Reply #19: listening to Pacifica radio wondering why the rest of America had gone totally fucking insane

[yurbud]

After 9/11, I felt like I was in some kind of surreal, Donnie Darko, Jacob's Ladder nightmare, with politicians and TV news people saying stuff that made no political, historical, military, or even common sense.

A country that might have one or even a handful of nukes could blackmail the whole world, so we have to invade them? That doesn't even pass muster as action movie logic.

Americans have to give up their civil rights because a handful of terrorists backed by our allies Saudi Arabia and Pakistan attacked us, but those countries, not even their leaders, are punished at all?

We need to keep a Cold War-sized military to fight terrorist groups that have no navy, air force, or ability to take and hold territory here or in any country outside of lawless backwaters like Afghanistan, Sudan, or Somalia?

and so on.

Pacifica was like listening to the BBC radio in occupied Europe during WWII for a while.

I would scour the internet for real news and eventually one of my leftier friends told me about DU. I was hooked pretty quickly though the first couple of years I didn't bump into the boundaries of acceptable debate a tenth as often as I have since Obama was elected.