Festering

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

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There aren’t many days when I wake up, look around and say “oh, thank heavens, it’s overcast.”  Nine eleven is one of those days.  It probably will always be.

For many of us, the crystalline clarity of that September morning sixteen years ago will live forever as the symbol of something we lost, some innocent glimmer that can never be recovered.  On that day, we changed, each of us who lived through it and who didn’t willfully go back to sleep.  On that day those of us who had been hopeful, idiotic internationalist libertarians were reminded that the world doesn’t conform to dreams, that other countries and other cultures get a say in who we are and what we do and that some of them hate us, they really, really hate us.

More importantly, though, deeper than the fracturing that made me a grown up  (Yes, I was then thirty nine, but still very much a young idiot) 9/11 broke our national illusions.

Look, being attacked is one thing.  Everyone who wasn’t willfully blinded — me, I wanted to believe in peace and stability after my turbulent growing up years, after the USSR had been (I thought) staked through the heart, after the cold war was over without nuclear holocaust — would have known sooner or later an attack like 9/11 would happen.  It’s not unheard of in the life of nations, and besides, we had countries and organizations who’d declared themselves at war with us (still do.)

And there was the previous World Trade Center attack, after all.

It’s what came after that has led to where we are.

For those of you who were too young, those who were not aware of politics, yet, sure, the country was as riven, as broken in two (or more) pieces as it is now.  The happy-slappy idea of consensus, of unity, was a thing of a unified mass media.

All through the cold war, those of us who both lived among intellectuals and who knew the USSR was a horrible, dehumanizing regime, and communism a malware in the soul of mankind, knew that the “left-complex” of media, entertainment and education told themselves lies about communism, lies which, effectively, made them internal enemies.

It was impossible, particularly around Reagan’s election, to miss the press’s view that he would start the hot war with an “otherwise peaceful” USSR, or not to read beneath it, a willingness to surrender, to secure “peace in our time” at all costs.

But those of us who’d grown up among leftists (in Europe, say, or in academia) could excuse it too.  Well, sort of excuse it.  We could look at what communism had once seemed to be, and at the massive propaganda machine of the USSR and shake our heads at these poor deluded fools who longed for their impossible utopia.  We deplored their treasonous words, their ridiculous betrayals, but in a way more in pity than in anger.

Then came 9/11.  For those following this by score card at home, 9/11 came after the fall of the USSR and before the horror pit of what communism had actually been had been covered over, memory-holed.  For a few years (a very few) the left was actually almost ashamed of itself, almost patriotic.

By 9/11 they’d started making noises about “not done right” as though there were anyway to do “right” a regime that requires everyone to behave like angels and against human nature.

Then nine eleven happened, and the masks came off.  There were my leftist friends “made uncomfortable” by the American flags everywhere.  There was talk about how we should apologize to the Muslim world, how it was all our fault, how we were the worst.

Since then we’ve been treated to insanity like gay marchers in support of regimes that would kill them; “feminists” who cover their heads in Muslim countries; feminists who will claim that Islamic women are the “true feminists.”

You could break your heart from laughing, if at the heart of it, their hatred for us weren’t so clear, so concentrated, so pure.  If it hadn’t become obvious that the enemy within REALLY wishes to destroy us and everything we are, even at the cost of letting the world be consumed by the most fanatic form of a 7th century religion which hates everything they claim to stand for.

The enemy outside is to be expected.  America is a new thing in the world.  We will always have enemies.

The enemy within, both on the left and those who claim to be on the right, but who live in gleeful expectation of our downfall, those are a problem and a serious threat.

They are not a serious threat because of their ability to do much against us, or even because (on the left) because of their monopoly on the cultural megaphones.  They’re not even a serious threat because of their numbers.  There aren’t really very many of them, and their cultural megaphones have been negated by technology, a negation and downfall accelerated by their behavior after 9/11, which propelled many of us to blogs and political activism.

No, they are a threat, because they still have some structural power, and because they are blissfully unaware of how their behavior, their beliefs, their reactions, appear to the rest of us.

The flags everywhere should have been a sign that Americans don’t generally hate America, as they do.  It wasn’t.  Instead, they whined about jingoism and retreated into their America-blaming bubble.

The rise of blogs, their inability to fully control elections should have been a warning.  It wasn’t.  Instead they made jokes about people in their pajamas and managed one last media sweep, one last fraud wave to elect Obama (who benefited too from almost uniform racial solidarity besides) and convinced themselves that meant the rest of us REALLY wanted an apology tour of the Muslim world, REALLY wanted NASA turned into an instrument to raise Muslim self esteem, that we really wanted to abandon Iraq and Afghanistan to the ravening hordes of Isis.

The election should have been a wake up call, but it was not.  They have sunk into a dream of being brave resistance to a Nazi regime that doesn’t exist.  Even though their predicted racial extermination camps, their predicted crack down failed to materialize, they’ve filled their yards with signs proclaiming their resistance, and gone that much crazier in their public utterances.

The alarm is ringing and they refuse to wake up.  Instead, they roll over and hit snooze again and again and again.

But just like you can’t ignore the alarm forever, you can’t ignore festering wounds forever.

Declaring 9/11 a day of volunteering or whatever the hell Obama did, as though this were a blameless, guilt-free tragedy and we were just being sad in general; saying it’s time to get over it; managing to make most images of 9/11 disappear from online, even from the free image sites like Pixabay (seriously, go look up twin towers, there) won’t make us forget.  It won’t make it all go away.

Sending out black clad fascists who call themselves antifa, won’t make the discontent stop.

Our elites can’t harness this type of anger to their benefit, though Lord knows they tried and tried and tried — OWS, Resistance, antifa — because our anger is with them and with their obvious, declared hatred of us.

There is a festering wound in the heart of America: our unavenged dead, our unrepentant fifth column.

You can cover wounds up, and skin can even grow over them, but that won’t make them heal.  The infection will just fester, consuming everything and eventually killing the patient.

The American people know their self proclaimed elites would rather side with those who want to destroy America than stop hating the nation that gave them so much.  And the American people don’t want to die.

Amping up the crazy to eleven (really how much crazier can you get than invisible micro aggressions, or no one knowing where to pee?) won’t stop the sound of the maggots feeding on our living flesh.

It won’t expunge away the image of those men and women and children (do you realize those children would now be in college?) who died on that clear, sunny September morning sixteen years ago for no other crime than being Americans.  Americans like us.

Tamping down on our anger and our grief won’t make it go away.  It will just make it find new outlets.

It is possible, of course, to keep this up long enough that they do indeed destroy America.  But they won’t like what comes next.  And nor will we.

On the other hand, I don’t think they have the power anymore.  I think their insane shrieking is all they have.  And it’s not enough.

