What was/is a greater danger to the republic of blessed memory: the (now-dead) Osama bin Laden, or the state apparatus installed in his honor? You tell me.

In July of 2010, the Congressional Research Service estimated that “the United States had spent more than $1 trillion on wars since the September 11, 2001.” That was in 2010.

For all the din being made over the opportunity to cut back on so-called counter-terrorism efforts now that bin Laden is dead—you and I know that’s never going to happen.

Since 9/11, our overlords who art in DC have doubled the defense budget, adding a Department of Homeland Security that took us from passing through a metal detector in our travels to genital manipulation and irradiation.

The police state perfected under the now fully rehabilitated “W,” and perpetuated under Obama his successor, is considered a co-equal branch of government. Your Fourth Amendment rights come with multiplying exclusionary clauses, not least that an agent of the state has the right to treat those who still travel (I try not to) like meat in a meatpacking factory.

The budget allotted to the repugnant TSA agents comes to $6.3 billion annually. According to Randall Holcombe of the Independent Institute, “The damage al Qaeda’s attack caused when it destroyed the World Trade Center was about $10 billion.”

In her familiar smarmy style, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow waxed nostalgic about the pre-9/11 era. She managed some valid points: “Ten years ago, before 9/11, the U.S. defense budget was half the size that it is now.

Ten years ago, before 9/11, there was no Department of Homeland Security. Had someone suggested that there ought to be one, you probably would have teased them for using a weird word like homeland.

Ten years ago before 9/11, you walked through a metal detector to get through an airplane, sure, but this was the kind of thing you‘d only do maybe on a third date. Sometimes on your flight, even the pilots would keep the cockpit door open and you could see them work and you could see the world fly by through their windshield if you peered down the aisle.

… Before 9/11, the U.S. legal history of torture was of our government prosecuting people for that. Wartime was no excuse. [Really?]

Before 9/11, the National Security Agency having access to everybody‘s emails and phone calls and texts and bank records and everything would have been a scandal.

Before 9/11, we did not have a new militarized intelligence bureaucracy that ‘The Washington Post’ described as an additional 1,271 government organizations, 1,931 private companies and an estimated 854,000 people holding top secret security clearances.

Before 9/11, no one in politics and private life talked about Article III Courts. Courted called for under the Constitution because those were just what courts were. We didn‘t have anything but Article III courts. Why would we?

Before 9/11, we didn‘t drop bombs using flying robots.

Before 9/11, we had not lost 3,000 people in Lower Manhattan and at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Before 9/11, we did not have 2.2 million Americans who are Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and we did not have the national promise to do right by them as a country in respecting their service.

Before 9/11, we had not lost more than 6,000 of those veterans in our post-9/11 wars before U.S. forces finally founder and killed Osama bin Laden.

If you were a kid when 9/11 happened, it may be hard to imagine our country without all of these things in place.

If you were an adult when 9/11 happened, you probably never could have believed this is how we would have chosen to spend the decade after.”