Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

One week ago Israel was viciously attacked by the terrorist group Hamas, which is also de facto government of the Gaza Strip. Hamas fighters purposefully massacred hundreds of civilians in addition to waging attacks on military targets. Soon thereafter I started seeing the analogy in the news, "10/7 is Israel's 9/11." I was already thinking it myself.

I've also seen some articles where writers highhandedly admonish readers how 10/7 and 9/11 are not alike, because of how al Qaeda was a non-state actor and Hamas is a state actor, or some equally beside-the-point thing like that. There are two big problems with this. First, fuck the finger-wagging man-splaining. Anyone attempting to use asshole style arguments and rub my nose in how smart they are by explaining to me how I've been mistaken the whole time is rarely going to win points with me. Rarely, because it's rarely the case such people are actually right! I will agree with an asshole's point if they are right. But almost invariably assholes are not right, because they are too caught up in their own egos to recognize facts contrary to their prejudices. In this case these finger-waggers are wrong because of problem #2: All analogies fail when you take them too far.

The point of making an analogy is to illustrate how something unfamiliar or simply new, in this case the 10/7 attacks on Israel, is similar in a few keys respects to something much more familiar, like the 9/11 attacks on the US. The key is in a few key respects. An analogy will always— always— break down if you take it too far. The "take it too far" in the case of these contrarian writers is them comparing the different geopolitical positions of Hamas vs. Al Qaeda and arguing that because those two are not the identical the whole comparison is null and void. That's horseshit. Their argument is a logical fallacy (overextending an analogy proves nothing) and an indication of arguing in bad faith.

The point of the analogy between the attacks is not that Hamas and Al Qaeda are the same (except also in some limited regards) but that the impact and consequences of the attacks have, or are likely to have, key similarities. Here are three big similarities I can think of right off the top of my head:

1) The attack killed a huge number of people, proportionately. The 9/11 attacks in the US killed just under 3,000 people, virtually all civilians. The initial death toll in the attacks on Israel was estimated at just over 100 in the hours after the attack. Just that death toll is a comparable loss as the US population in 2001 of 285 million is 30x Israel's population of 9.3 million today. And as the breathtaking scope of the 10/7 attacks became clearer after the first few hours, the death toll increased to over 900. Edit: after several days it was increased to 1,400. That makes 10/7 actually fourteen times as bad as 9/11 in terms of proportionate loss of life.

2) Policy reaction to the attacks will change government and society. The US government implemented sweeping, permanent changes after 9/11. The changes are still all around us in our daily lives. In Israel, this attack is seen as a massive failure of the country's sophisticated and far-reaching intelligence apparatus. What changes in surveillance and security policies will be made? And will this attack ultimately topple the precarious government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? Israelis are understandably pulling together in this time of war, but at the same time many are openly criticizing the leadership of Netanyahu— who for years has defined his political brand as his ability to keep Israelis safe from attack better than absolutely anyone else.

3) Israel has a rare moment of global support— and may overplay it. Following 9/11 the US had broad international support, including from geopolitical rivals who'd ordinarily condemn US foreign actions, to find and bring to justice the parties responsible. This support backed the invasion of Afghanistan and tolerated, to a certain extent, broad suspicion of Muslim people and Muslim majority countries. The US overplayed its hand, though, in invading Iraq under flimsy pretenses that later proved false— arguably knowingly false— and in violating its own commitments to the international rules of law through actions such as detaining prisoners without charges or trial and using torture. Nevermind that the US's enemies did such things as a matter of course; the US was held by its peers and its own people to a higher standard. Israel faces the same challenge today. This attack was brutal. It violated the rules of war, via its deliberate attack on civilians and taking of hostages. But Israel will lose its moment of international support if it does the same in return. It may seem unfair that it's held to a higher standard, but it's simply a fact that it is. And already its war on Hamas is causing a widespread humanitarian crisis. The 2 million residents of the Gaza Strip have been without power or piped water for several days. Israel is telling 1 million of them to leave ahead of a ground invasion, but where will they go? The borders, including Egypt's border, are all closed.

The REAL ID program, which requires enhanced drivers licenses to do all sorts of not-driving things such as enter an airport, federal courthouse, or your Congressional representative's office, has been postponed another 2 years. Today the DHS pushed back the deadline for full enforcement from May 3, 2023 to May 7, 2025. Source: DHS press release, 5 Dec 2022.

