Anyone who read yesterday’s post, “The Hardest Part of Remembering Sept. 11, 2001 Is…“, probably won’t be surprised that I agree with Paul Krugman:

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. Te atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

I’ve read a lot of criticism of Krugman that claims he’s ‘politicizing’ Sept. 11, 2001. From conservatives, that’s rich. As Comrade Driftglass likes to say, the arsonist and firefighter both are passionate about fire, but one is not the moral equivalent of the other. After using shamelessly using the attacks as cudgel for all sorts of policies (including a cut of the capital gains tax), pointing out how disgusting and divisive that was is not ‘politicization’ but truth telling.

For many apparently, the truth hurts.