Dammit, this isn't the America I grew up reading about. I really do wonder if that America can even come back, or if it was ever really here at all.
Do you think that America is a much greater country today than it was four years ago, before the planes hit?
We reacted the wrong way totally. We should have been like the British, treating this like an enormous act of criminal minds and proceeded to punish the guilty as necessary. Instead we got a country that punishes everybody. Well, everyone except those with power and affluence, 'course. When they got bombed this summer the people of Britain were stalwart. We have been nothing other than coward.
We let them win, because we allowed them to make us destroy who we are as Americans. We gave al Quaeda the biggest victory of its existence, and we dare pat ourselves on the back for being "good American patriots" even as we give away one freedom after another for sake of "security" from the government.
H.L. Mencken was right: "Democracy is the worship of jackals by jackasses". I know exactly who the jackals are. The problem is there's too many jackasses in this country ruining it for those of us that still care about these things.
I don't feel any bit "patriotic" on this fourth anniversary of 9/11, because there's precious little left to this country to feel proud about. And I refuse to be a hypocrite about it. We've been destroying ourselves ever since. There won't even be an America like this in another five years, the way things are going. You tell me how that's something to honor with empty words and useless gestures.
4 comments:
I'm still wondering who al-Qaeda is. Somebody's lying about something, since it is supposedly this all encompassing organization that Osama runs and all the people in Iraq are his 'lieutenants'.
Whatever, I'm still wondering how Osama got explosives into WTC 7 (the 47 story building that collapsed that afternoon) and made that come down with only small fires inside. Oh, yeah, and why did all the firefighters report explosions going off in the Twin Towers?
Since Osama was a CIA asset in the 1980's, maybe we should rename his organization 'Al-CIAda' or something.
;-)
It is disgusting how some people try to sell the war using "patriotism". i.e. If you don't support the war you are not patriotic. War is not a glorified act that should or needs to be sold. The war can already be considered a failure if the aims were to secure Saddam's WMDs. How the American people can forgive the President's failure and vote him for a second term I will never understand. And now blind patriots of America justify the continued occupation of Iraq by saying those who fell in Iraq would have died in vain if they pulled out now. It seems to me more like the collective thinking of people too afraid to admit they were wrong and previous justification of the war. But with no disrespect to the fallen whatsoever, this is what happens when you vote for a 'war president'.
Perhaps Osama really did achieve his aim 4yrs ago. Perhaps 9/11 was just a spark that would set off the spontaneous downfall of everything that was America.
Damn, Knight. This sounds like an "I'm emigrating opus", "because there's precious little left to this country to feel proud about."
I just think you are overridden with pessimism. While I understand the Patriot Act has some problems, there's precious little evidence of the abuses many have feared, notwithstanding certain problematic detentions.
"This sounds like an "I'm emigrating opus", "because there's precious little left to this country to feel proud about.""
Not that bad an idea, actually. Yeah, I'm pessimistic but it didn't come without a lot happening to earn that, sad to say.
You know what troubles me a lot about the Patriot Act? It's that something that big came together in so short a time. This wasn't something cobbled together immediately post-9/11. It most likel had been sitting on a shelf for a long time already, just waiting for the right time to be brought out. And then when it was, not one represenative or senator went on record as saying they actually read the thing.
The biggest mistake we made after 9/11 was allowing our government to define our anger for us. It took too much upon itself that it had no right to have. As a result we gave it permission to do things that in other circumstances we would have said "no" outright to. I like to think so anyway: one never can underestimate the stupidity of the American people unfortunately.
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