I just found myself posting this in comments on another site, and it expresses my feelings pretty damned well. This is a technical blog, but it's my blog, and in this one instance, I feel justified about a political post. And it's not like anybody reads this anyway -- so assuming you even exist, you have no reason to complain.
Thus runs the missive:
Bah. I don't like to rehash 9/11 because the second thing I thought, walking into the IU Union and seeing the smoking tower on the TV, was "Reichstag", and in this one thing, Mr. Bush has not failed me.
The first thing was -- holy shit THERE's something you don't see every day.
You know what? The actual specific damage there was nothing to the United States. Compare it to the damage Hitler did in Europe, then come back and tell me it was at all significant. The only damage it did was in America's collective head -- it was a bee sting, and the last six years have been anaphylaxis. Not sure yet whether it was fatal shock, but the patient still doesn't look good.
Now these same people, after 9/11-ing for years to justify stupidity and blood in Iraq, telling us a tinpot third-world embargoed communist was as dangerous or more dangerous to our mighty nation than the heavily industrialized Germany we faced down and beat while fighting on another front entirely -- against ninjas for cryin out loud -- those people are now telling us we're in an existential fight with Iran over the fate of Western Civilization. They've been at war with us for thirty years, and it's been an existential threat, but we just ... haven't noticed? Does anybody but me see how fricking stupid that sounds?
I spent a lot of time and energy being liberal and anti-war between 2001 and 2004-ish, killed my business thinking about politics instead of noticing the recession, ran up a shitload of unpaid back taxes and debt while killing my business, and every day I watched a pack of deadbeats getting richer and richer off America's pain, all because of America's Reichstag and the willingness of the American people to treat international politics like a horror movie. And that fucking monkey, excuse my freedom, can't even wipe the smirk off his face, even now.
I just don't care any more. America will recover from its panic attack, or it won't. It doesn't matter what I do or say. And that's what 9/11 means to me.
