In memory of a lot of things.

The Constitution only applies when the going gets easy.
War is the answer, even when you forget the question.
The truth is for sissies.
America has never faced an enemy as dangerous and as intent on killing us as King George, the Civil War, World War I, the Germans, the Japanese, a nuclear Soviet Union Al Qaeda.
The real September 11 story was badly in need of editing.
Just because they say it makes it so.
We have always been at war with Oceania.
A fool is born every election day.

Due process is for the innocent.
Patriotism means never having to say you're sorry.
It's all Sandy Berger's fault.

(courtesy of The Daily Kos)

What follows are my distinctly unpatriotic feelings-my opinions only to which I am entitled.

This shit has gotten out of hand.

I grieved for the dead. I did. The number of dead US soldiers in Iraq is close to, if not past, the number of 9/11 dead. And those are just US SOLDIERS, not Iraqi citizens, contractors, journalists, or other non-combatants. This country is in such an economic shambles that we rejoice when gas goes below 2.49 a gallon, and we reminisce that maybe Nixon wasn't such a bad preznit, after all. We are ruled by reactionary fundamentalists who squander our resources and the blood of our soldiers to fight other reactionary fundamentalists and use our national sentiment as lubricant to slide away our freedom, our constitution, our rights. They play fast and loose with the truth, just as they have since that sad, sad day, five years ago, when I came home from work, weeping, to hug my dog and await my kids' return from school. These reactionary fundamentalists have divided us, have fomented hatred and strife, have drawn lines across this nation that no terrorist ever could, and while the lines get broader and broader, they laugh at us.

Oh yes, they laugh.

They laugh at the gullible populace. They laugh while they hand us Soma in the form of sensationalized news, more JonBenet and more Human Interest and less substance, less outrage. They whisper campaigns and push with polls and tell us what to think, and the vast, vast medicated, attention-deficited, material-addicted unwashed overworked masses capitulate and think what they tell us to think because it's just easier, because then we can feel part of something, because then we can be part of the RIGHT side, the side that WINS, whether it's just or not.

They continue to erect straw men and strap them to windmills, at which they then tilt, knowing that knocking Roe V Wade or Gay Marriage or Freedom of Religion asunder would leave them no rallying cries. They throw money at the richest and keep the poorest entertained, more bread and circuses, more reality television, more spectacle, more monkey shows at gaping wounds in the ground. More uncompleted memorials and more undiscovered dead. Will there be a five-year memorial for the victims of Hurricane Katrina? Did you know that they are still finding bodies in New Orleans? Did you care? They milk the religious and the self-righteous, and laugh while they mock their beliefs, because all they believe in is money, power, and control.

I am angry. All the hard work done in my lifetime, all the international goodwill, all the progress in equality and justice and REASON, dammit, pure, sweet REASON and science and love of our Mother, this planet, has been destroyed in the past five years, all in the name of Security, of Liberty.

There are more deaths than the 9/11/01 deaths to mourn today. There is the death of reason. The death of justice. The death of tolerance. The death of equality. The death of so many of the ideals that this country was founded upon, that I believe in, that I fought for and watched others fight and die for. And so many of them under the rallying cry of "never forget!"

You're damn right I'll never forget.