9/11
It's kind of sad, september 11th has been commercialized. Badly. I mean they even call it "9/11". I think it's also called Patriot day or something like that? Everytime I see an infomercial for those commemorative coins I wanna vomit. I watched a documentary last night on the history channel that gave me chills, it brought me back to that day like I've never been brought back before.
This documentary had no voice over, no narration. It was beautifully done. It was comprised of a lot of home footage, it didn't follow one persons footage or a handful of peoples footage though. It included radio calls between emergency services, 911 calls, and then the audio with the video. It portrayed all the confusion of that day. All the fear. And what later turned to blind hatred and anger as well. It takes you away from the politics of it for awhile. The thing that amazed me is when you slow down what happened you realize that the FDNY had guys as high as the 77th floor...in the south tower too, the one with the second plane, where the plane hit a lot lower than the other tower. It's crazy to think the plan was to put the fire out or to trap it and let it burn, no one expected anything to collapse. It's also so horrifying to think about all the floors that were above where the planes hit. The most terrifying thing I've ever seen is someone that must've been on about the 105th floor of the north tower, out the window waving a white flag or a shirt, and then he jumps after awhile. Burn alive or crash on the city streets, why should an innocent person have had to make this kind of decision? The bravest thing that I took out of this and the thing that gives me pride just watching it was how guys didn't even flinch to keep going to ground zero, even after the south tower collapsed. A great deal of people showed so much heroism that day. And to a lot of people that was just their job. People in a career answering the biggest call of their lives, and very sadly for some of them their last calls.
The blind hatred and fear after the second tower collapsed was also captured. Remember all those fucking idiots that were going to 7-11's and beating the shit out of the HINDU guys that work there? Yeah, those morons. They had one guy in times square say into the camera "We should just go and destroy arab country, that's it." It goes to show how ignorant the average american can be, but at the same time you can't even blame him. The news feeds us this crap, the government feeds us this crap, and even when we rationally dissect and disagree with some of it and agree with some of the rest, it's still in our heads and I think it's probably been instilled in the back of our head that all Arabs are terrorists, even though they're not. Just like any stereotype.
But my point with everything is with september 11th, a lot of people say "Never Forget" but really don't remember themselves. We all remember that two planes hit the World Trade Center. Another hit the pentagon and a plane crashed in Pennsylvania that was hijacked as well. But I think what everyone needs to remember is how our innocence was just taken from us that day. We lost a lot of rights that day. Our own government jumped on this day to pass bills that infringe on our rights to privacy and anyone who stood in the way was looked at as "unpatriotic". Patriotism is a dangerous thing, people that are over patriotic almost make me less patriotic. Americans take everything very seriously and we have this attitude, a chip on our shoulder, that makes us want to be the best at everything and I really think it makes us end up going overboard with everything. And that goes for the average civilian who decided he loves this country so much that after "9/11" he was going to go out and buy 30 American flags in all different varieties to put all over his yard, his car, and he was going to buy some boxers, a bandana, and a bunch of "never forget" t-shirts because he loved America so much. There's nothing wrong with loving this country but some people love it so much they choose to ignore the wrongs we do. Every country does wrong, find me a perfect country, you can't. There never will be such thing. But come on. And not only did our government use "9/11" to infringe o our rights and get bills passed that they had wanted to pass for a long time waiting, it took us into war. The "War on Terrorism" sounds good from the onset but it's a shame it's led by a country with so many underlying reasons to go to war with these countries it's not even funny. How we have STILL yet to really get into Pakistan but claim to really want to get Bin Laden and the rest of the terrorist scum is beyond me. There were reports that Bin Laden was in Pakistan before we even went into Afghanistan. And coincidentally there's an oil pipeline being built in Afghanistan around that time. Hmm? And Iraq is a joke. Iraq should've been liberated in 1991, and the fact that it wasn't then and only now did we liberate it is proof enough that we're not there for the right reasons. We don't care about the people, we don't care about finding terrorists there, we care that there's a shitload of oil there and that we can't have it fall into the wrong hands. We're going to force a culture onto the iraqi's that they're going to hate and it's probably never going to work. Wooo.
Never forget what it's really about. The innocent people lost and the lingering affect it's had on us today. How we honor the fallen with coins, flags, t-shirts, unjustified wars, and more bloodshed. Don't get me wrong, I don't think the right action would've been to go "that sucked" and hide under a rock. But going to war with the first country you can find probably wasn't the brightest idea either.
