The "quiet dignity" of 4 World Trade Center.

Not to be confused with 1 World Trade Center — the 1776-foot-tall "Freedom Tower" — 4 World Trade Center is designed to reflect the reflecting pools that occupy the place where the original Twin Towers stood. The video is worth waiting out a the commercial. I especially enjoyed the views of the interior and the modest, gentle expressiveness of the architect Gary Kamemoto. Listen for what he says about craftsmen.

"As architects, if we push and try to do something extraordinary and give the workers that opportunity, we see that everybody is wanting to prove their trade."

The administration's refusal to give Congress access to the Benghazi witnesses.

On today's "Fox News Sunday," Lindsay Graham was talking about his threat of blocking all the President's nominees in the Senate until Congress is given access to the witnesses to the Benghazi attack.

CHRIS WALLACE: OK. So, when you and other senators -- because you're not along in this -- asked to talk to the survivors... or to read the interviews that the FBI conducted within hours after the attack... what does the administration say to you?

GRAHAM: They say it's an ongoing criminal investigation, which is stunning. Under that theory, we would not be able to look at 9/11 and to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was prosecuted. He's still not even going to trial....

Under that theory there would not have been Watergate hearings!

GRAHAM: Can you imagine if this was George W. Bush and he told the Congress after 9/11 -- you can't talk to anybody because there's a potential criminal investigation, we're not going to investigate how 9/11 became the failure that it was?

Banksy graffitis protest against the NYT for rejecting his op-ed mocking the new World Trade Center tower.

I got to his website from the NY Post, via Drudge, which takes at face value the statement "Today’s piece was going to be an op-ed column in the New York Times. But they declined to publish what I supplied. Which was this..."


Banksy's post says it was to be an op-ed, but it's not in the format of an op-ed. It's presented in the form of a front-page news story about the artist's opinion, not a column written by the artist, so I take it the mock-up of the NYT is just another artwork, a viral promo pointing to his graffiti (a photograph of which you can see at the first link, above).

But let's read the text anyway. Part of me resists artists who elbow me for attention, but that's not the part of me writing this blog post. We might ask: If this is in fact a rejected op-ed, why was it rejected? Well, obviously, it says "you've got to do something about the new World Trade Center," and that's too close to saying: Knock this one down too. It continues: "That building is a disaster," and how can you not think he's trying to do edgy comedy calling up memories of the disaster of September 11, 2001? The next line makes that obvious: "Well no, disasters are interesting."

Yeah, Artist Boy? Well, take your interestingness and go to hell.

That's my reaction after reading 2 paragraphs. But then I read on, and guess what? Artist Boy, self-professed lover of interestingness, goes on to natter out criticisms of the building that have all been aired extensively in the media as the reconstruction of the site has been debated over the years. Is Banksy familiar with any of that, or did he just wander over to America to start talking off the top of his head as if any of his thoughts are probably interesting?

I know. There seems to be a paradox: Why am I blogging about this if I don't find it interesting? It can't be interesting to say something is not interesting, can it? Yes, I'd say it is, if people are already acting as if it is interesting.

"'What happened today was not credible,' were the stunned and wooden words of Tom Clancy..."

A line on page 4 of the Martin Amis book "The Second Plane/September 11: Terror and Boredom," which I began rereading last night.

Tom Clancy died last Tuesday, and I did not blog about it, because I don't blog every obituary and because I've never read (or felt motivated to read) a Tom Clancy book. It doesn't mean anything — of course, I'm not superstitious — that I'd never taken an interest in Clancy and then I run into his name on the second page of the first essay in a book I happened to take down from the shelf for no apparent reason — was it on Tuesday?

I took the book off the shelf and immediately saw something I'd written inside the back cover. I didn't remember getting this idea, but I could recognize it as my own thinking and knew that something in the book had inspired me to think that. Because my graphomania extends to marginalia — as the first post on this blog attests — I'm able to find the place in the text that inspired the back-of-the-book notes.

First, I'll show you the Amis text (with my marginalia). It's on pages 13 and 14:




Now, I'll let you read my notes:

Asking Rand Paul about what Ron Paul said.

There's going to be a lot of this, and Rand Paul needs some skills here. Yesterday was a challenge, as he was asked about his father's statement that the 9/11/01 attacks were "blowback for decades of U.S. intervention in the Middle East." Rand's response:

"What I would say is that, you know there are a variety of reasons and when someone attacks you it’s not so much important what they say their reasons are... The most important thing is that we defend ourselves from attack. And whether or not some are motivated by our presence overseas, I think some are also motivated whether we’re there or not. So I think there’s a combination of reasons why we’re attacked.... The bottom line is, I think people around the world and our enemies around the world need to know that if we’re ever attacked on something like 9/11, if anyone were ever to use chemical weapons on our soldiers anywhere in the world, the response would be an overwhelming one from America and I think that’s the credibility we always need to maintain."

