The Embarrassing Pity Party

I figured I'd wait a day or two until all of the fussing had subsided.  Our fruit fly attention span is now following some new shiny bobble.  Oooo, look!  A couple of violent NFL players.  Who'd a-thunk it?

9/11.  I just don't get it.

Why do we do this every year?  For thirteen years now, we haul out the memories of us getting our ass handed to us, and we feel sorry for ourselves.

Why do we feel the need to do this every, single year?  What purpose does this serve?

I understand the folks that lost friends and family members mourning their loss.  I do, and I would do the same had I lost a love one.  But that's a private affair, not something that should be paraded about.

We should remember the firefighters and police that died that day.  They were killed in the line of duty.  Genuine heroes.  It was an honorable act that should be remembered forever.

Memorialized like Pearl Harbor.  Somber and respectful.  Use the event as a call to service.

This happens to a certain extent, but the star of the show is the victims.  Or the wannabees.

I, like most folks alive at the time, remember the planes slamming into the Trade Centers and bringing them down.

It was horrible.  It was gut-wrenching.  And it was over a decade ago.  Am I a victim because I witnessed the destruction on live TV from my home in California?

Seriously, move on.

But no.  This replaying of the, "We were victims," meme does nothing more than to reinforce the idea that we're helpless souls, unable to defend ourselves, who must depend upon some faceless government to keep us safe.

Let's say the names of all 3,000 VICTIMS.  Reinforce victim, victim, VICTIM.

Clang the bell at the appropriate moments when the VICTIMS died.  Victim, victim, VICTIM.

Use the occasion to keep the public wallowing in puddles of their own pee by telling them they'll be VICTIMS if ISIS - who is even worse and more powerful than Al Qaeda - isn't stopped this very instant.  Victim, victim, VICTIM.

We have this national obsession with victims.  Everyone want to be one.  It makes you part of the club.

We see victims - real victims - being lionized by the media.  Rape victims, and the like.  This obsession with "turn the spotlight on me, me, me" spreads through our nation, and people yearn to be portrayed as a victim.

"I have a cousin, who knows a guy whose best friend died in the Trade Centers."

What the hell?  Victimhood-by-proxy?

Snippets from blogs and social media from Thursday - 

Horrible day. I was living in New York City working as a newspaper reporter and I still cannot get over the fact that 2,977 innocent Americans were murdered that morning.

I was on a Navy base in Norfolk that day. They locked down our building and no one moved around. Me and two other guys in the CCTV room grabbed our hindparts and waited for Naval Station Norfolk to be hit and we hoped that we would survive if it was.

My mother's unexpected death changed it all.  [Her mother died the day before, on 9/10.  She's a victim because she couldn't fly the next day.]

...On 9/11, my heart attack did prevent at least one, and possibly two other tragic deaths. [Supposed to be in NYC on 9/11]

I knew that day my life would change forever and it did. [This person was in her home in southern California]

 
I was this close to becoming a victim, too.  There are literally dozens, if not hundreds of sites dedicated to these victimhood wannabees.

Why this burning desire to be a victim?  I just don't get it.
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How about we stop this pity-party, and actually do something?

1.  Let's teach our nation not to be afraid.  Use the occasion to talk straight, and preach self-reliance.  Just like you can't stop crazy person from kicking in your door to kill you, you can't stop an individual terrorist from trying to kill you.  Prepare yourself and your family to defend your own life.

Use the occasion to bring us together as a tribe of self-reliant individuals who will have each others backs.

A leader would do this, a politician won't.  They'll use the occasion to grow their business - big government.  We need more cops, more SWAT teams, more TSA, more VIPR squads, more everything.

Those things won't do squat against a dedicated terrorist.  See Boston Marathon for further clarification.

2.  If we want to remember someone who died as a result of 9/11, I want to remember and read off the names of our service members who lost their lives over in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I want to stick a big, fat, pissed-off finger in the chest of the politicians that sent those (mostly) men to their deaths without giving them a measurable objective, and scream, "WHY?!"

How in God's Name could we send those men over there and not tell them, "When you accomplish X, you're done, and are coming home."

Instead, we sent them over there on the vague premise of, "Let's kill them there, so we don't have to kill them here."

How do you know when you're done?!   You don't, because you'll never be done.  There's always someone, somewhere that needs killing.

And when you strangle them with Rules Of Engagement that border on the insane, you guarantee a long, drawn-out "war".

Just what the pols and their funding sources want.

3.  Watch 'em.  All flavors of government use this kind of occasion to convince us that they need to get bigger, and eat up more of our Constitutional rights, all in the name of safety.

Don't let them get away with it, unheard.

Push back, even when it means putting yourself into harm's way.  It's easy for me to say, and I admit, it's tough to do.  But we've got no other choice if we want to live free.



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