The reason that I note it has been pushed back again is that the REAL ID program was enacted into law back in... 2005. With the latest extension it will have taken twenty years to implement— or more if it gets delayed again! As the idea of creating more secure identity documents was one of the recommendations coming out of the 9/11 commission, one has to wonder the fact it will have taken 24 years since 9/11 to get them implemented demonstrates they're just security theater and actually not consequential for public safety.

There are many reasons why this program has been delayed for so many years. Initially it was because a lot of states opposed the program that created federal security requirements on state-issued driving permits. States opposed it partly because Congress passed without hearings or debate. In the House, it was dropped from a must-pass appropriations bill because of member objections but then reinserted in conference committee. The full House then approved the appropriations bill with the unrelated Real ID rider, as did the Senate. Et voilà: How A Bill (Really) Becomes A Law.

While many states fought the law for several years, it did remain the law. The federal government extended deadlines a few times to give them more time to comply. When it looked like the final extension would end in 2019, the roughly half the states that were holding out aligned with the program so as not to create hardships for their citizens when traveling or attempting to interact with the federal government. But then another extension came, giving states until 2020... at which point the Coronavirus Pandemic arrived, so the federal government extended it a few more times, ultimately to May 2023. And now it's May 2025.

It's Tier Tuesday, etc., etc. The headline news in Coronavirus statistics this week Tuesday is that we're on the eve of 1,000,000 deaths in the US from Covid-19. Per figures at The New York Times Coronavirus in the U.S. (retrieved 10 May 2022) the U.S. death toll stands at 999,916. With an average of 365 deaths/day recently the one million mark will certainly be crossed tomorrow... if it isn't actually crossed tonight as late figures roll in.

One million deaths.

One million deaths in barely over two years.

One million deaths and barely anyone wants to take it seriously. Approximately 40% of the country believes political conspiracy theories that it's a hoax. Another 40% or so is just tired of dealing with it. And most of the rest figure it's too much of an uphill battle to do anything about it from via public health policy anymore.

One million deaths. Over the 26 months since the death toll really started accumulating (March, 2020) that's an average of 38,461 dead per month or about 1,266 a day. And there were numerous times when more than 3,000 died on any given day.

Even on those days when 3,000+ were dying the news might as well have been background noise. A non-factor in most people's daily lives.

Think about other times when fewer than 3,000 people were killed.

December 7, 1941. Pearl Harbor. 2,403 US persons were killed. The US declared war on Japan the next day, entering WWII, and changed the course of history in ways that affect virtually every person in the world through the current day.

September 11, 2001. The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a flight that crashed in rural Pennsylvania when civilians fought back against the attackers. 2,977 US persons died that day. US laws, practices, and understanding of civil rights have been turned upside since that day. Go to any airport today, nearly 20 years later, and you're subject to numerous policies borne out of 9-11-01. But already the policies of the Coronavirus pandemic, with its now 1,000,000 dead, were ended less than 2 years after being started.

1 million dead in the US. And at least a hundred of million in the US who don't care.

"When will the pandemic end?" I'm sure billions of people have asked over the past 22 months. Medical science has a technical answer for this, relating to the Basic Reproduction Number, abbreviated R₀ (R-naught), a measure of a virus's contagiousness. By that standard we're not to the "after" phase yet— particularly because Omicron seems to have a higher R₀ than previous strains. 

Recently I read an alternate definition of pandemic/post-pandemic based on a sociopolitical gauge. By that standard, the pandemic is over when we stop focusing on interdiction and instead shift to adaptation. I.e., we stop trying to stop the spread of the virus and instead focus on how to learn to live with it picking us off. But that is not a "Back to Normal" scenario; it's a New Normal. It is a scenario where the pandemic becomes an endemic. 😨

By that social definition we're already post-pandemic. We're into the endemic. 😱

What's the evidence for this? First, half the country, political, has been post-pandemic for at least a year already. That half is done with closures and limitations on indoors restaurants, clubs, gyms, concerts, etc.; done with masking requirements (indeed several states have made it illegal to require masks anywhere); done even with social distancing. And approximately 30% of the country say they will never, ever get the Coronavirus vaccination.

Sadly it's not just the reality-denying wing of the US that's basically given up on trying to stop the pandemic and focused instead of learning to live— or tolerated acceptable losses— with it. It's our Democratic leadership, too. President Biden's speech on the pandemic 10 days ago was all weaksauce stuff. He promised to get us more tests— which haven't arrived! Everyone I've spoken to about Coronavirus is scrambling to find one! And he sent the military in to bolster hospitals that are becoming short-staffed due to insufficient resources and burnout.

