Meanwhile, as an utterly unserious post-America obsesses on everything except the house going up in flames . . .

Take in this:

In case you missed it over the weekend, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes warned on CBS's Face The Nation that the United States is facing the biggest threat in the history of the country, stemming from a number of different regions around the world.

"We face the highest threat level we have ever faced in this country, today," Nunes said. "Even after 9/11."

It's important to highlight that this statement is coming from the intelligence committee, whose members see an enormous amount of information that the media, general public and even other members of Congress do not.

And this:

The US commander in charge of most of America’s nuclear missiles has warned that too much power is concentrated in the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and drawn parallels between Russia’s recent behaviour and that of Nazi Germany.
Lieutenant General Stephen Wilson, commander of US Global Air Strike Command, said: “I don’t think we’ve ever seen so much power put in one person in Russia, and some of the things happening there are troubling and concerning for everybody.”
He added: “[They’ve] annexed a country, changing international borders, raising rhetoric unlike we’ve heard since the cold war times, and so lots of people are trying to figure out what is the strategic intent of Russia.

“Some of the actions by Russia recently we haven’t seen since the 1930s, when whole countries were annexed and borders were changed by decree.” 

And let us not forget the Chinese cyberattack on the OPM.

Or  the Iranian refusal to let the "international community" inspect its military sites at which nuclear activity is suspected.

Or the ongoing unspeakable cruelty of ISIS and the consolidation of its caliphate.

Will someone, anyone, explain to me why the sum total of this is not the primary subject of remarks by any presidential candidate, Pub or Freedom-Hater, any talk-show host, any think-piece magazine writer, or social-media message-pusher?

No, we turn yet another local crime story into an opportunity for the narrative-spinners and demography hustlers to get us to focus on distracting narratives like the Confederate flag. We continue to confer legitimacy on hustlers of the "privilege" narrative.  We get in the weeds over a bundle of trade bills that does not in any way, shape or form foster actual free-market economics.

This is why this blog is titled as it is.

One day - and I don't know how soon or distant it's going to be - we are going to awaken to a set of circumstances that made us react much as we did on that otherwise delightfully sunny September morning in 2001. And we will react as we did then: mouth agape, incredulous, too stunned to cry or roar, afraid of the possibility that more is coming.

When that day comes, let us not look back on days like these and wonder why we didm;t do what we needed to do.

The damn time to ask that question is right now.