Beneath it, as a groundswell, the people who know that when someone says they want to kill you, you should believe them, the people who love America still, despite the betrayals of the elites, the Americans, are getting very, very angry.

Festering wounds create heat and fever.  The voices of our unavenged dead cry out for vengeance.

Telling us to sit down, shut up and do volunteer work is not going to succeed.

If this goes on, the “elites” and every trace of their culture will be destroyed.  And all we can do is fight not to let America go with it.

In the end, we win, they lose.

The die is cast.  They’ve made their choice.  The rest of us made the only one we could.

Not all the destruction of monuments, not all the screaming, not all the black-clad goons will change anything now.

9/11 and the people’s reaction to it was the alarm.  They hit the snooze button.

 

 

399 thoughts on “Festering”

  1. There aren’t many days when I wake up, look around and say “oh, thank heavens, it’s overcast.” Nine eleven is one of those days. It probably will always be.

    Except, possibly, for those held in the sway of Hurricane Irma at the moment.

    But…

    Yes. I shall never forget that last view I saw of the New York skyline before everything changed. Early on that morning I turned on The Weather Channel to check out the day’s predictions. They were showing an iconic shot of the Manhattan sky line from across the river and the forecaster was enthusing about what a perfect September day New York was going to have.

    We never know when our world will be turned upside down. Be thankful for each beautiful moment while you have it.

    1. Quick lunch break:

      Yeah, 9/11 is going to have a different meaning now for some of us. I came to work in wind that some city/county EMS director on TV said was impossible to drive in, and then it started blowing hard. Fear this will be an exercise in futility until a few hours now. At least the trees didn’t go across the road before I came in.

      Ya’ll take care.

      2. Yup.
        It was such a beautiful autumn day. Very like today, in San Antonio, then and now. Clear, bright, just starting to cool from the brutal summer heat – and I drove to work with the classical station on, opened up the office that I worked in then … and began confirming my then-bosses’ appointments for the day.
        And then everything went weird.
        But on the surface, everything looked reassuringly normal.
        The flags came out over the next couple of days. They’ve never gone away, not since then, not in Texas.

    2. I was working in MIdtown (39th & 3rd) at the time. Our entire office was just in a fog for a few weeks afterwards.

  2. I was in shock. I was on vacation visiting my dad and his girlfriend when the news came over the radio about a plane hitting the towers. I had just turned the t.v. on to watch the second plane hit. Then I knew it wasn’t an accident. The following week was a week spent in shock and looking at the quiet skies and waiting for the other shoe to drop.
    That shoe is still falling I believe.

    1. I had been laid off Friday. I was reading online and heard about a plane — I assumed a little one, but I wasn’t in the mood. So I stopped reading.

      Then my older sister called me up and told me to turn on the TV.

      Later in the day — the plane in the Pennsylvania field? Well, the first reports were just like the rest of the frightened rumors of the day. The definitive new, I didn’t read on the news. Jerry Pournelle posted on a SFWA newsgroup a message of a father of one of those who fought. (Indeed, at the time, people were asking him whether he was sending this to news outlets.)

  3. I hit “Like” because I want people to read yyour essay. I don’t “Like” though, I hate the people who dances in the streets in celebration when the towers fell. I hate the politicans who demanded we apologize for being attacked. I hate the sympathizers who, knowing nothing about the world outside their little bubble, blamed it all on “US Aggression” and “Imperalism”

    Most of all I hated myself right then, having retired a few years before from a twenty year career in the USAF… and serving 10 years on the front where WWIII was expected to break out at any moment. I hated the thought that all my time overseas, my separation from friends, family, and the “Real World” (as we GI longingly refer to the US civilian life) was wasted. Thrown away and invalidated by MY PERSONAL failure to keep terrorism outside our borders.

    I was in Germany when bombs went off at Frankfurt Airport, US bases, and Oktoberfest… I got lectures on how to examine my car before getting in to determine if I’d been left and explosive present. Was there when a GI was murdered so his car could be used as a bomb the next day.

    I never wanted to be back in uniform with a weapon and an identifiable enemy more than the moment I watched LIVE as the second plane hit the tower… (Note: I haven’t had a portable TV in the car since)

    THIS is the day we SHOULD be watching those people jump instead of waiting to burn… Watching the whole mess unfold at full speed and again in slow motion.

    People should cry, be angry, scream in frustration as they absorb the whole situation and relive (some of us) our impotence to help, fix, or affect in any way what was happening.

    THIS should be a day of mourning, contemplation, and rededication to the priciples of freedom that our nation exemplies to the world at large.

    The children sucking their thumbs, coloring in their “Safe Spaces” are hardly the stuff that can prevent the US from being invaded and overcome by both illegals across our borders and those who are welcomed with open arms despite their avowed intention to destroy western civilization as we know it.

    I’m going to sit, drink another cup of coffee, and watch the results of the FedGov’s “Let It Burn” across the valley as I contemplate how we got from the Reagan years to today.

    I wonder if any of my friends homes will be torched by the latest flare up of fire on the southern edge of the burned zone, and be just a little glad I’m retired and have raised a couple of Alpha Men capable of going out and protecting the weak, the innocent, and the right… Guys even better suited for the job than I was at their ages.

    My third generation GI son (USAF A1C) in Okinawa, with grandfathers in WWII and Korea, me serving from Vietnam Era till after Desert Storm, and even his mother retired from the Air Force… tells folks who ask why he’s chosen to be in the service that “I was born for this”

    I’m hoping that enough of us are putting MEN and Strong Women out there to keep up the Good Fight…

    Hopefullly it will be enough to keep The Great Experiment going another couple hundred years.

    1. You raised yours right. From all the rest of civilization, Thank You.

      As to frustration on that morning…….
      I was in the ops center of the USS John F Kennedy (our last non-nuke carrier) that morning. We were just in the channel leading out from its berth, putting out to do some carrier qualifications for the air wing. I was aboard to lead some training on a command and control system.
      I was just trying to get started (training sailors underway is always hard, as there’s constantly something from their “day job” that needs doing, and right now), when a young officer (I think he was a JG) stuck his head in and told us to turn the tv to the news – “right now”.
      He left before we could get an answer to “why?”, but turn the tv on we did. Just in time to see the second plane strike. The place was stunned. Once we figured out we were not seeing a repeat of the first plane’s impact, questions turned to “Who?” and “What now?”
      That second question prompted the captain to ask for an inventory of ship’s weapons. It turned out we had diddly. We had some dummy training missiles, and one with a telemetry head. We had no aircraft weapons onboard, as this trip out to sea was nothing more than to test some systems, get this training done, and do the carrier quals for the wing (which would fly out of Jacksonville).
      Frustration abounded. Though it turned out any contribution would have been moot, they wanted more than anything to get in the mix NOW and deliver something to the bad guys, even if it was just cruising east of NYC and providing some air defense. And they couldn’t even do that. Hell, we couldn’t even turn around and go back to the dock to pick up weapons until we had cleared the channel (carriers don’t back up real well, and 3-point turns in that channel are out of the question).
      I wanted to be in the fight, too. But this entire ship’s compliment was chomping at the bit to do something, to do anything to right this wrong. Sheepdogs on leashes when they could smell the wolves on the other side of the herd.

