Courage and Cowardice
May. 17th, 2006 11:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
filkertomI'm gonna put my foot in it here.
Just saw the trailer for Oliver Stone's World Trade Center. It's billed as "a true story of courage and survival". Fine. Looks very good, actually.
But it got me thinking. And I've seen thoughts similar to this expressed in the blogosphere lately, but I just have the need to put mine here.
The real tragedy of 9/11 is how easily it allowed small, selfish men to make cowards of us.
This film celebrates the courage of the NYPD and FDNY. And we, as a nation, will watch it and beat our collective chest and say Yeah, thass right. That's America.
Except it isn't any more.
Those twenty guys on those planes scared the hell out of us, by showing how vulnerable we are to desperate and clever men. And then our own government has spent the following five years keeping us scared, to distract us from the evil they've done to the country.
Our Constitution is being savaged; our military is stretched to the breaking point; our treasury is being emptied; our rights are being eroded; our population is being segregated and downgraded and categorized.
And we're still quite, quite vulnerable to desperate and clever men.
I ask, in all seriousness: Do you really feel safer than you did Sept. 12, 2001? And, if you do, do you feel the cost has been worth it? Do you feel we, as a nation, are doing all right? Is this, the path we're on now, what America is all about?
Discuss.
Just saw the trailer for Oliver Stone's World Trade Center. It's billed as "a true story of courage and survival". Fine. Looks very good, actually.
But it got me thinking. And I've seen thoughts similar to this expressed in the blogosphere lately, but I just have the need to put mine here.
The real tragedy of 9/11 is how easily it allowed small, selfish men to make cowards of us.
This film celebrates the courage of the NYPD and FDNY. And we, as a nation, will watch it and beat our collective chest and say Yeah, thass right. That's America.
Except it isn't any more.
Those twenty guys on those planes scared the hell out of us, by showing how vulnerable we are to desperate and clever men. And then our own government has spent the following five years keeping us scared, to distract us from the evil they've done to the country.
Our Constitution is being savaged; our military is stretched to the breaking point; our treasury is being emptied; our rights are being eroded; our population is being segregated and downgraded and categorized.
And we're still quite, quite vulnerable to desperate and clever men.
I ask, in all seriousness: Do you really feel safer than you did Sept. 12, 2001? And, if you do, do you feel the cost has been worth it? Do you feel we, as a nation, are doing all right? Is this, the path we're on now, what America is all about?
Discuss.
