|
Gone, But Not Forgotten? What The Internet Will Look Like Under SOPA Fearsgiving Week Jesus Approves of Waterboarding Beware of Asteroids 
All links are current as of the date of publication. All content created by the author is copyrighted 2005-2010, except where held by the owners/publishers of parent works and/or subject materials. Any infringement of another's work is wholly unintentional. If you see something here that is yours, a polite request for removal or credit will be honored. |
� |
Post 9/11 StupidityTuesday, Feb. 06, 2007 1:40 PMTurner Broadcasting and the marketing firm behind the 'guerilla art' campaign that immobilized Boston will be paying a $2 million settlement to avoid any potential civil or criminal claims against them. "We hope that this painful lesson will not be lived or learned again either by the communities involved, or � Turner Broadcasting and Interference," Attorney General Martha Coakley said. Would that be the painful lesson of 'All It Takes To Panic Us Is A Box With Blinking Lights?' And the issue I have with the phrase, 'Post 9/11' anything is that it concedes power to the terrorists. Yet we have people proudly proclaiming that they are 'post 9/11' people, living in a 'post 9/11' world. But no one talks about living in a 'post 7/20' world, when man first set foot upon the moon, even though the space program yielded innovations like tube toothpaste, instant foods, microwave ovens, and smaller computers. No one talks about being in a 'post 12/7' world, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Perhaps that's because we turned around and pounded them for it. (It is not a suggestion or endorsement of using nuclear weapons to resolve our current or imagined future issues in the region.) To continue to acknowledge 9/11 is to say we are still afraid of terrorists doing something else, and admit our helplessness. Our elected leaders are no help. Bush and Cheney continuously roll out the fear parade, and Congress tends to have terrorism on the brain. So much so that they've ceded oversight on key issues and bought into assurances that 'we'd never dismiss a bunch of Federal attorneys on a whim'. How can a non-binding resolution be watered down? What's the point? Yet that's precisely what has happened in Congress. We're kinda sorta criticizing the President, but we don't want to do it too loudly. This is the same lame-brained idiocy we've seen well before the Democrats gained the majority. Nobody wants to tell the Emperor he's running around starkers. Until we establish the mission in Iraq ��what we intend to do, how we intend to do it, and by what date ��we will remain ineffective. An additional problem in this department is that we have to be honest with ourselves about our goals � right now, we're waffling between fighting terrorism and buying time for a nascent democracy � in order for our military to achieve those goals. Our leaders should not be moving the goalposts, then complaining that we're not supporting the troops.
|