      Yes, our training was a bust, as was the carrier quals. And, it turned out no aircraft carrier around NYC was going to really help. But, yes, the frustration was strong – to get going, to grab the powder horn and the musket and respond to the call.

      God bless all who answer that call (or prepare themselves to do so).

  4. No, they are a threat, because they still have some structural power, and because they are blissfully unaware of how their behavior, their beliefs, their reactions, appear to the rest of us.

    This. Seriously this.

    There are still cultural enclaves, like the metropolitan Northeast, where the people have been carefully schooled, where you will hear things like the following from NY’s Mayor De Blasio in an interview for New York magazine and reported on at Power Line:

    What’s been hardest is the way our legal system is structured to favor private property. I think people all over this city, of every background, would like to have the city government be able to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be. I think there’s a socialistic impulse, which I hear every day, in every kind of community, that they would like things to be planned in accordance to their needs. And I would, too. Unfortunately, what stands in the way of that is hundreds of years of history that have elevated property rights and wealth to the point that that’s the reality that calls the tune on a lot of development.

    1. It is more than a little disheartening to realize that in 16 years we have gone from Guiliani (who, for all his faults, understood what it meant to be a leader) to Bloomberg (who seemed to believe that being mayor meant being the city’s nanny) to…that.

        1. I still remember the catch in his voice, when he said something about the cost of that day in human lives – the lives of the police and FD personnel.

          1. One of a group we met on-line was a New Yorker, a member of a FNDY family. Her husband, brothers, in-laws were all FNDY. The Spouse, The Daughter and I had joined the extended family for a day when they were all vacationing on the Outer Banks of the North Carolina that summer. They were kind and gracious people, the sort of which the world could use far more. I spent a good part of 9/11 with her and a few others in a private on-line chat, all she knew at the time was that her husband’s unit was on the scene.

            He was in one of the very first units to arrive. He survived. He suffered an injury to a knee. He worked on in spite of it. He was ordered to stand down and get medical attention three days later. His Captain, who had suffered traumatic brain injuries when the first tower fell, defied doctor’s predictions by surviving.

          1. DeBlasio won in a very low turn-out election: 17 percent of 4.3 million registered voters, rendering his 73.3% to 24.3% victory* over his opponent somewhat less a resounding vote of confidence than a condemnation of NY politics.

            DeBlasio received 752,604 (17.5% of registered voters) against 249,121 (5.79% of registered voters) in an election in which 76.7% of registered voters voted for neither candidate.

            1. I’d heard it was low turnout, but I hadn’t realized it was that low. So given that total population of NYC is about 8.5 million, that means he was elected mayor by vote of 8.8% of the population. Ouch.

  5. I guess I’m just more cynical than thenaverage bear. My second thought when I saw the towers burning was “I’ve been expecting His for twenty years”.

    My first thought was “Thismis taking architectural criticism a little far”

    I had watched the Intellectual Left play footsie with various Islamic Radicals for decades. I knew goddamned well that the Left’s reaction would be to blame us first.

    I’ll admit I didn’t forsee them calling a mildly RINO President “Hitler”.

    *spit*

    1. My first thought was “This is taking architectural criticism a little far”

      *snerk*

      For all that those building were engineering marvels of their time, they weren’t the most aesthetically appealing structures. The New York skyline is better off for their absence.

      But if they had to come down, we should have been the ones to do it, by disassembling them. Not by a bunch of foreigners trying to start a war.

          1. Much, much longer. I remember a report I did in high school *mumblety* years ago on terrorism. Teacher was impressed on how far back I had managed to trace modern versions of it. So yes, we have been at war against the forces of anarchy and chaos for a very long time.

            1. Ugh. Classical education. Most people point to Rome, origins of Christianity, couple thousand years thereabouts.

              I rather doubt that’s quite it, though. There’s hints, if you look close, of stuff going back to the dawn of history (and like as not before, in the times we haven’t even the slightest record), things that make an avowed atheist (which I was at the time) consider there might just be something to all that religious jazz… Things that make you think about universals in the human condition. Things that Kipling, and Seneca, and others wrote about.

              The forces of chaos go by many names. They’re the barbarians at the gates. The cannibal savages in the wilds. The tribes, the pirates, and so on. One might even say such impulse is intrinsic to the human condition. There’s a little bit of the savage in even the best of us. Those that recognize it, and rule that beastial impulse, we call them civilized. And the uncivilized will always be at war with the civilized.

              In part it is envy. With civilization, amazing things are possible. And once we know what is possible, it becomes easier, even if our machines and buildings are broken, to build anew on old foundations. Brighter, stronger.

              1. “There’s hints, if you look close, of stuff going back to the dawn of history …”

                Consider the underlying meanings of the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, the basic tale of the civilized man and his wild counterpart.

            2. “we have been at war against the forces of anarchy and chaos for a very long time.”

              Always have been, always will be.

      2. “For all that those building were engineering marvels of their time,”
        They were also a prime example of how listening to ecoloons is a bad idea; one of the bigger reasons they came down so fast is that we didn’t use asbestos to fireproof the columns after a certain floor; the planes hit above that. Turns out fire melts steel real well if it isn’t adequately fireproofed.

        1. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t necessarily liquid, or even hitting one of the solid-solid phase transitions in the iron-carbon system. Steel gets softer when you heat it, like many other things. My understanding is that the steel frame broke before it got to the maximum temperature an aviation fuel fire can produce.

          1. Any metal has temperatures where it loses strength. Even without surpassing heat treatment you lose a portion of strength. As an example, the Concorde speed limit was driven more by aero heating of the aluminum skin than force based.concerns. Reason stuff like the Sr71 was heavily titanium and X15 mostly inconel.

              1. And a huge amount of it is misapplied bits of science. Take a number of tests and make it sound like it’s impossible. But wasn’t just jet fuel in the buildings, no insulation as would be tested and already overstressed design members.

                Just a year later there was an overpass collapse in iirc LA purely by an oil truck fire. Pretty sure it wasn’t brought down with thermite

                1. To my certain knowledge the same thing has happened multiple times on the I285 around Atlanta. And I was about a mile away in a training class when one of them happened, where I285 crosses over GA400.

          2. But from what I’ve seen, the opinion is that it would have gotten there slower. What would three more hours to evacuate been worth?

