I’m still new at this blogging thing, and I still haven’t figured out exactly how I’m going to use this site. Some posts will be reactions to things that happen in the news (or in my life), and other posts will be an outlet for me to describe things that I’ve been thinking about for a while. This one goes in that later category, mostly, but it’s precipitated by this overwhelming sense that everybody wants to be persecuted. I’m planning to write more about how that’s impacted us, as a generation of human beings living in the United States, but this is an important precursor to that post, that might or might not ever materialize. To the point of this post: depending on how you see the world, and on which part of that world you focus on, being persecuted has it’s perks. I seriously doubt that any persecuted group feels those benefits are worth the cost of persecution, but the benefits are there, nevertheless.
Category: society
Never forget?
Yesterday was the 14th anniversary of the September 11 attacks that changed the NYC skyline forever. People keep saying “never forget,” a phrase borrowed, knowingly or not, purposefully or not, from the holocaust. I hate that phrase. First of all, I don’t think anybody who was an adult on that day can forget it, unless they suffer from a neurological disorder that degrades their memories in general. Second, and this is the key point here, what is the most important part to remember?
The “never forget” slogan is a rallying cry. It’s a call to war. It’s telling us to stay afraid. Don’t let your guard down and fight fight fight. But who should we fight fight fight, and do we really need to be the ones fight fight fighting?
The people who planned and executed the attacks against us are gone. The government that supported them has been removed from Afghanistan, and was never in many of the countries that we added to the enemy list after that dreadful day fourteen years ago. We’re still soaking in the fallout, like the cloud from a nuclear disaster, and it’s still making us sick. We tolerate and even foster racism against Muslims like we did to Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. We are war hungry and still looking for revenge (even though we can’t even seem to figure out who deserves our vengeance). It’s enough already, and it’s time to get back to the Nation we were before that day changed us. Let’s not forget that.
I am done living in fear.
Hitting Bregma 