10 years have now gone by since the only memorable September 11th in our nation’s history. In 10 years we should have learned a great deal but as far as I’m concerned, the country we live in now isn’t any better than it was then.
1. We can’t get into a stadium without mandatory bag searches. In my overly-careful neck of the woods we have to stand in bag lines even if we don’t have a bag.
2. The airports are a complete joke and everyone knows it. Even the TSA officer who pulled me aside for a random search in an unnamed small city in the Midwest knew it was a joke. He asked if he could search my bags and he seemed genuinely disinterested. I told him that I do not consent to searches and he just waved me along knowing it was just an obligatory waste of time anyway.
3. The 9/11 report demonstrated that among the reasons for the attack, the strongest reason was the presence of our troops on the ground in the Middle East and our continued bombing of a Muslim country (Iraq). Our meddling in the region is still significant and making our country vulnerable and weaker.
4. We are spending trillions now in our foreign empire and arguing at home over teacher pay and entitlements. I’m for entitlement reform obviously but why is our militarism and expense of foreign adventurism off the table from a budget standpoint?
All of the memorials acknowledging the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001 will be nothing more than a celebration of American resolve and cheering USA! USA! USA! like idiots. All of the reasons for that attack are still present. Instead of removing these reasons we continue our war against a tactic and we are going broke doing so.
10 years after Pearl Harbor we had defeated the enemy, rebuilt our economy and were bored enough to find another war in Korea to keep us occupied. Now we’re nothing more than a broke and paranoid nation and our leaders are out of ideas.
I’ll return to more interesting posts than this but I couldn’t let this anniversary go by without going on record that I am not looking forward to the empty-headed remembrances that will be going on this weekend.
6 comments:
i been think of turning off the tv and internet til tuesday.
i might be a good weekend to take an overnight drive,too.
Perfect Gino...no moment of silence, no listening to stories about where we were and how we felt on that day...just listening to Flogging Molly really loudly on the Interstate driving through fly-over country. Sounds good.
I couldn't agree more Tracy.
looks like i'm not going after all, got surgery coming up too soon to be back in time.
my drive was similar to yours: social distortion and 80's hardcore on I-5 headed north to Seattle.
looks like my trip will be end of october instead.
There is another notable (for lack of a better word) September 11; on that date in 1985, Pete Rose broke Ty Cobb's career hit record.
Actually that is pretty notable as that was considered an untouchable record. It was a tragic enough experience that pitcher Eric Show destroyed himself with drug abuse while Pete Rose set out to destroy the entire game.
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