              1. Sarah, I’m not sure it would have prevented the jumpers; most of them were above the impact floors and access was blocked. I’m thinking about the floors below the fire and all the people who hadn’t gotten very far from the Towers when it dropped.

                1. I’m sorry to ask, but no one ever explained this to me. I KNOW that the access to the roof was blocked. But SURELY properly equipped people could have broken through from the top. WHY was there no helicopter rescue of people trapped above the fires? Am I ignoring some facts of physics? Or was it a “complete confusion” thing?

                  1. Having been on a couple high tower roofs, there’s not a lot of space to put a helicopter unless there’s a spot specifically designed for one. Not to mention two other factors with the World Trade towers. One is the speed in which they collapsed and two is the air currents and height of them. If someone had thought about using helicopters they didn’t have enough time to get them into position to be effective. Not to mention other risks.

                    1. All of this, plus how many helicopters were available on short notice, air traffic control around the tower, etc.

                      Sarah, it wasn’t just that roof access was blocked at the roof; you had 50+ floors of people who couldn’t go down either because the stairs were blocked down.

                    3. It was either blocked, or it was a secured door and the guy with the key was in the security office on the first floor.

                    4. From some one that has worked “behind the scenes”. Roof’s are typically zero access to public or tenants. Only people that can gain access to roofs are building maintenance and security. Access is so highly restricted that it requires filing out of forms and timings before anyone can gain access. Then doors have to be unlocked. Getting into the mechanical rooms requires special keys once again held by building operators or security guards. You won’t find them just hanging on the wall.
                      So yes access was blocked, because that’s the way it is for security and liability reasons.

                    5. In this case, the evacuation procedure was “go to roof” Even the people on lower floors tried to do that in the confusion. This is why I assumed there was a procedure for evacuation from roof. Which had to be helicopter, right?

                    7. I’m thinking that flames such as were occurring would create drafts, eddys and air currents that would make it very difficult to deploy helicopters.

                    8. I’m not certain how many pinnacle-landing-capable helicopter pilots would have been available on short notice, and would have been permitted in by Air Traffic Control. The guys I’ve talked to say that landing on an oil-rig or pinnacle (high building or rock, either one) is a different sort of operation from “normal” rotorcraft ops. YMMV, and I wasn’t talking to a large sample of rotor-wing guys.

                    9. Not to mention passenger capacity, and flight ops. Imagine trying to keep panicked peoples heads down as they load only five or six at a time into each helicopter. Most people think of the military Huey’s or Blackhawk these days and even then they don’t have a large capacity. At best a helicopter airlift if it had been feasible may have only gotten a few people out before the towers collapsed.

                    10. Again, that was part of their planned “evacuation” for other emergencies. This was clear in the biography of guy who saved a bunch of people and died on his last run in.

                    11. That’s…interesting. I have no idea why they would have a rooftop evacuation direction. I would be curious to see their old fire safety plans and when they were updated.

                    13. Had to double check timings. I think there wasn’t enough time to get anything organized properly as well. Time, time, ask anything of me but time.

    2. they called him that because of those camps that he was going to put muslims in, that were going to be run by FEMA…

  6. September 11th 2001, I was a tutoring center at Auburn University in Montgomery, AL. I’d been married for 5 months. My husband was working on Gunter AFB which was locked down. He couldn’t leave until late afternoon. I couldn’t call my family in NYC. I’ll not forget that day.

    Subsequent developments have shown me what domestic enemies are.

        2. The reason one jumper in particular caught my eye was that he seemed to doing a perfect swan dive. He wasn’t falling with limbs askew.

      2. Once I was aware of the impact of the first plane I turned on the TV again. It remained on throughout the day.

        Initially the chatter had been about past accidental collisions of planes and tall buildings. When the second plane appeared on the screen and crashed into the second of the towers that became a turning point.

        That was clearly no accident. That became the image burned in my mind.

        From then on each incident, each image, became an ever increasing exercise of ‘Oh no, and now what?’

    2. Gunter was also one of the places that got a fake anthrax powder delivery a couple of weeks later.

  7. Well said, and I believe the ‘vaccination’ has taken. America is coming back to its senses, and the gloves are coming off. The nattering left continues to spew their PC nonsense, but America has had enough. It is time to take the battle TO the terrorists, until they are done.

    1. As long as you recognize that we will have to clean out the Fifth Column HERE first. That was Bush’s fundamental mistake.

    2. It sure as h-ll worked on me. Within a few weeks I had read two translations of the Koran, started seriously studying Islamic ideology, and ended up one of the early members of the blog that spawned JihadWatch, The Jawa Report, The Gates of Vienna, Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, PJ Media, and a few others, and was working as part of the anti-jihadi-propaganda YouTube Smackdown.

  8. Declaring 9/11 a day of volunteering or whatever the hell Obama did, as though this were a blameless, guilt-free tragedy and we were just being sad in general; saying it’s time to get over it; managing to make most images of 9/11 disappear from online, even from the free image sites like Pixabay (seriously, go look up twin towers, there) won’t make us forget. It won’t make it all go away.

    They took all the footage off my T.V.
    Said it’s too disturbing for you and me
    It’ll just breed anger that’s what the experts say
    If it was up to me I’d show it everyday

      2. Intended target was almost certainly either the White House or Congress. What I’ve never understood was the mindset that caused them to spend two planes on the World Trade Center. Guess I just cannot set my head in the perspective of an Islamic jihadi, thank the Lord.

        3. What’s most (bitterly) amusing is that they believed the way to defeat the US was to eliminate the reins on our anger.

          To paraphrase Bugs Bunny, They don’t know us very well, do they?

          1. There were two quotes that I recalled, after the emotions of watching the towers collapse died down a little.

            Both were said to be uttered on 7 December 1941. The first was the apocryphal comment attributed to Yamamoto: “I fear all we have done is wakened a sleeping giant and filled it with a terrible resolve.” The second was from Admiral Halsey when Enterprise steamed into Pearl Harbor that evening: “When this war is over the Japanese language will be spoken only in Hell.”

            Unfortunately our Fifth Column has made both sentiments moot.

            1. > “I fear all we have done is wakened a
              > sleeping giant and filled it with a terrible resolve.”

              Has I been El Presidente, on 09/12 I would have had an Executive Order drafted to turn the Enola Gay and Bocks Car over to the Confederate Air Force with funding and orders to get them operational A.S.A.P.

              No, the President doesn’t have authority over the CAF… but I expect they would have gone at it 24/7. And for that matter, Tibbets and Sweeney were still alive…

              I would’ve set up streaming webcams, and a calendar like that of the Theocracy of Muntab, that counted *down*…

              1. I was at Airsho™ (our homecoming show) at Midland that year. I’ve never sensed the kind of mood I got from people, snarling anticipation and the desire to DO Something. When they piped Pres. Bush’s announcement about going into Afghanistan over the PA? I think the cheers and snarls of “Now we get the b@stards” shook the control tower. I was in the O’Club at the time and wow. Absolute, intense concentration and silence, and then ROAWR. Even the folks from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, England, France, Germany were on their feet yelling “Sic ’em” with the rest of us.

