Well written
Emotionally sane and - intellectually honest, mostly. Multiply her anguish by the constellation of 'others', each of the victims. (But don't forget, while thinking of that - the victims in Nicargua, Guatemala, etc. People just as dead - just not so spectacularly. And no one to write eloquently of, even a few).
As an Econ type, you surely note the rather simplistic view she limns of "jobs - at Any cost" (of Corporate self-aggrandizement? say?). This cannot be simplied to such a slogan, but her points cannot be dismissed - either. And it's her story she tells, not anyone else's.
YAN illustration of the follies of labels like Left/Right (fortunately she stays with just the L-half of the dichotomy, and her own experience of that, as she grew 'up').
While I am as sure (as she) that there remain some people who still imagine the SLA et al - represented something other than a specialized-madness.. it is good that she speaks of the others - who still manage to question rote-Authority, and National performance all along - without making the leap..
"We Deserved WTC" QED.
When you parse the 'We' in that, and our antediluvian concepts of 'Deserve' - that I believe, is where the language fails.
Chomsky is a caricature; Moore was great at lampooning the hypocrisy of a GM and its cardboard-CIEIO - and much else. Taking either as political theorists is as unwise as taking the perverse inner world of Jerry Falwell as 'a good way to live here'.
An idiot is an idiot. These L/R labels didn't work and won't work -- hence dialogue about any workable political principles in Murica, remains a chimerical wish. Maybe the fact of 9/11 eventually - shall purge both houses of their most inane mouthings; shock 'us' into actually communicating about reforms (?)
Maybe.. but that would be unprecedented! and language has suffered greatly prior-to and throughout the ".com" language-warping as a Bizness staple. We'd have to make intentional and regular efforts to undo some of that 'innovation' before talk could even begin, without the slogans.
:(
Ashton
