REMEMBER, REMEMBER We all lose loved ones. It is an inevitability of life here on Earth. When those close to us are taken suddenly, however, it can make the parting all that more tragic and harder to move past. People lose family members and close friends to these types of tragedies every day and their sorrow is no more important than those who have died suddenly for other reasons. Year after year, since 9/11, we have been inundated with the imagery and chaos of a day that took thousands from us suddenly. This day has come to represent a sense of nationalism that, at the time, inspired the world to stand with us in that moment of horrific terror and uncertainty. We had the support and compassion of the global community behind us. Since then, in the names of those we lost, we have undertaken a great War on Terror, and every time anyone has objected to any policy changes that undermine civil liberty, those honored dead were propped up to silence the critics. As freedom after freedom has been eroded, and our police have been militarized, that September day and the people that were lost have been hoisted forward on our news networks. With blundering arrogance, we squandered the international support we had immediately after 9/11, miring ourselves in multiple fronts of warfare, and making more enemies than we had to begin with. Every year, the media replays the footage of the attacks on the twin towers and the pentagon with a callousness that could care less about the families of the victims. After all, they have ratings to fill and advertisement slots to sell. With all that we have come to discover from Wikileaks and Edward Snowden about what our government has done in the name of what happened on 9/11, it has become harder and harder to tolerate the yearly barrage of manufactured patriotism that stands ready to assault us and guilt us into respect for a government that is steadily becoming more and more aggressive towards its own people in the name of national security. Our privacy has been violated, our fourth amendment torn to virtual pieces, and our police are being militarized. When anyone stands up to oppose these violations, the immortalized victims of the worst terrorist attack on our soil are trotted out as intellectual cover to quiet the opposition while politicians and lobbyists shield themselves behind the dead to excuse their actions. Its time to say enough is enough when it comes to the pageantry of this yearly spectacle. Weve more than mourned. Weve beat this horse well past dead, and milked this cow way beyond dry. Its time to stop letting those in power use the memories of those who died as ammunition to rob us of our liberty in the name of safety. It is time to end this parade of mindless nationalism and remember that freedom does have a price, and that price is vigilance.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 17:32:08 +0000