Its been 13 years, and I still remember exactly where I was when I first heard. I was cutting trees for a living. We were working at an older ladys house and I was dragging branches to the wood chipper. The lady comes outside and asks if wed heard. The other guys ignore her and keep at it with their chainsaws. I ask what she meant as Im piling the next stack of branches to drag. She says two planes just flew into the World Trade Center. They thought she was senile. I thought she was losing it. The statement simply made no sense. Then our supervisor showed up on site and called us over. The story was playing on the radio. There was still no info at that point other than planes had hit the trade center. (I would find out about the Pentagon later that day.) My first thought, other than shock, was theres no way this is an accident. I got that conspiracy theorist look from two of the guys. The rest you already know. It seems like a life time ago. So much has changed since then. It makes me sad to think about it. I know we always like to pat ourselves on the back so quickly and talk about how we overcame and persevered. Those at ground zero were heroes, and Ill never take that from them. The rest of us? Weve lived under 13 years of Orange Alert. The Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act. The creation of the TSA and Homeland Securities. Weve tolerated two Presidents that have signed off on our rights and liberties in the name of security. Harassing citizens at will. Protestors being arrested and bloodied in the streets. Centralized authority is giving themselves the authority to detain us at will and indefinitely. (This is currently law under the NDAA) This sadly didnt go away when the Republicans left the White House. Despite what we tell ourselves. We have a current fight in Congress over the signing of secret bills. Laws that are in effect that the public is not notified over. This is happening right now, under this current regime. We have become smaller, and less, in the name of fear. And thats exactly what terrorism wants, fear. So instead of another talk about the American spirit, and how proud we should be, Id like you to look at the pictures and footage of that smoking rubble in downtown New York, and think about all our government has taken from us since that day. To protect us. I want you to get pissed off. I want you to look at these fools in Congress that have signed off on YOUR RIGHTS time and again. I want you to look into local politicians that have no affiliation with Republican or Democrat, and fight to get people into office that you personally believe in. Not the lesser of two evils. I want us to take back what we never should have let go of in the first place. Let today be a reminder of what we all too often take for granted. What is ours. And who out there, foreign and domestic, that might seek to take it from us. Its time to get active. The two parties in charge are not here to help you, and I think theyve proven that time and again now. Its time for a real change. We deserve better. And only we can make that happen.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 15:16:40 +0000
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