                Yep, I’d have been there, toolbox in hand, ready to set to work on the restoration. I like working on the big engines. *beatific kitty smile, flicks out claws*

            2. Do not be so sure. Things can… snap.
              As Bugs Bunny was mentioned, recall the USA is summed up in that cartoon rabbit. One slight can be overlooked. Two can be ignored. But let them continue and build? Then… oh, snap.

              We might well “hate ourselves in the morning.” but we will have made damn sure it’s WE who see the morning.

              1. This is actually what happened with regards the Buddhists. All that condemnation for Aum Sun Kyii (I can’t remember the exact spelling of her name, sorry) and yelling about the Rohingya? It started with the Rohingya tribes slaughtering their non-Muslim neighbors and taking over the villages. There was an incident reported in ReligionOfPeace’s website and, I think Jihadwatch, where the Rohingya set fire to a few of their houses with the intent that the fire spread to the Buddhist side of the village. The wind turned, and destroyed the Muslim side of the village. I can’t recall exactly if it was that incident, but the Rohingya then proceeded to claim that the Buddhists had tried to kill them all…

                Of course none of these stories really make it out of the region, given the Western kowtowing to Islamic groups but pretty much, the Buddhists collectively had enough and now we have tribal genocide in the region.

                1. So … apparently a few of the Buddhists decided, “What the heck, so it will take a few more turns of the wheel t0 work off the karmic debt — kill the bastards before they kill us.”

                  I suddenly hear the Kinkster singing,

                  No, they ain’t makin’ Buddhists like Gautama anymore,
                  We don’t turn the other cheek the way they done before.
                  You hear that Muslim holler as he hit that hardwood floor
                  Lord, they ain’t makin’ Buddhists like Gautama anymore.

                2. I remember reading on Jihadwatch and a few other similar places (Weazelzippers?) about the Buddhists being attacked by their Muslim “neighbors” going back to 2005, and thinking that sooner or later, the peaceful Buddhists were going to go all Tibetan and whup someone.

                  1. Yeah. I was reading about the attacks around then too. Remember I was trying my best back in the day to report as much on the global Islamic atrocities on LJ; which was one of the reasons why fuckwit started stalking me. For my his-declared ‘racist bias’ against Muslims.

                    1. *attempts to look grave and serious* Because we all know that Islam is a race, just like Christian, Daoist, Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and Jewish are races.

        5. I think they are like the Rangora in Troy Rising. It was called the World Trade Center, so by smashing it, they should surely disrupt our trade with the rest of the world, because it must all be controlled from one place…

  9. Still in a bit of shock to this day. And yes, it’s clear sunny blue outside, winds regardless, and I hate it.

    After the first dazed numbness wore off, I ended up getting the Airwolf series – “because Why Not” was the reason in my head. And I noticed something that at the time seemed odd: back in the 80s, the Middle East was portrayed as an awful, nasty, screwed-up place that hated us and desperately wanted superweapons to use against us. This was jarring enough with the “religion of peace” messages our so-called elites were putting out that I started researching; libraries, internet, the works.

    I spent at least 2 years at that on my own time before I could conclude to my own satisfaction that pre-1980s portrayals of Islam and its adherents were on target, and what we were being told currently was insane.

    …I admit I had an advantage over most people my age. My first exposure to anything about Islam was reading the Solomon Kane stories as a little kid. Whippings, slavery, gruesome executions… yeah.

    So. Now I’m trying to write heroes, because we need them. And I will never forgive the idiot elites – the information is out there, dash it all, and if I can find it as an amateur on my own time, there is no excuse.

    1. “And I will never forgive the idiot elites ”

      In John Ringo’s words (Queen of Wands) “And even then, understand and forgive them if you can. But that doesn’t mean you have to let them live, mind you.”. Until you forgive them you are letting them live rent free in your head. Neither they or you deserve that.

        1. Agreed, however, like broken bones, you are in pain and disabled until it happens while the scum don’t even know let alone care.

              1. …I’m going to try to phrase this politely. For a few days around the 11th, the grief is overwhelming. If you call that reveling in an injury, we are obviously not speaking the same language.

    2. We don’t need heroes. We just need enough decent people doing what needs to be done.

      “There’s us. We’re the cavalry. We’re the last defense. If not us, who?”
      – Sarah Hoyt, accordingtohoyt 02/22/17

        1. *Ahem* That’s no idiot chick, that’s a white Mormon male with a tremendous rack. I have been reliably informed.

          1. Who *must* be a man because she drinks beer! Which, of course, is a favorite drink among white Mormon males…

      2. I watched a cellphone video of a bunch of guys passing an old lady in a wheelchair from hand to hand, over chest-high water . They got her wedged into someone’s bass boat, not shaped to accomodate wheelchairs. One of the guys was holding her so she wouldn’t tip over backwards.

        He patted her on the arm and said, “It’ll be all right.”

        She took his hand and said, “I know.”

        There’s your cavalry. When the bureaucracy is as useless as ever, and the rest of the country seemed to be losing its collective mind, there were still people who were willing to call in at work, load up whatever equipment they had, and head off to the place the officials were telling people to stay away from, because they’d already seen how effective those same officials had been last time; more part of the problem than the solution.

        The very same rednecks and their pickup trucks, that the “coastal elites” love to denigrate and make fun of. The irony, it burns…

        1. It is important to keep in mind that the people who make New York, who make America, great, are not the people on display on the nightly news or in the headlines.

          They are the people wearing the hard hats and putting their backs to the task in this video. Never forget that the teams clearing the debris were more troubled by an excess, not an insufficiency, of volunteers.

          1. Or as a character said recently: they say the pen is mightier than the sword, and often enough they’re right. But sometimes the plow and the spud-wrench are mightier than both; and in this new age of the world, we ignore it at our peril. Or to our demise.

              1. You have to turn potatoes as they grow, or they get flat on one side. You use a spud wrench to do so – otherwise, you have to dig them up to turn them.

                2. Nonsense — a spud wrench is:

                  1) a spud used as a wrench, e.g., for removing the remnants of a broken light bulb

                  2) the pluperfect form of speed wrench, a type of wrench employed when haste is needed, such as removing a lug’s nuts during a NASCAR event

    3. It is not stupidity and it is not ignorance at the level of the senior leadership. (Okay, maybe Hillary has been living on bootlicking long enough to be that delusional.)

      As countries go, America is very safe. I think the Civil War still has the record for numbers of Americans dead. The indian wars have been settled long enough that we would have lost a lot of the institutional knowledge of why we waged them even without the bullshit PC revisionist history.

