SATURDAY NIGHT MUSIC

 

Bette Midler, Yankee Stadium, September 23, 2001, Memorial Service:

September 11, 2001 -- 25 Years Later

  

I believe this post is relevant to remembering and memorializing September 11, 2001.

We all remember where we were when we heard the news. The rest of the day felt like a nightmarish blur as we watched the twin towers collapse and the clouds of dust settle on lower Manhattan.

It's a day I'll never forget.

George W. Bush was the president, and I remember that he  actively spoke out against harassing, blaming, or attacking Muslim Americans. He repeatedly emphasized that the attacks were carried out by extremists and did not represent the Islamic religion. 

That was the correct thing to do.

Unfortunately, 25 years later, there are still Americans who allow their fears, ignorance, and bigotry to blame ALL Muslims for the 19 fanatical terrorists who perpetrated the unspeakable carnage and destruction on that day.

Our friend and frequent contributor and commenter here at P.E., Dave Miller, recently found the comment below on the Geeez blog; and, it not only shocked him and me, but it made me think that we, as humans never, never learn what history teaches us again and again about blaming an entire religion, culture, or country for the crimes of the fanatical few.

I leave this for you to think about on this 25th anniversary of that terrible day. May we remember those who lost their lives and the first responders who risked theirs to save their fellow human beings. They represent the best in humanity.

The following comment, in my opinion, represents the worst:

Dave did something interesting with the comment. He loaded it into Google AI and asked how Michel Montaigne might've responded to it, based on his famous essay "Of Cannibals" Here's the response Dave got:

********************************

If Michel de Montaigne were alive today and reading this post, his reaction would combine profound grief, intellectual disgust, and an immediate recognition of the exact human flaws he spent his life cataloging.

The quote you shared—borrowing the name of Samuel Huntington, the political scientist famous for the "Clash of Civilizations" theory—is a textbook example of the fanatical certainty and ethnocentric brutality that Montaigne witnessed firsthand during the French Wars of Religion.

Here is how Montaigne, drawing from his philosophy and specifically from Of Cannibals, would dissect and respond to this text:

---

1. On the Brutality of the "Civilized"

The author of the post frames Muslims as "swine" and casually advocates for the atomic annihilation of hundreds of millions of people during prayer. In Of Cannibals, Montaigne famously argued that Europeans point out the "barbarism" of others while completely ignoring their own monstrous behavior.

Montaigne would look at this post and say:

"We call them barbarians, but we ignore our own savagery. It is far more barbarous to vaporize entire nations of living, breathing families in a 'glorious burst' of radiation than it is to practice ritual cannibalism on a dead enemy in a forest."

To Montaigne, the author has lost their humanity. By advocating for genocide under the guise of "national security" (prevention), the writer proves Montaigne's core thesis: civilized society often invents the most sophisticated, high-tech cruelties.

2. The Danger of Absolute Certainty

Montaigne's lifelong motto was "What do I know?" (Que sais-je?). He believed that human cruelty almost always stems from people believing they possess absolute, unshakeable truth.

The author of the post speaks with total, terrifying conviction—implying that an entire religion is a singular monolith that must be wiped "from the planet." Montaigne would respond:

"How arrogant must a man be to play God? To believe his small, fearful human mind has the right to decide who lives and dies on this earth? True wisdom begins with doubting your own anger."

3. Missing the Mirror

In Of Cannibals, Montaigne used the indigenous people of Brazil as a mirror to show Europeans their own greed, hypocrisy, and inequality. He would see this post as a refusal to look in that mirror.

The author points to "Islamic attacks" to justify total destruction, but Montaigne would remind the writer of Europe's (and the West's) own bloody history:

"You condemn the violence of the other, yet your own solution is a violence so vast it would turn the world to ash. You have become the very monster you claim to fight."

4. The Violation of Hospitality and Curiosity

Montaigne was deeply fascinated by different cultures and religions. He traveled widely, sought out perspectives different from his own, and advocated for open-mindedness. The idea of "barring" an entire group of people based on their faith would strike him as a tragedy of human ignorance. He believed that when we close our borders and our minds to the world, we stop growing and instead fester in our own biases.