Rand's response was:
	Excellent. He took control and refocused in the right direction.
	Okay, but he should have more vigorously distanced himself from his father.
	Not good. He should have expressed outrage at caring about why we may be hated.
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9/11.

Today is the 12-year anniversary of the attack on America (as well as the 1-year anniversary of the Benghazi attack).

9/11 is not like Washington's Birthday/Lincoln's Birthday.

You're not supposed to use them to promote your commercial enterprise.

A Wisconsin golf course — Tumbledown Trails — advertised a $9.11 special for 9/11. It was, understandably, not well received. It was, in fact, so poorly received that they're considering closing the place on 9/11 to protect employees from the unpleasant things people might say.

Considering war and death, we should object to Washington's Birthday/Lincoln's Birthday advertising. There is some criticism of that now and then, but not much, perhaps because they're from the somewhat distant past, perhaps because we commemorate them on their birthdays — or a day around their birthdays — and not on an anniversary of their suffering.

And then, there's just something about golf. That golf should be played when anything serious is happening!

I was just listening to the podcast of yesterday's Rush Limbaugh show, and he was going on about "Obama on Syria: Incoherent Incompetence -- or the Decline of America by Design?," riffing on a WSJ piece by Norman Podhoretz called "Obama's Successful Foreign Failure."

Podhoretz noted the puzzle of how "to characterize a president who declares war against what he calls a great evil demanding immediate extirpation and in the next breath announces that he will postpone taking action for at least 10 days -- and then goes off to play golf before embarking on a trip to another part of the world?"

Rush restates it, double stressing the role of golf: "Then he goes out and plays golf and plans another trip, then comes back, and then says, 'By the way, I'm not gonna do this unless Congress goes along with me,' and then goes and plays golf."

After a commercial break, Rush is back rereading Podhoretz, replete with "then goes off to play golf."

The same golf-is-disrespectful game was played against Bush, who allowed video like this to be captured...



... and of course it was used against him. He compensated for media hostility by giving up golf entirely, and even his giving up of golf was used against him.

"President Obama’s toughest Syria hurdle: The calendar."

Oh no! Our leader, assailed by the calendar!

Obama will sit Monday for interviews for six TV news programs, which will air within an hour of what had promised to be the week’s most highly anticipated Washington event: the NFL Redskins’ season opener against Philadelphia....

If Monday Night Football pushed Obama’s address to the nation on Syria to Tuesday, odds are low for the president to have the nation’s attention to himself the rest of the week either.

The Sept. 11 anniversary comes Wednesday, the same day the Senate could vote for cloture. Yom Kippur begins Friday night.

Oh! That pesky September 11th anniversary, randomly popping up as a "tough hurdle" on Obama's — what's the metaphor? — race toward war! And this year, it's not just the usual anniversary of the day the terrorists declared war on the United States, it's now the first anniversary of the attack in Benghazi. Oh, my lord! The double 9/11 and football.

Obama won’t even have Tuesday to himself. Hillary Clinton is due to deliver a speech that afternoon in Philadelphia. Voters in New York City will head to the polls for that city’s primary elections. And the new iPhone event scheduled for that day has become an annual media spectacle.

Fate has no mercy on this man, this once-golden savior of the world! The double 9/11, football, and Hillary gives a speech in Philadelphia. A speech! In Philadelphia! (I wonder if she'll talk about Benghazi? What difference at this point does it make?) The double 9/11, football, and Hillary gives a speech... and New York has a primary... and Apple has the audacity to do another one of its PR events.

Here's Bill Clinton's old press secretary Mike McCurry:

“How do you hold the attention of the American people when it is increasingly hard to do so with the distractions of the NFL season and religious holidays and back-to-school nights?” 

Increasingly? Is football new? Is going back to school new? Is Yom Kippur new?! (Note: Only 1.7% of Americans are Jewish.)

“This is the challenge of the presidency, the ability to gather the nation around a common campfire is just not there anymore. You have to go for the sporadic bursts of attention and deal with the perpetual A.D.D. that people have.”

And now we are to be blamed for A.D.D.! People are tired of 12 years of war. It's not A.D.D. to react with an instinctive "no" to another war, a war that should have been explained already.

Why would a normal person — with a normal attention span — believe that Obama will tell us something new on Tuesday? Why didn't he look us in the eye and explain everything clearly when he first proposed it or when he said he was submitting the question to Congress? It's not A.D.D., it's common sense to reflexively turn away.

Timing has worked against the White House from the very start. The Aug. 21 attack that prompted the administration to gear up for a Syria strike left Obama violating his predecessor’s key rule on selling the public on a war: Don’t do it in August.

Politico writes as if war is funny and the real issue is the little things that bug Obama.