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This documentary had no voice over, no narration. It was beautifully done. It was comprised of a lot of home footage, it didn't follow one persons footage or a handful of peoples footage though. It included radio calls between emergency services, 911 calls, and then the audio with the video. It portrayed all the confusion of that day. All the fear. And what later turned to blind hatred and anger as well. It takes you away from the politics of it for awhile. The thing that amazed me is when you slow down what happened you realize that the FDNY had guys as high as the 77th floor...in the south tower too, the one with the second plane, where the plane hit a lot lower than the other tower. It's crazy to think the plan was to put the fire out or to trap it and let it burn, no one expected anything to collapse. It's also so horrifying to think about all the floors that were above where the planes hit. The most terrifying thing I've ever seen is someone that must've been on about the 105th floor of the north tower, out the window waving a white flag or a shirt, and then he jumps after awhile. Burn alive or crash on the city streets, why should an innocent person have had to make this kind of decision? The bravest thing that I took out of this and the thing that gives me pride just watching it was how guys didn't even flinch to keep going to ground zero, even after the south tower collapsed. A great deal of people showed so much heroism that day. And to a lot of people that was just their job. People in a career answering the biggest call of their lives, and very sadly for some of them their last calls.
The blind hatred and fear after the second tower collapsed was also captured. Remember all those fucking idiots that were going to 7-11's and beating the shit out of the HINDU guys that work there? Yeah, those morons. They had one guy in times square say into the camera "We should just go and destroy arab country, that's it." It goes to show how ignorant the average american can be, but at the same time you can't even blame him. The news feeds us this crap, the government feeds us this crap, and even when we rationally dissect and disagree with some of it and agree with some of the rest, it's still in our heads and I think it's probably been instilled in the back of our head that all Arabs are terrorists, even though they're not. Just like any stereotype.
But my point with everything is with september 11th, a lot of people say "Never Forget" but really don't remember themselves. We all remember that two planes hit the World Trade Center. Another hit the pentagon and a plane crashed in Pennsylvania that was hijacked as well. But I think what everyone needs to remember is how our innocence was just taken from us that day. We lost a lot of rights that day. Our own government jumped on this day to pass bills that infringe on our rights to privacy and anyone who stood in the way was looked at as "unpatriotic". Patriotism is a dangerous thing, people that are over patriotic almost make me less patriotic. Americans take everything very seriously and we have this attitude, a chip on our shoulder, that makes us want to be the best at everything and I really think it makes us end up going overboard with everything. And that goes for the average civilian who decided he loves this country so much that after "9/11" he was going to go out and buy 30 American flags in all different varieties to put all over his yard, his car, and he was going to buy some boxers, a bandana, and a bunch of "never forget" t-shirts because he loved America so much. There's nothing wrong with loving this country but some people love it so much they choose to ignore the wrongs we do. Every country does wrong, find me a perfect country, you can't. There never will be such thing. But come on. And not only did our government use "9/11" to infringe o our rights and get bills passed that they had wanted to pass for a long time waiting, it took us into war. The "War on Terrorism" sounds good from the onset but it's a shame it's led by a country with so many underlying reasons to go to war with these countries it's not even funny. How we have STILL yet to really get into Pakistan but claim to really want to get Bin Laden and the rest of the terrorist scum is beyond me. There were reports that Bin Laden was in Pakistan before we even went into Afghanistan. And coincidentally there's an oil pipeline being built in Afghanistan around that time. Hmm? And Iraq is a joke. Iraq should've been liberated in 1991, and the fact that it wasn't then and only now did we liberate it is proof enough that we're not there for the right reasons. We don't care about the people, we don't care about finding terrorists there, we care that there's a shitload of oil there and that we can't have it fall into the wrong hands. We're going to force a culture onto the iraqi's that they're going to hate and it's probably never going to work. Wooo.
Never forget what it's really about. The innocent people lost and the lingering affect it's had on us today. How we honor the fallen with coins, flags, t-shirts, unjustified wars, and more bloodshed. Don't get me wrong, I don't think the right action would've been to go "that sucked" and hide under a rock. But going to war with the first country you can find probably wasn't the brightest idea either.
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