I am sick and tired of September 11, 2001. I don’t need another person telling me “never forget”. I DO want to forget it. And it WILL be forgotten. Nobody remembers when the Maine blew up, nobody remembers the day Army gunned down crowds in Detroit and one day nobody will remember 9/11 except for the numbers itself, at least as long as emergency services have the same telephone number.
But wait! You didn’t lose a LOVED ONE in the attacks! Ok you’re right. I’m sorry my loved ones all died equally horrible, gut-wrenching deaths leaving me alone and bereaved and grief-stricken but just didn’t have the foresight to do it in NY or Washington. The death of ANY loved one is horrific and I’m not demeaning that – I just don’t see anything more (or less) “special” if your loved one died in 9/11 versus say an ordinary, boring, soul-destroying bout of cancer.
But you bastard, they tried to take our freedom, la la la. No they didn’t. I’m aware of hundreds of terrorist attacks, some of them inside the United States, some of them paid for or on behalf of “RADICAL EVIL MUSLIM FANATICS” and some of them in other countries and never once, NEVER ONCE have I ever heard or seen one terrorist leader or spokesman or anything else say “hey be less FREE and we’ll stop bombing you.”
Are you crazy? I mean the EXACT SAME guys fought against the Soviet Union in the 1980’s and never ONCE ever demanded that the SU change its laws because that society was “too free”. Of course the SU wasn’t “too free”, it was a totalitarian dictatorship!
The absolutely only people who ever made America “less free” were NOT Muslim bearded fanatics from the sands of Arabia but were U.S. citizens, most of them with white European faces and Bibles. I mean there’s an old “joke” (sometimes you HAVE to laugh) that the U.S. government must be Al-Qaeda’s best buddy because it was a SUSTAINED and COORDINATED effort to SHUT DOWN freedom that got us into the Department of Homeland Security, no water bottles on planes, Guantanamo Bay, suspension of habeas corpus and the whole nine yards and NOT a few buildings being blown up.
If restricting America’s freedoms WAS the goal then slam-dunk Cheney, Tenet, 99% of establishment journalists, the Supreme Court and George W. Bush. Mission Accomplished for real. Heckuva job!
But 9/11 was an attack on the ENTIRE NATION you unfeeling unpatriotic bastard!
Uh, was it? Because last I heard “only” about 3,000 people died. I’m sorry for each one of those people AND the survivors who love them and miss them but I’m also equally sorry for the 4,000 soldiers who have been killed (and tens of thousands horrifically maimed), I’m sorry for the hundreds of lives lost to Thalidomide, I’m sorry for the hundreds of people who died in the Tuskegee “experiment”, I’m sorry for the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people who die yearly due to (legal) pharmaceutical drugs, I’m sorry for the untold millions of sufferers who get ill from the pollution that companies dump in their neighborhoods (PCB = so tasty!), I’m sorry for the untold thousands of guys getting raped in a prison for the “crime” of possessing a plant and I’m sorry for the people who died in Hurricane Katrina and every other natural disaster that COULD’VE been saved. I’m even sorry for all the people who have ever been beat, clubbed, shot or tasered to death by police.
Heck, I’m sorry for the everyone who suffers as the result of malicious acts, whether it’s a company making an unethical buck that ends in your death (yep including our fun-loving HMO/heath insurers), a deliberately shoddy product (ask Ralph Nader about cars some time) or whether it’s one of hundreds of the wars, interventions, police actions, “advisory” roles or anything else the gov’t sends its citizens to go die for.
Many, many years ago an ex “friend” of mine, in revenge for what he perceived to be a grievous injury to his character, broke into the house where I and some friends were living and stole a lot of our valuables. Was it awful? Yes it was. It wasn’t just the loss of material items and the difficulty in replacing them, it was an awful violation of the sanctity of our home.
So yeah, on 9/11/01 someone broke into the sanctity of our home and violated it. It was awful and terrible. But everywhere ELSE I seem to go, whether it’s London or Madrid or Beslan, somehow people tend to REBOUND from these things. It hurt but it’s not a permanent hurt. It was a one time deal because we let our guard down about a few shifty people we should’ve kept our eye on.
But the ONLY reason it remains a festering, raw wound that never heals is because people keep picking at it. Let the dead bury the dead. The rest of us have work to do.
I hate to sound like a “successories” poster here but the only ones keeping 9/11 from being a moment to INSPIRE us to be better people, be a more just and free nation and to be a beacon of tolerance, justice and liberty to the world is OURSELVES not whoever is responsible for the 9/11/01 attacks.
Pax