Looking for the war protest. Part 2: The video.

Meade and I approach the Capitol, here in Madison, Wisconsin, on a Saturday morning, thinking if there's going to be action, it will be here. This is before Obama emerged to say that he was going to ask permission from Congress. This is a 10 minute video, but it's edited and moves quickly, I think. Look at the tags below to get an idea of what's in store:

"Make no mistake, NSA can and will perform its missions consistent with the Fourth Amendment and all applicable laws."

"But senior leadership must understand that today’s and tomorrow’s mission will demand a powerful, permanent presence on a global telecommunications network that will host the ‘protected’ communications of Americans as well as the targeted communications of adversaries."

National Security Agency memo from the Clinton era, highlighted at Politico under the headline "NSA memo pushed to 'rethink' 4th Amendment" and noting "The quotes around 'protected' appear in the original document." (I haven't read the memo, but the quotes around "protected" may have to do with the third party principle discussed here.)

Also at the Politico link:

The NSA has been a central player in U.S. cyber strategy since at least 1997, according to a separate declassified memo obtained by [George Washington University’s] National Security Archive. That document describes how the administration of President Bill Clinton assigned NSA with “Computer Network Attack” — “a natural companion to NSA’s exploit and protect functions,” the memo said.

But it wasn’t until later, after the infusion of billions of dollars and the new legal authorities that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, that NSA’s capabilities grew to the scale revealed this week.

I note the groundwork for the argument: Bill Clinton would have averted the 9/11 attacks. Also: Everything is Bush's fault. Before 9/11, he didn't do what Clinton told him to do. After 9/11, he did too much.

"A Self is interesting to oneself and others, it acts as a sort of rudder in all the vicissitudes of life..."

"... and it thereby defines what used to be known as a career," wrote Jacques Barzun to his grandson, the lawprof, Charles Barzun, quoted by my son Jaltcoh here. The grandson had asked for help with what he called "a genuine crisis of identity... "brought on by the events of 9/11 and partly by my own discovery that I could not have cared less about my job." The grandfather assured him that he would find his way, which would look "like a path marked on a map" and "you will have made a Self, which is indeed a desirable possession."

The elder Barzun likens identity to a path and then to a rudder. Life is a journey. That's a very widely used metaphor. All these people who think of life as a journey: What are they picturing? Do they see a wilderness where you can find — or break — a path? Or do they see a map where you can mark a path? Or is it a journey over the ocean, in which your body is a ship, and what you want is a rudder?



The seafaring image implicit in Barzun's "rudder" made me think of that popular old poem that ends "I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul." I haven't heard that poem — "Invictus" — quoted in a long time, perhaps because it was overquoted to the point of triteness and nowadays people don't read poetry — other than in children's books. They'll listen to poetry, including the endless doggerel of rap (which is, perhaps, inspired by many childhood readings of Dr. Seuss books). But there was a time when lots of ordinary people knew the last verse of "Invictus" by heart.

I'm reading the Wikipedia page for "Invictus," scanning the long list of items under the heading "Influence." It begins with "Casablanca" (where "I am the master of my fate" is used ironically). The next item features Ronald Reagan:

In the 1945 film Kings Row, Parris Mitchell, a psychiatrist played by Robert Cummings, recites the first two stanzas of "Invictus" to his friend Drake McHugh, played by Ronald Reagan, before revealing to Drake that his legs were unnecessarily amputated by a cruel doctor.

Next, another President, FDR, at least the FDR of the 1958 play Sunrise at Campobello. Further down we encounter Nelson Mandela, who recited the poem to hearten his fellow prisoners. There's also Aung San Suu Kyi. And then... it's chilling to encounter this after beginning this post with the crisis of identity brought on by 9/11:

The Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh quoted the poem in its entirety as his final (written) statement.

The terrorists are out and about on their own ships in the seafaring journey of life, and they've got their rudders. Emergency inspiration available here.

"Reaching heights of 1,776 feet, One World Trade has surpassed the Empire State Building to become the tallest building in New York City."

"Previously dubbed the Freedom Tower, the building proudly stands tall in Lower Manhattan as a reminder of the resilience of New York City after a grave act of terror."

Great.

Why was "Freedom" dropped? Corny? Bush-y? Disagreement over whether they hate us because of our freedom?

Americans are asking "Why do they hate us?"

They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

I hope it was because "One World Trade" is dignified and traditional.

"Terrorists want large, splashy attacks on specific sorts of targets that have high emotional resonance..."

"... for both the victims and the people on your side who you hope to recruit, or tap for money.  This helps explain why Al Qaeda was so obsessed with the Twin Towers, a place that — until they fell — most New Yorkers regarded as a rather ugly landmark containing some so-so office space.  To a terrorist group looking for publicity, on the other hand, it had immense symbolic value: the tallest building in America's biggest city, with the hubristic name of 'World Trade Center.' That's why we don't get high-frequency, low-intensity attacks on crowded spaces near some Texas town that no one in Abottabad [sic] has ever heard of.  When attacks on those places happen, they tend to be the provenance of local lunatics for whom the nearby mall, or primary school, has some immense symbolic emotional importance."

