I do disagree, as I have noted before, with the idea that the 2024 election was stolen/a coup, although I understand the basic argument.

I don’t disagree entirely with your assessment of the politics of this administration, although I do question the degree to which it was a conscious, thought-out strategy, but rather more issues of simple-mindedness and arrogance.

However, the quick end of that unity was a deliberate political strategy of the incumbent (and illegitimately so) executive that saw in 9/11 a golden opportunity to force through its foreign and domestic policy priorities, unity be damned.

As I know I have said here before, I long expected that a major Islamist terrorist attack would happen on US soil. It had been attmpted before, after all, as had (elsewhere) the hijacking of planes to use as bombs–the plot that Rice said could not possibly have been imagined. But never in my worst nightmare did I imagine that the government of the day would make such an attack a wedge issue. But then again, never in my worst nightmare had I imagined that we’d have a government that had stolen an election and been placed in power by what anywhere else in the world would be called a coup.

So, the notion that “we are doing just fine, thanks” is impossible to sustain. The republic has never been so threatened, and I am not referring to the terrorist threat.

Obviously, the notion that we “need” another 9/11 is utterly morally repugnant. How many more thousands have to die–whether here at home or in Iraq or Afghanistan or Iran or Pakistan, or anywhere else–to “save” America?

But the author’s claim also has the effect all wrong. Another major attack would be the nail in the coffin of democracy, such as it is these days in America. I don’t think martial law, or something close to it, could be ruled out in response the next time something like that happens. And, alas, there is a good chance another attack will occur some day. And G-d forbid if it should happen with a Democrat in the presidency; it would be just the window the wacko right would need to launch an insurrection.