September 11.
ABC's Path to 9/11 docudrama has been a source of disagreement here at home. It's highlighted for me something that I find continually challenging and frustrating - my dad and I, while we tend to agree on most 'big' moral issues, just don't know how to negotiate the spaces where we disagree - especially when it comes to George W. Bush. Anything at all that I say implying Bush's faults is met with skepticism and disdain for my alarm, and anything that he says implying that maybe it's not as big a deal as I think it is is met with just as much skepticism (and anger). We aren't getting anywhere. We haven't gotten anywhere in a while. (This is, obviously, a problem that runs deeper than just this one example, it's the same issue that is bedeviling liberals everywhere, see also: story of my life so far) I don't really know what to do about it, but it's been on my mind a lot the past few days as this 9/11 film controversy raged.
As regards the 9/11 film, Dad (and a lot of other people, really) doesn't have a problem with fictionalized scenes or insinuations made without factual basis. He thinks that as long as it's mostly right, it's fine, that people need to know the history behind 9/11. To which I say: of course we need to know the history. But a whole bunch of prominent historians have come out in opposition to the film.
In response to lots of criticism, ABC made some last-minute big (but not big enough) edits.
If there is one thing that's on my mind today, this fifth anniversary of 9/11, it is this: no one is served by falsehoods and distortions in the name of promoting an agenda. If we cannot even be honest with ourselves about what happened, how can we begin to know what we have to do from here?