“We seem to wallow in fear.”

I can’t say I felt overwhelmingly manipulated by the five-year commemoration of 9/11, but that’s probably because I don’t watch television. This guy was sick of it, and he’s Greenwich mean time. Then again, on the occasion, it was probably too much to ask anyone within our shores to express this version of reality.

The causes remain the same: separatism, and religious nationalism dressed up as holy war.

What has changed, grotesquely, is the aftershock. Terrorism is 10% bang and 90% an echo effect composed of media hysteria, political overkill and kneejerk executive action, usually retribution against some wider group treated as collectively responsible. This response has become 24-hour, seven-day-a-week amplification by the new politico-media complex, especially shrill where the dead are white people.

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