Says Megan McArdle. This reasoning suggests that if only we'd avoid prideful spectacles we could deflect the Qaeda crowd. But there will always be local lunatics, and it's impossible to avoid all the tiny targets like schools and shops that every town has....

Adam Lanza was bullied while he attended Sandy Hook Elementary and his mother Nancy considered suing the school for turning a blind eye to the abuse, an unnamed Lanza family member told the New York Daily News.

“Adam would come home with bruises all over his body,” the relative told the Daily News. “His mom would ask him what was wrong, and he wouldn’t say anything. He would just sit there.”

Know your local lunatics. And for God's sake don't torment them. Don't create them out of whatever raw material you find around. Here's a pressure cooker. What can we put in it?

Now, these local lunatics tend to show their faces. It's a showdown. They die or get captured quickly. We know who did it.

On 9/11, every building I saw seemed shockingly vulnerable. I wondered if all buildings would come down. How deceptively solid these things seem, but there are people in the world who would destroy everything anybody builds. And yet so many buildings have remained standing all these years. I didn't think it would work out this well. Terrorists in my town bombed a minor spectacle of a building 40 years ago, but since 9/11, the building have held up.

After 9/11, I obsessed about what the terrorists would do next and, naturally, I thought of the things that would hit me and the people I knew. I pictured a day when 100 suicide bombers, one by one, in 100 different college towns stepped into a crowded café or movie theater or sports event and blew up. But that never happened. McArdle's theory suggests why. That's local-lunatic level. Too lowly for the Qaeda-type brand.

But is a crowd waiting at the finish line of the Boston Marathon such a spectacle? Are crappy pressure-cooker bombs the mark of a prideful organization that once commandeered 4 jet planes and piloted 3 of them into major landmarks?

We don't yet know who the Boston bomber is or even whether it's bomber or bombers. Using McArdle's reasoning, one wonders who fixates on the Boston Marathon. Do the people in Abbottabad care about our lengthy footraces? And why target the spectators? Or was the first bomb, planted in the spectators, supposed to make the runners run toward the second bomb? That's an evil trick, but hardly anything that seen from the other side of the globe could look like glory.

"Columbia professor strips down to underwear in bizarre lesson to help baffled students learn quantum mechanics."

"'In order to learn quantum mechanics, you have to strip to your raw, erase all the garbage from your brain, and start over again,' Prof. Emlyn Hughes said. Against a backdrop of 9/11 and Holocaust images, he remained in a fetal position as two people dressed as ninjas blindfolded stuffed animals."

"Um, nothing you’ve learned in your life up til now is in any way going to help prepare you for this.... I’ve been tasked with the impossible challenge of teaching you quantum mechanics in one hour."

Racist, sexist graffiti in the new World Trade Center bathrooms.

Port Authority police are now investigating. Who wrote these things? The construction workers?

“Such slurs are offensive and have no place at the World Trade Center site or elsewhere,” PA spokeswoman Lisa MacSpadden said. “The Port Authority has zero tolerance for those who demonstrate intolerance.”

The construction company said it has an anti-vandalism policy which it would "reiterate" to its crews.

Hardhats who toil on the site said the foul writing on the walls is a fact of life at all job sites — and there’s not much anyone can do about it.

Black construction workers, victims of some of the most repugnant scrawls, were furious but said they don’t dare complain when they see the N-word.

“You ask any black person on the job, and they’ll say, ‘What can you do about it?’ ” said an outraged Tyson Patterson, 35, of the Bronx. “You talk and you get fired. I have to be political and pretend it doesn’t bother me.”

"By naming the tragedy 12/14, we honor the 26 victims of the Sandy Hook School shooting, their families and their town. 12/14."

"Think it. Say it. Help Newtown heal."

I'm sorry, but no. If we take that approach, history will turn into numerical code and erstwhile ordinary days on the calendar will pop up each year as doomsdays, depressing some people and luring the crazies into copycatism.

Big events are normally named by the place where they happen, unless they are storms that we see coming and we name them like babies, when they are still cute like babies and haven't, like teenagers, shown their horrible tendencies.

9/11 was the exception to the rule, and this past year we got another 9/11 attack, in Benghazi. What do you do when these things pile up on the same day? It's not even random. The day fires up the imagination and focuses plans. I don't want a famous school massacre day called 12/14!

Protect our days, so that they continue to dawn as fresh new days, innocent and full of potential. Or let individuals infuse them with good memories, anniversaries of happiness like weddings and births.