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Selectivity

I don't post much any more. Maybe I will again sometime, but the Trump years exhausted me in a way nothing else has in the events of my lifetime. I find it increasingly hard to care or think about bigger issues, and instead focus on my immediate family and our near-term future. 9-11 is a day we of my generation choose as a day of mourning and remembrance. Frankly, the last 20 years have been endless mourning, remembrance, ribbons, and half-masting of the flag.

What was done to citizens of this country by religious terrorists was horrible. Do not mistake anything I'm writing to mean anything different.

But we have selective memory in America. If you go out on Facebook, you'll see post after post about how much people miss the way we came together as a nation after the attacks, and how they miss the memory of 9-12. I will say I do remember those days, and when your nation is attacked, patriotic fervor is to be expected. At the time, a lot more folks that lived through WW II were around, and they spoke of how the time after 9-11 reminded them of the time after Pearl Harbor. And that checks out. And if you have a clear, unclouded memory of those days after 9-11, you'll remember how Muslim Americans were harassed; how a Sikh was murdered; and how many Americans wanted Mosques closed and Muslims rounded up and put into camps -- just like America after Pearl Harbor.

Last month, 13 American servicepersons were tragically killed. Republicans called out the President as unfit to lead and threw the word impeachment around. On 9-11, when 3,000 Americans died, we were all told that we shouldn't play the blame game, and it was time to rally around our flag and our President. In fact, I don't remember Ford shouldering too much blame when Saigon fell, and his Secretary of State negotiated the peace deal to end that debacle. Maybe my memory is failing, but I don't remember anyone calling Ronald Reagan unfit after the Marine barracks were bombed in Beirut, nor do I remember lot of opposition to pulling our troops out of there instead of staying the course. If anyone has read this far, feel free to point out if my memory is failing me here.

Our good will and our desire for common cause after 9-11 was crassly exploited. Evidence of Iraqi involvement in 9-11 was stretched beyond the limits of any credibility and the nation was dragged into what was ostensibly a quick war in which we would be greeted as liberators and turned into a quagmire. And we engaged the services of Blackwater - a shadowy para-military organization. And we decided we were fine with torturing people. Last night, I watched Jose Rodriguez being interviewed. His "we-did-what-had-to-be-done" and "it-was-them-or-us" statements sounded very much like the justifications SS and Gestapo officials gave for their actions after WW II. Iraq is why many of us are here at DU. Our opposition to the war - instead of adapting the just-wave-the-flag-and-be-grateful-to-God mentality caused many of us to be shamed in our communities and workplaces. It also caused us to elect Barack Obama -- a perceived sin that many in America will never forgive.

But America comes together in times of crisis and tragedy!

Do we?

In 2012, in Sandy Hook, CT, 20 children aged 6 - 7 - let me repeat that - twenty.children.aged.six.to.seven. - and six teachers were killed because a woman made a horrible error in judgment (for which she paid with her life) and thought firearms would be just the thing for her son with mental health issues. Now, after 9-11, no-fly lists were developed; we all had to go through a CT scan to board an aircraft; and we passed the "Patriot" act to give the feds some pretty sweeping powers. After twenty children were killed with a weapon readily available to any would-be terrorist, we heard accusations of people being "crisis actors" and were lectured about the importance of our second amendment rights (always important unless Black Panthers are the ones carrying said firearms - refer to Reagan, Ronald - during his time Governor of CA). And Sandy Hook was a rinse-and-repeat of Columbine. And Parkland was a rinse and repeat of Sandy Hook. And there was the sniper at Mandalay Bay.

But those, I guess, were small events. You would think that surely we could come together over something big. A huge national threat. But again - you'd be mistaken. As of today, approximately 659,000 Americans have died from the disease that doctors and most Americans call COVID-19, but whom a select group of stubborn Trump supporters insist on calling China-19 because I guess blaming a foreign country makes them feel better somehow. Donald Trump followers are still touting Hydroxychloroquine, or insisting this is a hoax, or insisting that our immune systems are all we need -- and steadfastly fighting sensible public health measures like mask mandates and vaccine requirements. Oddly, Donald Trump engineered Operation Warp Speed and brought major players in Pharma together to get a vaccine to market quickly -- and his followers ironically won't take it. So we should use any means necessary to save the lives of Americans from foreign terrorists, but using any means necessary to stop a disease that has killed the equivalent of roughly 220 9-11s -- and that you tell us is ostensibly China's fault -- is an invasion of your freedom; a government overreach; a reason to recall Gavin Newsom.

I realize that I'm rambling incoherently. Again, I don't post much any more, so indulge me in this one last incoherent thought about the selectivity of the American patriotic psyche. A little passive-aggressive thing I see right now is the 13 beers meme. Restaurant owners set an empty table with 13 beers for the soldiers killed in Afghanistan. They post photos on Facebook. It's passive-aggressive because it's not just a nice symbolic we-love-the-troops meme. It's a dig at Biden. Again if anyone has read this far, feel free to point out if my memory is failing me here. Maybe it's because social media didn't exist, but I don't remember anyone setting out beers for the 220 Marines killed in Beirut. In fact, I'm hard -pressed to remember anyone commemorating October 23, 1983. In 2017 a KC-130 broke up over Mississippi and killed 16 marines - a tragedy caused by inadequate maintenance of the aircraft. In fact, photos of those Marines were erroneously circulated on social media after the Afghanistan bombing. Again - did countless restaurants post photos of 16 empty places for Marines that died in the line of duty? If so, they kept it well hidden. Were the Secretary of Defense or the President subjected to having their patriotism or fitness to lead questioned over the needless deaths of 16 brave Americans because of their dereliction of duty to oversee maintenance? No - no they were not. Because our outrage is selective.

If you made it this far, you have my sympathy. But I appreciate you reading this. God Bless America!

So, Wingnutland's latest manufactured outrage. - Bidens watch

Biden is seen glancing at his watch in a photo during the dignified transfer. Wingnuts are outraged as if he invited the Taliban to Maryland.