Which America Was Attacked on 9/11?

Via Matt Yglesias, the Confidence Man reads Paul Waldman's Gadflyer article on Bush's mobilization of the "real America" meme to denigrate Kerry -- and the strctural impossibility of Kerry being able to counterpunch. It's a nice piece of analysis, especially the focus on the demographic trends that are dooming the GOP to premodern irrelevancy.

But there is a key question that needs to be brought to the table here: namely, which of these two Americas, the "real" or the Real, was actually attacked on 9/11?

The Confidence Man has spoken before about the fact that the America that was attacked on 9/11 was in fact the Modernist Real America, the land of economic progress, globalizing transnational corporations, secularism, hedonism, and pluralism. Look at any Fundie Islamist screed to see what the WTC actually represented to them.

The "real" America -- the red-state America of Fundie Christianity, small-town mores, economic protectionism, social conservatism, etc etc -- was most definitely not attacked on 9/11. Al Qaida couldn't care less about the backwards anti-Modernist red-state rubes. Al Qaida wants to kill the Liberals.