      On the one hand, the visceral villages burned and women raped knowledge of external threats is much weaker for us. On the other hand, a lot of folks grew up Red, and if they looked that square in the eye they knew who they would have to plan on killing.

      As Americans, we naturally have a greater psychic sense of the internal threat than the external. As communists, the tens of millions of Americans here that they will need to kill sooner or later are more dangerous than a larger number of Muslims much further away. They only need to bring in enough Muslims such that a violent reaction against Islamic terrorism could be used as an excuse to start liquidating rightwingers a little at a time. That’s not necessarily a lot of Muslims to kill in addition to the rightwingers.

      They probably figure that between federal LEOs and radicalized illegals they will have what they need to win. The danger of Hillary was that she might have been delusionally overconfident enough to start things early, instead of waiting for an advantage that may never materialize.

      1. I remember saying on the day that Antietam had probably been beaten out as the day with the most American casualties.

        As we know, I was wrong.

  10. I’m afraid that when it comes to Islam, I woke up long before that. I was just a kid when the 6-day war took place, and a teen when aftermath of the Yom Kippur war in 1973 kicked off the Arab oil embargo.
    I was in Bolivia in 1979 and not supposed to be paying attention to the news, but the Iranian Revolution when the occupants of the American Embassy were taken hostage and held for a year, while Iranians were in the streets chanting “Death to America” and calling America “the Great Satan” nevertheless filtered through.
    Every time I hear someone saying “Islam is the religion of peace” I want to spit and say “What planet have you been living on for the past half century?” Yes, a lot of Muslims are peaceful, but there are also plenty who are anything but.

    1. I was in college in 1972 when Black September attacked, took hostage and killed the Israeli Olympic team, at Summer Olympics in Munich. There in the middle of an event that was supposed to model peaceful international cooperation we saw Islamic extremists make their disdain of the rights of others clear. It could not be claimed that this was a territorial dispute, as was done in all the Middle East wars from 1948 on.

      More recently we have had it clearly demonstrated that those people who object to Islamism, and its particular fundamentalist interpretations of Islam, don’t prosper under the rule of such groups. For example, if you do not align yourself with ISIS, even if you are an active member of another sect of Islam, ISIS has proved an equal opportunity executor.

      I know that at the moment there are several groups who claim that they are commanded by the faith of Islam to employ violence to remake the entire world according to their dictates. It is not clear to me that all who are Muslim agree.

      1. I know that at the moment there are several groups who claim that they are commanded by the faith of Islam to employ violence to remake the entire world according to their dictates. It is not clear to me that all many who are Muslim disagree.
        FIFY, I think.

        1. One of the worst incidents of jihadist terror in recent years occurred in 2014 in Pakistan, when Tahrik-i-Taliban gunmen attacked the Army Public School in Peshawar. They killed 131 boys and 9 teachers. This was one of thousands of incidents of jihadist terror against other Moslems. That record indicates to me that there is no consensus for jihadism among Moslems.

          1. See my comment, posted an hour after yours, about how the moderate Muslims tend to dislike jihadism but don’t dare say so, for fear of the retribution that would be visited on their heads if they spoke out.

          2. “That record indicates to me that there is no consensus for jihadism among Moslems.”

            No, jihad against the infidel is one of the five pillars. If you aren’t supporting it, you aren’t a Muslim as the Koran itself defines Muslim.

            What it indicates is the tendency in Islam for violent disagreement over who’s practicing it most truly, complicated by struggles for secular power because the Mosque IS the State. See Sunni vs Shia, which started within a generation or so after Mohammed’s death.

          3. Unfortunately, that’s like concluding that anyone shot by a gang could not be a law-breaker. 😦

            It’s not enough to support Jihad, you have to support that specific attacker’s specific Jihad, to their satisfaction.

            1. This is much more what I saw when I was over there. Most of the population could (and DID, with the Kurds as a notable exception) support blowing up non-muslims, actively. Once the infidels were dealt with they’d start looking for apostasy.

              The situation was slowly starting to change when I left country. The gains have been likely lost by us pulling out to the extent we have. They were starting to slowly go ‘wait, wait… hold on a sec. You mean we don’t have to put up with this stuff?” They were a lot slower, but some getting there, on the ‘you mean I can’t take it out on my neighbor who isn’t a when we’re not both going after the next circle out?’ set. And a few. Agonizingly few, but growing by the time we left, were starting to get curious about how we did things and that we did NOT have to live in fear. Though they were still iffy over not making other people live in fear of THEM.

                    1. Of course they don’t exist. “There’s us, the rednecks in Flyoverland, and ‘the poor.’ Who else could there be?”

              2. It’s enough to make you wonder if the idea of the pull out was to make damned sure that they never got upety about thinking the might not have to live in fear, huh?

                2. Nah. That’s far too cunning a plan for anyone in DC to come up with. Now, that might be why the Iraqi government didn’t try and get us to stay.

                  1. They didn’t want to stay because another idea percolating in was that it was possible to have government without having to bribe everyone at every stage.

                  2. They did, actually.

                    They were so sure we were going to stay that they used standard cultural practices of trying to milk a little more out of the situation– and were utterly shocked when Obama, instead of going “golly, sure, we’ll grant you guys another couple of dozen schools and some training for your guys, on top of what we’re already doing,” went “oh, well, if you don’t want us we’re gone.”

                    It’s like… if someone knocked on your door, the butler said “she is not home to company,” and then they proceeded to argue that you must be because the car was there… “not home to company” doesn’t literally mean “not in the house,” it means not receiving visitors.

                    1. *handwaggle* There was a little of that, especially in the initial rounds of negotiation. But they were REALLY complaining about how some people were expecting them to be HONEST while I was there in ’08.

                    2. Well, yeah, that’s kind of a basic cultural issue….

                      I don’t get it, but it’s a serious insult to notice that someone is robbing you blind if you’re supposed to be “respecting” them. Like, right up there with getting religiously nosey about the first child’s gestational age at birth type insult.

                    4. Now it is not good for the Christian’s health to hustle the Aryan
                      brown,
                      For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the
                      Christian down;
                      And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of
                      the late deceased,
                      And the epitaph drear: “A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the
                      East.”

                      Rudyard Kipling, The Naulahka

          4. And so?

            If those who do not agree with it fail to stop those who do from attempting to kill us, we end up in the same place – smashing everything and everyone in order to make them stop.

        2. I once attended a lecture by a former Muslim who had converted to Christianity. He talked about the climate of fear that ruled in his home region: people went to the mosque not because they truly wanted to go, but because if they didn’t, their neighbors would notice. Start being seen as “not a good Muslim” and suddenly your children have a lot worse marriage prospects, the promotion at your job somehow goes to someone else, and so on. Much like the Soviet Union, with the whole “never be the first one to stop applauding” thing, each person’s chains were forged by their neighbors.

