We interrupt your regularly-scheduled 'Ask a Vet' for a dose of PATRIOTIC PORN!!!





Yes, I know what today is. After all, how could we forget? I knew it was coming last weekend, when this happened. Even if you have no awareness of time, it's easy to tell what time of year it is from your Facebook feed, too.



I don't know what it is where we can't go without making this a national orgy of sorrow. Yes, it has been 17 years. I know. I was there. (figuratively, not literally - others here WERE there.) The company I worked for at the time had an office with a view of the towers - we heard the commotion as it happened via a conference call right when the towers collapsed.

It's maybe a curiosity of Americans where everything needs a memorial, no matter how slight. This is not slight - but we're still going about it the wrong way. 9/11 now has the feel of the Reichstag Fire. We must propagandize it every year so our perceived enemies remain de-humanized and targeted.

Somewhere in this vast land, somebody is going to bring a cake to their office, and the clueless will gather around to listen to the National Anthem on the radio and "honor" our dead. By having a party. I don't know about you, but such a thought disgusts me.

Boston is the origin of two of those flights. As far as I am aware, this city is not planning any significant commemoration. On board the USS Constitution this morning, there is going to be a one-gun salute at 8:46 and 9:37, the National Anthem will be played each time, and that will be all.

Perhaps being near the epicenter alters our view - I can't speak for New York, but this city is always looking forward. We remember our past, but we don't dwell on it. Case in point, next April is going to be 6 years since the Marathon bombings here. There is only one physical memorial in this city to the event, and it honours a person. MIT police officer Sean Collier, who was shot and killed by the suspects at the corner of Vassar and Main in Cambridge.



You can think of those places where a 9-11 memorial is going to be an event. Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and you could probably name a few more places. I'm finding it ironic that all of these places are bastion of right-wing America. Some of them thousands of miles away and probably without any direct connections to the event.
Celebrating the death of thousands of their ideological enemies in liberal New York City.

I just don't get it anymore.