She was angry about the attacks but she was also angry about how they were being portrayed in the media: “The disconnect between last Tuesday’s monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing.”

Yes, she pointed out the relationship between American foreign policy and 9/11: “Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a ‘cowardly’ attack on ‘civilization’ or ‘liberty’ or ‘humanity’ or ‘the free world’ but an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?”

But her deepest worry concerned intelligence failures and the subsequent manipulation by media and elected officials: “The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.”

She did not believe we were being well-served by “confidence-building and grief management.” As she put it so well, “Politics, the politics of a democracy—which entails disagreement, which promotes candor—has been replaced by psychotherapy. Let’s by all means grieve together. But let’s not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen.”

Sunny uplifting rhetoric was not then–and is not now–a substitute for looking at the world with a cold eye.

Stephen says all nations, in effect, do horrible things. A truism. But what responsibility does the average citizen bear for these “horrible things”?

Btw: we’ve been at war now over all this for nine years–more horrible things?