Was Freedom Attacked?

I've been reading about common types of cognitive distortions this evening, which cognitive behavioral therapists see as the root cause of neuroses (anxiety, depression, compulsions, etc.); why otherwise rational people do irrational things.

I got to thinking: how do people acquire these cognitive distortions? Surely, they must be learned; from a variety of sources: parents, teachers, TV, movies, in church, on the playground, and from our leaders. Our leaders are selected and serve in a political environment, which lends itself to the creation and perpetuation of distortions.

A few of the cognitive distortions given birth during the current administration stand out. Over three years after September 11th, 2001, it only just now really sunk in how curious the first public statement out of President Bush's mouth that day really was:

"Freedom was attacked."

Really? Was freedom, the abstract concept, attacked? I can't conceive how this was so. I do know that the World Trade Center was attacked and destroyed, and that the Pentagon was attacked a damaged. Did the president or his handlers really think that stating these facts wasn't enough? Did people need to be convinced that these horrific acts of violence were not alarming enough, that they had to be "spun" into something more threatening: an attack on our freedom? Does this come under the category of poetic license? Now if, say, the Statue of Liberty was attacked, I don't think I'd fault the president for saying, "Liberty was attacked," as at least the point of that statue is to symbolize liberty. To my knowledge, the Pentagon and World Trade Center were not de facto nor de jour symbols of freedom.

Perhaps I'm missing the point of what the president was trying to say, but he didn't explain what he meant by the remark. Was I supposed to know what it meant? Or was I simply supposed to accept that any action against the United States is targeted at the concept of "freedom."

Remember that this statement was not simply a flighty bit of rhetoric that found its way into one of the president's stammering rambles. This was deliberately stated first, of all the things the president had to say that night, the most important thing for you to know was that "Freedom was attacked," which makes a certain amount of sense as I'd been watching the news that day, and only saw planes flying to skyscrapers and the skyscrapers collapsing, so I must have missed the whole attack on freedom, which probably wouldn't have even made the newspapers the next day if the president hadn't mentioned it.

I found a relate curiousity attributed to Donald Rumsfeld (lifted from a website that really bought into the "freedom was attacked" thing):

"The way to deal with this problem is not to suddenly become a police state and say we're not going to be free, and we're not going to go about our lives."

Perhaps the way to deal with this problem is to suddenly become a police state and say we are going to be free?

Can One Be 'With You' and 'With the Terrorists?'

On September 20th, 2001, addressing a joint session of congress, President Bush said (to enthusuastic applause):

"Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

Here, the president's logic is air-tight. Some people are with you. Some people are with the terrorists. I think it's pretty clear that there are no people that are both with you and with the terrorists. There -- I think I pretty much covered all the combinations.

What Is the President Thinking?

A long time ago, a roommate of mine said that he suspected that athletes didn't just talk in sports cliches, but thought in sports cliches. I want to know: does he really believe the stuff he says? We're told that President Bush is "principled" because he "sees things in absolutes." The only way I find this disfunction in any way redeamable is if he's saying to himself: "I'm an absolutely shitty president."