September 11 slipped by this week, (literally on NBC’s Today Show, which opted for a Kardashian breast augmentation segment rather than covering the Ground Zero ceremony), and many speeches were given about “never forgetting”, (how could we?), and how we’ve “pulled together as a nation”, (BULLSHIT!).
The very real nightmare of such horror taking place on American soil instead of simply being reported from a distant location on TV, changed us forever. But the suggestion that it unified us in some positive and spiritual way is not only spin-doctor preposterous, it belies the reality to the contrary. As a nation, we have never been more divided since we took to the wholesale slaughter of one another in our Civil War, (clearly a very large percentage of the country has never given up hope for a better solution to the “racial problem”). Our politics are mean, our national demeanor is exclusionary and unwelcoming to immigrants, (legal or not), women are still less than equal, gays even less than that, and phoney baloney religious dogma and greed manipulate and overshadow every ounce of goodness left in our bruised and battered human nature. In fact, the unifying elements after the World Trade Center attack were outrage, anger and the lock-step determination to do what we do best…take up arms and kick some ass. We know and care to know nothing of the people that hate us so. We simply hate them back.
On Tuesday, the US Ambassador to Libya and several of his staff were murdered by a crazed gang of Muslim fundamentalists exacting their revenge for the release of an American-made film that ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad. Unfortunately, these newly liberated Libyans have neither tolerance nor a sense of humor about such things and their new freedom, thanks in no small part to American might, does not extend to others’ freedom of speech.
The American Embassy in Cairo is under attack as well, because followers of fundamentalist Islam, including many in the newly liberated Egyptian government hate us too.
Protestors stormed the Yemeni Embassy because…well, it’s in Yemen and twenty other similar protests have erupted throughout Northern Africa and the Middle East. Ahhhhhh, Mogadishu in the Arab Spring!
Israel can’t wait to go after Iran, (easier to think about if you call the innocents who will be killed Iranian rather than Persian), before the handful of whackos ruling that clusterfuck stumble upon a device, (or are given one by their Russian or Chinese buddies), that will let them strike first. Israel would love our blessing and support, and since diplomacy and sanctions don’t really work on crazy people, we’ll probably give it to them.
This is all Holy War crap made possible by the centuries-old lack of understanding, cooperation and humanitarian responsibility of man toward his fellow man. Hiding behind the protective firewalls of scripture and the military industrial complex has allowed the vast majority of us to ignore the plight of the rest of the world, (except, of course, for the $18 that will feed a family of six for a month in the Sudan according to the late night info-mercials), and now we are at the brink of a horror that IMAX, even 3D IMAX, could never do justice. An all-out 21st Century Crusade will leave a billion dead and obliterate civilization for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Perhaps this is what the Mayans were talking about, but if we don’t stop our frivolous pursuits of exclusionary piety, wealth and power, we all lose, (except for those lucky bastards headed off to a multiple virgin orgy in the sky).