Unlucky 13

It’s been 13 years.  Yes, I still remember.  No, I won’t forget. 

More than that, though, I won’t forgive.  But the people I’m not forgiving may surprise you.  At the time, I supported, and still do, a military reprisal.  It was inevitable, and it was necessary.  It was the other ominous shit that, even then, gave me the fucking willies.

I will not forgive those who knee jerked, and made disproportionate war effective for our enemies.  In a blind fear, we threw billions of dollars down a hole, and we’re still doing it.  We walk around, cocky, knowing that ‘merica! is number one…but we danced to their tune, and we’re still doing it.

I do not forgive the creation of the exceptionally ominous Department of Homeland Security.  Words like “Homeland”, “Fatherland”, and “Motherland” are rhetorically charged devices that smolder in the minds and hearts of the masses, and I worried about it then.  I see no reason today to stop worrying. 

I do not forgive the creation of the TSA, a ridiculous adventure in security theatre that has kept exactly zero travelers safer in the past 13 years.  They confiscate belt buckles and knives and jars of jam, and tell themselves they're effective.  Kudos, boys, you’re doing a bang up job. 

I do not forgive the creation of the snoop state that Snowden exposed, nor those in power who wished to silence and now wish to punish.  We shredded the 4^th amendment looking for the needles in the haystack. 

I do not forgive the furtive movement to arm police with ever increasing military hardware in fear of terrorists.  Those toys are getting used against citizens, not foreign, nor even domestic, terrorists.  Mission creep is a very, very real thing. 

The thing I hate most about those vile men that poked the eagle with a stick is quite simple, really.  They won.  

In Remembrance,

Dangerboy