---

💡 The Final Verdict

Montaigne lived in a time when Catholics and Protestants were slaughtering each other in the streets of France, convinced they were doing God's work. He saw where that kind of rhetoric led: to massacres, ash, and the destruction of the soul.

He would view this "Sam Huntington" post not as a modern political opinion, but as the same old, tragic human sickness—fanaticism masking itself as virtue. He would urge the writer to put down their weapons, log off the computer, go outside, and play with their cat until they remembered what it means to be human.

MAGA and their rank hypocrisy and bigotry:

 

Some Americans, including the former mayor of New York City and convicted felon, Rudi Giuliani, have been calling for the current mayor of NYC, Zohran Mamdani, to NOT attend the memorial services scheduled for 9/11. Why, you ask? Because Mayor Mamdani is a Muslim (he was 9 years old when the Twin Towers came down), and their thinking is that somehow, because of his Muslim religion, Mayor Mamdani has some sort of culpability for what the 15 Saudis (out of the 19 terrorists who perpetrated 9/11) did.

It is, of course, rank hypocrisy and bigotry on all who've been demanding that Mayor Mamdani not attend any of the memorial services.

Donald Trump and his family have significant business and financial ties with Saudi Arabia that include real estate licensing, golf properties, and multi-billion-dollar private equity investments. 

Trump accepted a luxury jet from Qatar, a Muslim country; and Trump has granted Qatar permission to have formal access to use and build training facilities at a U.S. military airbase, just as the U.S. operates extensively inside Qatar.

Can anyone explain MAGA's outrage around having the mayor of NYC attend 9/11 memorial services while ignoring their idol Trump's extensive relationships with Muslims?

Can some explain the rank hypocrisy around that?

This is how Mayor Mamdani dealt with Giuliani's demand he stay home on 9/11 (snort, snort):

A map showing which U.S. states have a higher Human Development Index than Germany.

 

"HDI combines life expectancy, education, and income into a single measure of human development. It is usually used to compare countries, so applying the same framework to individual U.S. states creates a much more unusual comparison. 

Germany scores about 0.959, placing it among the world’s highest-development countries. Massachusetts and New Hampshire both come in slightly higher at 0.961, while Minnesota reaches 0.960. Hawaii essentially matches Germany at 0.959. 

What makes the map interesting is how narrow the gap is at the top. These states are separated from Germany by only thousandths of a point, meaning relatively small differences in health, education, or income can shift the ranking. The comparison also shows why economic size alone does not determine development. A wealthy state can still rank lower if life expectancy or education outcomes lag, while another state with slightly less economic output can perform better because its overall human-development indicators are stronger. 

The figures come from Global Data Lab’s Subnational Human Development Index, which applies a framework designed to make regions within countries broadly comparable with national HDI scores. 

The bigger story is the variation inside the United States itself. A small number of states sit at or above the level of one of the world’s highest-HDI countries, while many others fall noticeably below the same benchmark. 

 So this map is less about “beating” Germany and more about showing how unevenly health, education, and living standards are distributed across a single country." 

 Source: Global Data Lab, Subnational HDI v10.2, 2023 data; released May 2026.

I'm not going to state the obvious about the states in this study. 

But I will point out that Conservatives/MAGA habitually trash Blue States as "socialists, Communists, WOKE, etc.  But according to this map, Liberal blue states deliver a better quality of life for their citizens than do Conservative red states, even large wealthy states like Texas!

The cost of living in Massachusetts is high. But you get what you pay for in health care, education, safety, and overall quality of life.

The MAGA POTUS is a raving lunatic!

 

Washington Post:

Trump suggests renaming New Mexico amid torrent of online memes and taunts 

The suggestion came as the president unleashed dozens of social media posts. He lacks authority to rename New Mexico or any other state. 

 President Donald Trump on Sunday suggested renaming New Mexico as “New America,” an idea he floated amid dozens of other social media posts that included memes of the president, insults for his rivals and messages that Democrats said were distasteful. 

 “Many people suggested changing the name of New Mexico, one of the great vote cheating states of all time, to NEW AMERICA,” Trump wrote in one Truth Social post, accompanied by an AI-crafted video of him changing a roadside billboard and dancing. 

“So much more prestigious and beautiful for the people of that potentially incredible State. Wow, I Love It!!!”