9/11/09: Celebrating Eight Years of TERROR
“I wouldn’t like to be in that aircraft.”
I recall exactly where I was eight years ago – I was awake, wasting time online (hey, what’s changed?) reading about men of science in the eighteenth century and scouting photos for the Schizoganda project.
A friend I had been chatting with on AOLIM told me to turn on the television – there was something I had to see. I watched as the second plane hit the WTC. There would be repercussions, all of which were unknown at the time. It was obvious that everything was about to change, this event was going to be a catalyst for the worst.
I had taken the pre-ASVAB and received a perfect score at the Army recruiting office just a few days prior and perhaps the only direct and immediately-evident effect that 9/11 had on me was that I found it necessary to change my phone number (though, really, with an Army recruiter and I probably would have had to do that anyway).
The recruiter was out for blood (maybe he realized he may be running out soon?) and, though he was convinced that the kid he’d talked to would make a great Green Beret or intel officer or something, he didn’t know that I would never pass a security clearance screening; I had gone to the recruitment office with my friend to provide moral support (id est “don’t join the Army”).
… but this isn’t about my misadventures with Army recruiters (an eye-opening experience, nonetheless), it’s about the collective misadventures of the American people. We’ve started two wars and spent billions funding the same “military industrial complex” that Eisenhower warned of in his farewell address:
All the fear that the word “terrorism” produces has been channeled into such fools’ errands as buying duct tape and preparing for unlikely terrorist actions – or bandied about as a distraction to the reality of government malfeasance as the president gave tax cuts to the rich and enacted disastrous economic policies and the National Security Agency illegally wiretapped everyone.
Fast-forward to present day: the country may not be run by the same morons who brought it to the brink of totalitarianism, but the media still does what it can to run a three-ring circus and the core problems facing humanity remain: rampant ignorance (willful or otherwise) and the actions of those enabled by ignorance.
I don’t lend much validity to the theories surrounding “what really happened” on September 11th, 2001 – it’s irrelevant whether the planes were remote-controlled, thermite and explosives were used to topple the towers, or the towers were destroyed by a laser fired from deep space. What matters is that the American people will never know exactly what happened – and most are OK with that.
Most are OK with being manipulated, believing what they see on television, trusting a chickenhawk Halliburton stockholder as their vice president…
Most people deserve exactly what we’re all getting here.
03:00 – Third point: You say you’re worried about kids – I’m not worried about kids. I’m worried about grown-ups. These are the ones who vote. These are the ones who tell you “The world is coming to an end in 2012!” – kids don’t say that, grown-ups do.
I’m worried about grown-ups who say “Read my horoscope, tell me whether I’ll find money tomorrow!” grown-ups say this, not children, okay?
Children do not read horoscopes.
. . .
Kids are born curious – they’re always… exploring. We spend the first year of their lives teaching them how to walk and talk, and the rest of their lives telling them how to shut up and sit down.
- Neil Degrasse Tyson
So how’s that working out for you, shutting up and sitting down?
