Abraham Lincoln, as quoted in Kesher Talk's 2003 9/11 Roundup:

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We cannot escape history. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation."

We are beginning to think anew, and act anew, but it is not enough. I have commented before here on Winds of Change.NET re: the uselessness and foolishness of the current Vietnam debate in America's campaign, and find Ara Rubyan's similarly frustrated voice on the other side of the spectrum. Michael Totten, in the center, is of the same mind.

CBS' Ra^thergate shows that step 1 of the rethink needs to happen in America's media, which covered itself in shame after shame last week. Maybe if they had more people in pyjamas instead of the "professional" twits they currently employ, we'd be hearing more about real issues as Iran prepares to go nuclear and a 3 Conjectures future ticks nearer and nearer. Among other minor problems that obviously weigh less heavily than rehashes of a 30 year old war.

But the winds and waves of change will not stop with the media. For the Class 5 storm that began on Sept. 11 will wash away the certitudes of both parties before it has run its full course.

The Democratic Party's certitudes stem from the 1960s. Like an interstellar hitch-hiker facing the ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, they have thrown a towel over their heads; if they can't see the threat, perhaps it will believe that it can't see them, either. They sit now in spiteful denial, shouting the same tired slogans, oblivious to their growing irrelevance. As Totten so memorably put it:

"Lefty Boomers seriously need to stop and ask themselves if they want to be today's Bob Dole."

Ouch. Owwwwch! Now, here's the second half of the joke. The 1980s are dead too - and the news hasn't even reached the GOP's consciousness yet. But it will:

"If the Sixties are dead, then surely the Eighties are not far behind in the funerary procession. The Reagan years ensconced in the American psyche the notion that we can be strong on defense while frolicking on the beach at home. In Reagan’s time, this was a reasonable expectation with the Cold War as a backdrop. As a society, we were partially mobilized to fight the Soviets; our military was largely transparent. It was the era of parity with our enemy, brought about by mutual nuclear blackmail---Pax Nuclea. And so the 1980s supposition that America can be militarized without being mobilized has added to our false sense of security in dealing with today’s dark threats."

I'll leave the final summation to "Marcus Tacitus" of Between Hope and Fear, an exceptionally promising new blogger:

"This war, to date, is Sitzkrieg. The real battle has yet to be joined. Both parties of our political system equally tow the line that we can go on living exactly as we are accustomed to. And yet the briefest study of past wars always reveals huge sociopolitical and cultural transformations that equally overtake opposing sides regardless of who the victor and vanquished are. We have yet to admit that we are on the threshold to an unknown destiny. We live as though it were the 20th Century, because we still can, not because it is."