The teabaggers, birthers, deathers, and bloodthirsty neotheocons are gathering today to recapture how they supposedly felt on 9/12/01. I suppose they felt good, for why would you want to recapture a moment in your life, in all of our lives, really, that was mindblowingly devastating and horrible. But since Glenn Beck and his deluded minions want to recapture that feeling, I can only assume it was because he and they felt good that day, after America suffered the worst attack on its soil since Pearl Harbor. I suppose he felt good that thousands of Americans just died in balls of red hot fire at the hands of terrorists. He felt good that Americans were all fearful and scared, angry and sad. You see, those are the emotions upon which fascism thrives. Anger and Fear. And during the Bush Administration, we were told to remember those emotions of anger and fear. All policy decisions were made with reference to 9/11, so that we would remember our anger and fear. A war was fought in a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 because we had to prevent 9/11 from every happening again, and our anger and fear allowed that to happen.
I felt like shit on 9/12, as I assume people in New York and Washington did. I suppose it is possible for people thousands of miles away from the attacks and with no real connection to it to feel great if their political and ideological goals are best achieved in atmosphere of anger and fear. But for people who actually mourn the loss of 9/11, we did not feel great on 9/12. Why would I want to purposefully feel that way again?
Are there lessons to learn from 9/11? Absolutely. Should we ever forget the sacrifice of those who died on 9/11? Absolutely not. Should Al Queda and Osama bin Laden be captured at long last and brought to justice? Damn straight. But to say that we have to recapture the feeling we had on 9/12 is to say we can never let go of the anger and fear we felt that day. That we must always live in anger and fear.
Glenn Beck can go fuck himself, because I won’t live that way, sad and scared, fearful and depressed, angry and frightened, for the rest of my life. Indeed, there are only two kinds of people who want to live that way: those with mental health disorders, and terrorists.
To those thinking Glenn Beck’s 9/12 project means anything, ask yourself this: which one are you?