          Pondering that, I started to understand the mindset of the moderate Muslims. They don’t personally like the violence, and they privately wish that the jihadists would stop… but to actually say so would get them and their family instantly shunned (and, in some places, killed). So they keep their heads down and say nothing. And thus, the jihadists feel that they have the support of the vast majority of Muslims — because, in practice, they do. At least, the vast majority of Muslims don’t dare to oppose the jihadists, and so they don’t speak out when their governments sponsor terrorism.

          1. And like Russia, the “heads down” people will end up dying if a massive strike against the US leads to retaliation.

            Don’t have to like it, but that’s how this works.

      2. I was eight and yep, that was my wake up call. BUT then later, I wanted to believe that the rest of the world was impotent, that we could drag them to freedom despite themselves. For which may G-d forgive me.

      3. For example, if you do not align yourself with ISIS, even if you are an active member of another sect of Islam, ISIS has proved an equal opportunity executor.

        Even if you do align with them, are a loyal footsoldier, if a current “leader” of yours wants you dead– they’ll make up a reason.

    2. Peace? I recall 444 days that tell me very much otherwise. We haven’t been left to be peaceful since 1979. It is not our actions, but our fundamental lack of reaction that is a problem.

      The fuse is very long.
      It is burning still.
      Eventually, the flame will reach the charge.

      And when it finally goes, many will (perhaps even myself) will be surprised at how ‘minor’ the very last ‘trigger’ was – and how large the charge finally turns out to be.

      2. Yellow ribbons on trees all over Houston. “Tie a yellow ribbon on the old oak tree/ if after three long years/ you still remember me.”

      3. There’s a Kipling poem I referred to just last night / yesterday in a vignette story. It’s called “Et Dona Ferentes” — and it encapsulates this point oh-so-well.
        American’s aren’t just like Britons in this respect; old or new, we’ve always been a lot more so.
        For those who might want a free preview:

        Cock the gun that is not loaded,
        Cook the frozen dynamite,
        But oh, beware my Country
        When my Country grows polite.

        In another story I (or a character) basically predict That Day will still be living in its own kind of infamy more than a quarter-millennium from now. Still think she’ll be right.

        Thanks so much for this appropriate remembrance of That Day.

      4. It could be something as simple as a developer sleeping with several journalists to get good reviews/publicity for her “game”.

        That tiny little thing created the undead hordes that are the misogynist/alt-right/neo-nazis/white supremacists/russian agents that got Trump elected.

        (I am of course using the left/SJW’s characterization of Gamergate)

    3. “What planet have you been living on for the past half century?”
      Half Century? When, since being formed, has it NOT been at war with most the rest of the world? It can’t even get along with itself. And then some apologist will point to something in Christianity’s past and this atheist will ask “Oh? How many years ago was that?”

      2. There is that. Yes, Christianity has had its share of violence, but most of that has been in spite of, not because of, the example and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, while Islam started out conquering the unbelievers by force and never quit.

        1. and most of the ‘evils’ put forth by the apologists and the moslems was done in response to the spread by sword of the rantings of a dehydrated over hungry lunatic pedophile and his adherents conquering lands.

  11. 9/11 was followed by a brief illusion of unity.
    Probably immediately, though, those who would surrender to the USSR began to surrender into dhimmitude.
    And W telling everyone that Islam is religion of peace was utterly amazing to see. So the divisions dating back to 1945 are deeper and more set. Maybe more than in 1861. I just wonder how much longer the statist kabuki dance will go on. W, BO, and a new guy, and the band plays on.

    1. I recall thinking, at the time when every MSM voice was crying out, “Why do they hate us?” that my thoughts were, “Why don’t they fear us?”

      But then, I already understood the lessons of Rome.

      The Blogfather has already linked this, but it suggests at ;least a partial answer to my question. Once the Cyclops’ eye has been blinded, the giant is only dangerous by accident.

      Saudi government allegedly funded a ‘dry run’ for 9/11
      Fresh evidence submitted in a major 9/11 lawsuit moving forward against the Saudi Arabian government reveals its embassy in Washington may have funded a “dry run” for the hijackings carried…

      1. So we best be fracking on.
        Frackin, getin chips cashed in,
        Frackin past the EPA man,
        Just keep frackin on ,,,

          1. Ahem. If you’re still giving them money for their oil, then you have a successful capitalist exchange going on. Isn’t that one of the points of freedom or liberty? They can choose to raise their prices as much as they want, and we are free to choose to not buy it FROM THEM when it gets too high. 😉

      2. > “Why don’t they fear us?”

        They may wish they had.

        The old joke about ‘Why aren’t there any Muslims on the Enterprise?” comes to mind…

              1. More than one, actually. Caliphate and the Carrera series. (Criminy, he’s up to SIX books in that, now?)

            2. Sort of like how when it would be over, Japanese would only be spoken in Hell… except in our timeline, Japanese had the luxury of being saved by the nuclear bomb.

              *tick* *tick* *tick* *tick*

                  1. Check them, I’ve been in them! ^.^

                    I like the JDF, and the Japanese– a lot of food for thought about the standard theme in anime about beating your enemy, stopping as soon as you get them to stop whatever bad thing they were doing, and then treating them with honor so they become your friend.

                    I have no idea if it was a theme before WWII, but given that the culture was able to survive long enough to produce anime, it probably was.

                    1. Japan had a long history of warfare up through the Sengoku era. The unification and the Tokugawa Shogunate put a stop to most of that (understandable, but some of the ways that the new government did that were rather unfortunate). But the understanding is there. It was a part of Japanese culture. And despite a lot of the “Death before dishonor!” stuff that you see in any work of fiction involving bushido, there was a lot of pragmatism involved. Sure, certain people were going to have to die – sometimes because it was too much trouble letting them live, and sometimes because an example needed to be made of someone. But a wise leader understood who *must* die, and which former enemies would be more useful as “new allies”.

                      Unfortunately, during the inter-war period, the Japanese military decided to try and tap into this old military tradition – and went about it in entirely the wrong way. What they ended up with was a poisonous mix of several different elements, and it explains just why the Japanese were so screwed up from the ’30s right up until VJ Day. And why the rest of Asia *still* hates them.

                      The response to that was to take things to the extreme in the opposite direction. And from what I understand, the Japanese public has embraced that whole-heartedly. There’s this understanding that yes, the Japanese have the samurai traditions in their past. But the pacifistic elements introduced into their culture and nation by Article 9 of the post-War constitution are now apparently seen as an inherent element of “Japanese-ness”, despite the fact that their ancestors from a few centuries back would be boggled by the restrictions.

