliban quickly fell in Afghanistan, but the beginning of a 19-year-long war — which they would win — had only just begun. There were anthrax attacks in newsrooms and congressional offices. There were FBI roundups of innocent Muslims. Congress passed the Patriot Act, hyper-charging the surveillance state. The disastrous Iraq War would begin seven months later.

America’s military misadventure in Iraq was such a fiasco, in fact, that it’s oft-cited as a major factor in Donald Trump’s hijacking of the Republican Party, which is now more a personality cult than a political organization with coherent politics.

When Trump announced his presidential run in 2015, there were plenty of reasons to be concerned. He was overtly racist. He encouraged violence among his followers. He promised a “Muslim ban.” The thought of what he might do in a national crisis, like 9/11, was terrifying to some of us. But to many others who still wouldn’t vote for him, Trump was all talk, he was a clown, his rhetoric was a sideshow and a distraction to the real issues — like tax cuts or something.

Thankfully, we never had to find out how Trump would have led a frightened, angry country flailing around after a murderous assault on the homeland. We did, however, get a good look at what he’d do as the leader of the free world during a once-in-a-century global crisis — which was to deny the crisis was happening, then lie to the public about the severity of the crisis, then put his nepo baby son-in-law and his cronies in charge of handling the crisis. It didn’t go well, by any metric.

Before that crisis had ended, he tried to steal an election that he decisively lost and directly incited a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol. He literally broke the revered American tradition of peaceful transfer of power. Thanks to the cowardice and opportunism of Mitch McConnell, he avoided conviction at his second impeachment, leaving him still eligible to serve in elected office, and nearly four years later — here we are.

Of course, here we are:

MeidasTouch has identified ten Republicans who honored the 9/11 hijackers in their posts about the terrorist attack today.

Story… https://t.co/JFX6iH44Rb

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) September 11, 2024

Read the list at Meidas News.

Meanwhile, in near-sacred remembrance in New York:

A citywide moment of silence was held at 8:46 a.m. to mark the moment hijacked Flight 11 struck the North Tower. A second moment of silence was held at 9:03 a.m. to mark when hijacked Flight 175 struck the South Tower.

Another moment of silence followed at 9:37 a.m., marking when hijacked Flight 77 struck the Pentagon.

A moment of silence was held at 9:59 a.m. to mark when the South Tower fell, then at 10:03 a.m. to mark when hijacked Flight 93 crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and then at 10:28 a.m. to mark when the North Tower fell.

Including:

On this day each year, families who lost loved ones in the worst terror attack on American soil make the solemn trek to observe the six moments of silence, hear the reading of the names, and fulfill a sacred promise to never forget.

As years pass, more and more names are being read by children and young adults born after the attacks — as an older generation passes on the grave responsibility of remembering this day to a new generation.

“Twenty three years is like 23 seconds. On Sept. 11, my brother disappeared, but this place has become my altar,” one man said at the podium. “This ceremony is essential, because that day he disappeared, but if I come here and I speak his name out loud, and you hear his name, he will never, never disappear.”

“I have sunflowers every year, not just because they remind me of my uncle Richie, but because in a time of such profound darkness, they always look for the light,” one woman said.

Attempt to pay homage to those killed and try to forget the T-Rump, or not, yet here we are once again…

(Illustration out front: ‘Twin Towers,’ oil by Preston Sandlin, and found here.)