The Weak In Rock

So, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.  Of course, a lot of my perception most likely has to do with my being out in the middle of the Delta all weekend with a pile of my closest friends and their families instead of sitting around the house.

What, pray tell, am I talking about?  The whole 9/11 10th anniversary thing.

See, don’t like the level of attention being paid to the annual remembrance of this event.  My philosophy can be summed up pretty simply - America doesn’t make a big deal about the times we got our ass handed to us.  It’s not a part of our national culture or identity.  Do we remember?  We most certainly do.  We remember the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  We remember the first battle of Bull Run.  We remember the Battle of the Bulge.  We remember the Tet Offensive.  We remember them quietly and solemnly.

Now some folks will say that 9/11 was different.  And they would be right.  The difference from all of the above I’ve mentioned is that 9/11 wasn’t a battle or a military attack on the US military by the organized and legal military of another sovereign nation.  It was an act of organized mass murder, perpetrated by sociopath mobsters masquerading as religious crusaders.  By filling our newspapers, TV news programs, radio and internet traffic with detailed recollections of this event we’re raising what was really just the act of organized criminals to the level of the military tragedies I mention above.  It doesn’t make sense, and it’s not consistent with our national character.

The US of A is the ultimate winner.  Whether that’s completely true or not is irrelevant.  That’s who we are.  Yes, it’s moronic and irritating that whenever the Olympics are held the world is guaranteed to see hundreds of thousands of Yanks standing on their feet chanting “U-S-A, U-S-A!” whenever someone with the good fortune to be born here does something pretty well.  However, that is who we are, and I’m more than a little bit frightened of what I think are some of the symptoms of the dwindling of the confidence that goes along with that attitude.  I think the fear that permeates American society today is leading us to underestimate ourselves.  Because we underestimate what we can do, we have become prone to expect failure.  That expectation of failure is feeding fear that things we really need to do are things we really are just not capable of.

Personally, I’d like to see us leave the remembrance of 9/11 to the people of New York, the District of Columbia and the families of the folks who went down with flight 93 in Pennsylvania.  And I’m certainly on the side of those who thought the notion that there wasn’t enough room for the police and fire fighters to attend the 9/11 memorial at the WTC site was utterly ridiculous.  In my mind, there was no room for anyone else there.

I hope that more people come around to my notion of how to remember.  I certainly hope that the trend of commercializing this horrible event creates as much revulsion as Keith Olbermann felt at the way Major League Baseball commercialized and controlled Baseball’s remembrance of 9/11.  I like Olbermann best when he sticks to baseball matters.  I love the way he writes and the way he respects the power of words, but most of the time I find his political rants to be ham-handed.  This rant against what MLB did to the Mets this past weekend was, in my opinion, dead on.   But then again, I’m reasonably certain that if there’s a hell, Bud Selig will get to chat through eternity with Bin Laden.

Good for you S&P.  About time someone slapped our dysfunctional Federal Government in the face with its own stupidity.  Note here that I am not pointing fingers at any one political party.  As I said to some friends online this morning - there’s really only one political party in the US now - the Asshat party.

The GOP categorically refuse to raise taxes, or even close loopholes in the current tax code that allow people and businesses to essentially legally cheat their way out of paying their fair share.  Want to know why the US will inevitably decline?  Because you cannot fight two major wars simultaneously with no plan to raise the funds to pay for these escapades.

Meanwhile, the Democrats categorically refuse to discuss any modifications to current entitlement programs - even utterly common-sense reforms like recognizing that when Social Security was established, enshrining the notion of a retirement age of 65 years, the average life expectancy was 61.7 years (These things were done with a purpose - even FDR didn’t intend for 100% of the population to withdraw from their Social Security accounts, and he certainly didn’t intend for us to do it well into our 80s, as is the case for a whole lot  of people these days).

You cannot run a government on sacred ideas.  Once political parties hold certain notions sacrosanct it becomes impossible to have reasoned debate around these issues.  You cannot discuss tax reform with a Republican any more than you can have a reasoned discussion with a religious fanatic about the existence of a deity.  You cannot talk about entitlement reform with a Democrat any more than you can discuss evolutionary theory with a creationist.

So, you know what?  Fuck it.  I say we issue swords and shields to the members of Congress, lock them in the Capitol building and let them have at it.  Whoever has the most members of their party left standing gets to run the country their way.  And while we’re at it, since we won’t be able to have reasoned political discussions anymore, we can skip having elections.  Whoever survives the Congressional bloodletting gets to represent us, until we’re too pissed off to put up with them anymore and we can hold a good old fashioned revolution and start over.

Any takers?