Merciful Jesu

Lord, is it 25 years already? A quarter of a century since the world changed utterly with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, ushering in an age of insecurity in the West, multiple wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan and (in hindsight) US policies that made a flurry of performative activities around the top-level symptoms while never actually addressing any root causes.

And it led us to the current administration, the most ignorant, cruel, feckless, incompetent pack of grifters ever assembled in one place and handed the biggest economy, the most powerful military and (apparently) the most spiteful electorate in history.

I’ve been wondering what the Kleptocrat would have done had his arse been spreading in the Oval Office in 2001. I imagine him issuing fatwahs for everyone who ever set foot in a mosque, immediate missile strikes on…well, not Saudi Arabia, the point of origin for the core of the 9/11 perps, because “ally”, but maybe Syria, Iraq and Mozambique, just because he could. He couldn’t have done a better job than Bush 43 at hunkering down on fossil fuels (thus keeping us tied to Middle East supply sources), but he could probably have raked in a lot more bribes from the sheikhs and emirs.

I started down the road of picturing Hegseth as SecDef, but that was too farcically apocalyptic even for me.

Oh—and as for NATO invoking Article V—the only time in its existence—spilling its blood and treasure in defense of the United States…I wonder.

Twenty-five years, and how far have we progressed, really? Thirteen years of Republican presidents; twelve of Democratic ones, with a good chunk of the first years of the latter spent cleaning up the economic mess left by the former. Eighty years of post-World War II international goodwill and soft power gone like our stock of munitions. It’s going to take us longer than Germany to rebuild global trust, if we work diligently and humbly.

Wellbut, today’s a time for commemorating the more than 3000 people—mostly Americans, but (this being America) people from multiple countries—who went about their business on a sunny day in New York City and Washington, D.C., 25 years ago and never came home.

So my earworm is the “Recorare” from Mozart’s Requiem. The prayer begins:

“Remember, merciful Jesu,
“that I am the cause of thy coming,
“and cast me not away on that day.”

 

©2026 Bas Bleu