It didn't take the Republicans very long to hijack the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. By Friday, September 14, we cats had taken down the American flag from our house (we'd been the first in the neighborhood to put one up), because Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blamed the attacks on gays and abortion providers — and the White House refused to repudiate them.
That same day, as we recall, George W. Bush — formerly the Worst Person Who's Ever Lived, but who worked mighty hard to live up to that moniker when he was President — quelled concerns about his lack of leadership during the crisis by standing on a pile of rubble in Lower Manhattan and blustering through a bullhorn. And America forgave him. (Somehow we think the same would not have happened to the rightful winner of the 2000 election, President Gore.)
Thus began a milking of 9/11 that Bush, Cheney and the Republicans used to question people's patriotism, destroy American heroes in the 2002 midterms, and justify a disastrous invasion of a country that hadn't attacked us (Iraq). The Bushies were so protective of this that they were even willing to unmask a dedicated CIA officer and put in danger American assets abroad. So, lest you be tempted to think that Donald Trump's current hideousness has wiped out the badness of the Bushies — well, think again.
Today, though, the perfidy and hypocrisy of the Republicans' abuse of and disdain for 9/11 became abundantly clear: Republican Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah stopped the 9/11 first responders' compensation fund dead in its tracks. These are dudes who profess concern about national debt but who had no problem voting for Trump's ruinous tax cut for the 1 percent.
The GOP has apparently decided that its special brand of 9/11 exploitation is paying no more political dividends — so who cares what happens to the guys who worked the pile for months, and the journalists who covered them?
The Republican Party's transgressions over the last 40 years have been many, but one of the worst was the appropriation of a national tragedy for their political gain. Now, people are saying that Trump will self-destruct and take the party with him. We cats cannot wait for that day. In the meantime, we Democrats are taking 9/11 back from the Republicans' soiled hands. And we HISS.
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