Days later the CDC announced a new, shorter recommending quarantine period for people infected. The reduction was not because medical science says less time is needed but because the government recognized virtually nobody was quarantining anyway and hopes a shorter time will get more people to comply.

Crucially, these are not measures to stop the virus; they are only measures for us to figure out how to live with it— and to accept 1,000+ US deaths per day (note: that's 9/11 THREE TIMES A WEEK!!!) from it.

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of 9/11. On 11 September 2001 nineteen terrorists commandeered 4 passenger aircraft and flew them into New York's Twin Towers and the Pentagon outside of Washington, DC. One of the aircraft crashed in an empty field outside the small town of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers aboard heard news of the mass murder-suicide attacks and tried to overpower the hijackers. In all nearly 3,000 innocent people were killed in the attacks.

"NEVER FORGET," demands the popular slogan. Indeed, we Americans who were alive on that day, even those of us who live 2,500 miles away from where the attacks occurred, will never forget what happened on 9/11. But while we, collectively, remember, it's like we have selective memory. While we remember this, what else are we forgetting? Or choosing not to acknowledge?

One thing that many people overlook, or minimize, in talking about 9/11 is the cost of the War on Terror we spawned in reaction to it. In efforts to punish the perpetrators and prevent subsequent attacks like it, we have spent nearly $6 trillion already— with another $2 trillion more needed in health care and disability coverage for veterans in decades to come. This war effort has resulted in nearly 900,000 deaths worldwide and at least 38 million people displaced. I read these figures in a fascinating article at Vox.com yesterday (11 Sep 2021).

Another thing many of us forget— or find easy to overlook— is how life has changed since 9/11. In the aftermath of the attacks safety became an all-consuming goal. Americans accepted, or were forced to accept, unprecedented government intrusion into their private lives. Surveillance became such a norm most of us forgot about it. And where people didn't forget it, their reminders were often met with eye rolls as if to call it churlish to mention. Plus, merely being surveilled is a majority privilege. People who are Muslim, or look or sound like they might be Muslim or from a Muslim country, are frequently stopped by authorities in the normal course of their lives because someone thinks they "look suspicious".

Yet another thing often forgotten, or failed to be acknowledged, is how 9/11 compares to other things. On 9/11 we lost nearly 3,000 people to a terrorist attack. 20 years later we've spent trillions of dollars, invaded multiple countries, killed almost a million people, and trampled on Constitutional liberties, all for those 3,000 deaths. Meanwhile, at various times in the past year, more people in the US died from Coronavirus in one day than were killed on 9/11. Overall 660,000 people in the US have died from Coronavirus in the past year and a half. Though the death toll is no longer surpassing 9/11 every single day it's still terrifyingly high at a recent average of 1,666 daily— more than half 9/11's death toll. Source: New York Times, "Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count", retrieved 12 Sep 2021.

All the more terrifying about Coronavirus's high death toll is that these deaths are now largely preventable— and have been for months. We know how greatly reduce transmissions, infections, and hospitalizations. It starts with the vaccine, which has been free and freely available in the US for months now. Next common simple, common sense measures such as masking and social distancing. If we could get high compliance with these three things we could have Coronavirus nearly eradicated in the US by now.

Instead we've got half the country's political leaders minimizing the dangers of Coronavirus and arguing that all these mitigation measures are pointless and/or unconstitutional trampling of civil liberties. Ironically this is the same political party that carried most of the water for the post-9/11 surveillance state. They argued as an article of faith, "The president's main job is to keep us safe." ...Actually, no, it's literally to uphold the laws and the Constitution— but don't let things like what's literally in the Constitution get in the way of your arguments. Oh, and BTW, this is also the party that argues for strict, literal interpretation of the Constitution— though obviously only when it suits their ideological goals.

So yeah, never forget 9/11. But don't let it blind you to terrible things going on today that we can stop.

So. Less than 24 hours after I last warned about it in this blog, it's finally happened. The deaths in the US due to Coronavirus on one day surpassed the 9/11 death toll. As this NY Times article reports (9 Dec 2020), officials across the US reported at least 3,011 new Coronavirus fatalities today. The terrorist attacks of 11 Sep 2001 killed 2,977 people, excluding the terrorist perpetrators, per Wikipedia (Casualties of the September 11 attacks, retrieved 9 Dec 2020).

UPDATE: The Coronavirus death toll for 9 Dec increased to 3,157 as additional data came in.