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A_Very_Nice_Dog's avatar

"One of the things that isn't talked about so much these days is that, while it was a divisive time under the Trump administration, there weren't armed insurrections and disputed territories along the California, Michigan, and New Jersey borders. That's something that is on president Tom Cotton's hands. Under Donald Trump's contentious, but firm, leadership, we still had at least fifty states in the union."

- Paul Krugman, coughing up blood in a bunker and still Tweeting in 2032.

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Richard Cardenas's avatar

My wife's father is from Jordan. He spent his career working for the Corps of Engineers starting in the early 80s. His coworkers were shit to him when he started his career because of Iran idiocy. He then got round two of being shat on after 9/11. Coworkers he'd known for years stopped talking to him, etc.

My brother in law was in 4th grade in 2001 and a kid told him he was going to bring a gun to school and shoot him. There were meetings at the school but the kid faced no punishment beyond being asked to apologize.

A neighbor, who is a well known doctor in town, pulled a gun on my father in law who was out looking for a lost cat. They'd lived in the same place for over 15 years at that point. That was around 2002 or 2003.

My father in law isn't Muslim by the way. His parents were Catholic and as a kid he bounced around Lebanon and Jordan because (insert 50 year history of the middle east here).

Anyways, that's how tolerant people in suburban Texas were after 9/11, thanks to W's calmness.

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Susan's avatar

Great analysis. Millions of people around the world tried to stop the genocidal war against Iraq. These liberals don’t recognize that movements from the ground up do see the past and current times for what they are.

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sickduck's avatar

9/11 didn't personally affect me or disrupt my comfortable life so technically it was all pretty low-key!

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Professional Lurker's avatar

"X didn't personally affect me...!" is essentially the subject line for half of the opinion pieces in the NYT, WaPo, etc.

"How this tiny slight against me personally ruins all of our lives" is, of course, the other half.

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Simon Pollock's avatar

Saving Rafi some work here:

Man, what the hell?

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Nicholas Slayton's avatar

Seriously though.

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Steve Hayward's avatar

Not only was there PLENTY of anti-Muslim "sentiment" and outright hostility (as noted by Richard in another comment here) it has continued for 19 years! Trump perpetuates it to this day with things like his don't-call-it-a-Muslim-ban travel ban! I was still in Toronto at the time, and it was happening there too!

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Buzz's avatar

Christ, I was 9 on 9/11 and I remember pretty clearly panic and a mass outbreak of anti-Muslim sentiment

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Satan’s Public Defender's avatar

If 9/11 gave us any positives, there’s this one and only thing: it showed the world that Paul Krugman is an absolute delusional idiot #NeverForget

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biff_wonsley's avatar

If you liked "look forward, not backward" from Obama, you're going love it coming from Biden. We have so much to look forward to!

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Louisiana swamp-priest's avatar

lol get fucked krugman

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BrenDerlin's avatar

To people like Krugman, it's okay to kill millions of muslims as long as you also say things like "Islam is a religion of peace" - because then everyone will understand the nuance between BAD muslims who are TERRORISTS and GOOD muslims who like PEACE.

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CGold113's avatar

I was a freshman in high school when the towers fell, so I very barely had an understanding of how the world really worked at that point (being raised conservative by arch-conservative parents certainly didn't help, but I digress). Even I knew that Muslim people were being targeted and harrassed, and they still are to this day! I can't imagine what Krugman was thinking here.

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Jim Evans's avatar

Spot on.

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Jeff's avatar

The first sentence in Krugman's tweet got me...was he living in a different America at the time, because that is not my recollection of what happened at all. We are still feeling the effects on a regular basis. Great piece, Jack. Guarding against this narrative revisionism is going to be important.

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Jake's avatar

great piece, Jack.

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Bill Lumbergh's avatar

Maybe it was an attempt at sarcasm? Deadpan? That the “2/“ at the end was a typo that should have been “/s”? No? No, you’re probably right.

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