So we take off our shoes and our belts, we cheer torture and collateral damage and forget that our forebears held themselves to a higher standard. They didn't always attain it, certainly, but they tried and sometimes they pretended in the name of civility. We don't even pretend to be above fear, and we certainly don't pretend to be civil to our enemies as our mothers taught us.
Never forget indeed; let's do some remembering I say and remember what life was like before 19 Saudi assholes (not Iraqis) took our faith in ourselves and our values and hung them out to dry in the name of security.
This isn't the time to be chuntering on about Key West and it's streets and it's quirks and it's piddly little problems. This weekend is a time to turn inward and tune out the noise and reflect on what that day ten years ago means to each of us.
Whatever it means to you I hope to see you back bright and early Monday morning refreshed, and ready to enjoy a little window on this peaceful little world we call the Florida Keys.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
8 comments:
I intend to spend this weekend in quiet reflection. Thank you Michael for this post.
Thanks for a good suggestion on how to mark the date with introspection. We should never forget but we should also move on. The terrorists did in fact instill a feeling of fear in the nation. That fear was magnified by an increasingly power hungry political class.
The 911 commission concluded that we got caught with our pants down. That has been fixed. However the now antiquated levers of power still exist.
We need a leader that will remove those levers that take the form of the TSA, the "Patriot Act", and the Fed's version of ecomomic security. Alas, such a leaders vision of Liberty would be vilified by both the Left and the Right much to the delight of the monied power brokers.
If the Key West Diary had a "like" button like FaceBook does I'd push it on this post.
+1 on Gary's comment.
Ten years from now 9-11 will be remembered like 12-7. Just another day.
Gary
Conch:
Great post indeed. After having survived Catholic school concentration camp, I no longer electively go to church, however, I suspect that in churches and synagogues and other places of worship today there will be an abundance of hand holding and kumbaya-ing and general "never forgetting".
Unfortunately though, as Anonymous posited, in another decade or so this "never forgetting" will go the way of Pearl Harbor I'm afraid. And perhaps that's a good thing in a sense for the National consciousness. Not so much that we ever forget those poor souls that lost thier lives, but so that we can move past it all.
Also, why MSNBC decided it was a good idea to rebroadcast the entire tragedy "as it happened" is beyond me, but I'm sure they sold some decent commercial time.
God Bless the United States....and nobody else.
A tragic day, yes. A friend was on Flight 93. But Never Forget™ the terrorists won. Nineteen guys armed with box cutters and BOARDING PASSES knocked the allegedly most powerful nation on Earth on its ass (at a likely cost of less than a quarter-million dollars), and to this day we cower in fear, no thanks to media that somehow have the idea everyone wants the wounds of this day torn open yet again on its anniversary...
__Orin
Scootin' Old Skool
All true.
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