9/11...

[seawasp]

... was called a declaration of war. And, in a way, it was, but not the war that the politicians wanted us to think.

It was a war against trust. A war against acceptance of risk in the real world. A war against our freedom, not by Muslim terrorists, but by our own people.

We are currently losing this war, as we were from the moment the PATRIOT act was passed. We continue to lose it as long as it, and similar laws, remain in force, as long as we are searched by increasingly intrusive means for weapons just to be able to fly for an hour, as long as our politicians and police justify any level of violence, intrusion, surveillance, and confiscation in the name of "terrorism".

I mourn for the people who died that day. And I mourn for the wound that it dealt our country, a wound that various groups are trying their best not to heal, but to cut open wider.

Comments

[kjn]

There is also the thing that the US is, due to its size and prosperity, setting trends and tones for the rest of the world. The social, cultural, and political decisions that the US takes—in airline security, in surveillance, in what it sees as threats—has a huge impact on the rest of the world. Both in its direct impact on us, but also indirectly.