Americans behave like a conquered, pacified population -- much like Vichy France in WW II.
The Bushies milked the maximum out of "the events of 9/11"(tm), their own personal Reichstag Fire, and that's one of the most convenient, if completely predictable, outcomes.
"Convenient" if you're a corporatist thug, that is -- a term that fits so many, many members of the Bushies' Flaming Nazi Fourth Reich Soul Review and International Crime Cartel, LLC.
How else do you explain the sad fact that an entire country that used to scorn gullible rubes and laugh at suckers and marks -- in public, anyway -- is now so scared to show any hint of individuality or independent thought that we gladly do that ridiculous striptease for our TSA "protectors" just to board an airliner.
Amazingly, we're still doing it today even though anyone with half a brain knows the real "terrorists" operated for eight straight years out of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and a few dozen offices in the Senate and House office buildings, not some elaborate cave deep in the Hindu Kush.
It's been a lot longer than just those eight years, but this time the velvet gloves finally began wearing out and the iron fists started showing through the seams.
Proudly harassing republicans, wingnuts, blue-nosed fundie loons, xenophobes, chicken hawks, gullible American creation myth true believers, repressed reactionary bigots and countless other lower life-forms since 1967. Cats, on the other hand...