Thread by @Cajsa

Please do not buy the "we were so united" story about 9/11. That unity went only one way. Democrats chose country over party. Meanwhile, Republicans and the media said repeatedly it was a good thing Bush was president instead of Gore because Republicans would never support Gore

They said it as though they thought it was commendable that they were incapable of putting partisanship aside if their guy were not in the White House on 9/11. The media seemed to think the same thing. It was when I realized they were never the loyal opposition.

They used the national tragedy to purge people in the media. Donahue was fired even though he still had better ratings than others on the network. Reporters were fired if they weren't on the pro-war beat. WIRED did a story about how the people who were wrong about Iraq War

and WMD moved up career-wise but those who were right lost their careers. It was a few years into the war...and it was telling, the more right you were, the more you lost your position and reputation.

The GOP used the "unity" to force through tax cuts. In Nov 2001, they held unemployment benefits for people thrown out of work by 9/11 hostage in order to pressure for repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax, the tax that was supposed to ensure the super-rich at least paid some

It was not only going to repeal the tax, it was going to refund all the AMT paid back to when the AMT was created in 1986. I remember this so well because my organization fought back against this and successfully devised a campaign that defeated the AMT repeal.

We had to be smart & fight with humor because no dissent was acceptable in 11/2001. So we had folks dress up in gowns & tuxedos & wear signs identifying them as specific CEOs who had laid off thousands with the millions in AMT they would get & they panhandled unemployment line

Local papers didn't cover it at all, but we shared our research, plan, signage with a national network of people opposing AMT and they did the same action in other states where they didn't have a shit paper like the Oregonian.

What the media today calls unity is the Democrats supporting the president in a crisis and the Republicans using that crisis to gut constitutional protections and pass tax cuts that were designed to cripple safety net programs, and to label policy differences as unpatriotic.