                    3. Auto translate of this site, says:
                      http://www.rusmea.com/2013/02/yasuke-o-samurai-africano.html

                      16th century Italian diplomat/Jesuit Alessandro Valiganano brought a servant (other link said slave, who knows).

                      Everyone was very impressed by a huge, strange guy, Oda Nobunaga the strategist was very impressed, the Jesuit gave him to the famous strategist, who made him a member of his personal guard and gave him the name Yasaku. He married the adopted daughter of a feudal lord (I’m not sure if it’s his boss or the place he visited, the translation isn’t that great).

                      He was either from the area that became the Congo, the area that became Mozambique or he was born in Italy.

                      From what I remember of normal situations in that time, taking a youth to offer as a servant wasn’t that unusual.

                    4. Imagine, oh, the guy who plays Sisko in DS9, showing up in Japan as a young teenager– back when hitting six foot was a totally freakish monster of a big guy.

                    5. I don’t know about that, but there’s an anime called Afro Samurai; voice acted by Samuel L. Jackson.

                    6. As Foxfier explains, he arrived shortly before the Shogunate (though he was a contemporary of the man who established it). He apparently makes an appearance in the video game Nioh. The protagonist in that game is loosely based off of a real-life Englishman – William Adams – who was also a non-native Samurai.

                  2. Different basic culture, and a very different occupation mindset. A mindset that would have simply flattened the mosques where the “freedom fighters” were operating from.

                    1. There’s a number of light novels/ anime that go with the thought experiment of ‘what if Japan did try expansionism again’ via dint of Japan ending up with interdimensional portals… (One of them was ‘conquer by spreading our Otaku Culture’… which was …odd.)

                    2. On first thought, that seemed odd to me, too. On second thought, though – any odder than conquest by Ronald McDonald and Mickey Mouse?

                      Third thought – would a nation of Otaku notice a new set of rulers (so long as the net stayed up)?

                    3. The old Japanese would do that without even thinking about it. The modern Japanese might balk, though. It’s hard to say. Article 9 has done some odd things to Japanese society as a whole.

                      Of course, unless the US suddenly vanishes, the whole thing is moot since the US would have the actual responsibility as things stand right now.

                    4. We should have done it! I wouldn’t have minded a few nukes to hammer home the idea that you don’t touch American or you’ll horribly soon thereafter!

                  3. Yeah, and GIs sent Jap skulls home to the wife or girlfriend. We were willing to finish the job, but then they surrendered. Considered the die hard hold outs elsewhere, you’d expect a pretty fanatic resistance movement on the main islands, right?

                    Stanhope.

                    These days you’d get in trouble for scalping, ear necklaces, or sending home skulls to momma. My culture is being oppressed.

                    1. Okay, so the GIs send home skulls….

                      Do the wife or girlfriend actually appreciate the gesture? I can’t imagine it would be easy to decorate with, even if your tastes already ran to taxidermy.

                    2. It’s my understanding that this was the part of rising up to the barbarism of your enemies — fighting no-holds-barred because your enemy is fighting no-holds-barred.

                      However, after everything settled down, the Americans were ashamed of having kept human remains as souvenirs, and weren’t so eager to display them.

                      This reminds me of Bill Whittle talking about an unrelated topic, saying that any civilized person, if necessary, can do barbaric things, and can do so rather easily if the occasion forces it, but then return back to civility afterwards…but a barbarian can’t so easily be made civilized….

                    3. Failing to return to civilization is not unknown, but self-sacrifice for civilization was understood.

                      Watch The Searchers or even Shane.

                    4. Against the wall Alpheus responded in part:

                      This reminds me of Bill Whittle talking about an unrelated topic, saying that any civilized person, if necessary, can do barbaric things, and can do so rather easily if the occasion forces it, but then return back to civility afterwards…but a barbarian can’t so easily be made civilized….

                      May we be vigilant, strong enough, committed enough and just barbaric enough to do what is necessary to keep the possibility of civilization alive. Then may we always return to civility.

          1. What the progs say and often do sounds more like helping our enemies than just unpopular speech. Lying about the facts on the ground and indoctrinating our children etc.

      3. The fact that the US didn’t implement “Oderint dum metuant” as national policy guidance after 9/11 pretty much refutes all those who insist the USA is Imperial SPQR reborn.

        OTOH, Czar Vladimir I would execute this in a heartbeat (some would argue he already has – ask Georgia the country not the state, or Ukraine, etc.), and that says something as well.

  12. I forgot what day it is today. I’m a bit ashamed of that. Such things should never be forgotten.

    A certain segment of our population is trying as hard as they can to memory-hole the greatest atrocity of war the USA has ever suffered. Don’t let them win.

    1. I’m flying the 9/11 flag of honor, with the names of victims and heroes. In my old neighborhood some idiots claimed it made them uncomfortable. They are SUPPOSED to be uncomfortable.

      1. Of course. People who are fat, dumb, and happy, usually don’t do anything the ones in charge don’t want them to do; although they do sit around and complain a lot.

      2. Maybe its because I’m Canadian, but I’ve -never- seen somebody come up to me and demand I stop doing/saying something because it “made them uncomfortable.” I can’t envision it going well for them.

        To be sure, I’d start in doing/saying whatever it was a lot frigging louder.

        1. My suspicion is that nobody would say “You’re making me feel uncomfortable.” The trick is usually performed as “You might be making others feel uncomfortable.”

          See:
          LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY, MUSICAL EDITION: British conductor sacked by US music festival after ‘innocent’ joke with his African-American friend was labelled racist. It doesn’t say who the officious “white woman” was who overheard two strangers talking and took it upon herself to tell the Stasi that she had witnessed badthink. But I doubt she was motivated by “good intentions.” More like self-importance and a desire to wield unaccountable power. She should make a public apology for this unconscionable act of big-brotherism.
          https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/275239/

        2. Where in Canada? My mom was from Montreal (when it was anglophone) and her mom was from Ottawa. I’ve also got cousins from Toronto.

      3. If, under such circumstances, someone informed me that they were uncomfortable I would ask what they wished me to do. If they suggested I remove the display I would smile as sweetly as I could, shake my head and sadly reply, ‘Ah, well. That makes me uncomfortable.’

        I would be speaking the truth.

    2. In a couple of years, people will be voting… who weren’t even born in 2001. It’s just some more old video, like the rest of the boring stuff on the History Channel.

      They have no personal outrage, no personal drive for revenge. We failed. They have their own causes, and no particular desire to shoulder the ones we flubbed.

      1. Don’t worry, the Islamics will do something to enrage them as well. Hopefully nuking Washington.

        2. I’ll miss the Air and Space Museum, and some of the other galleries… Other aspects of DC? Er, we’ll just leave that to the imagination.

          1. Hopefully not NY again or I’ll be missing a lot of family. I was lucky that no one in my family got caught by 9/11.

        3. Call be selfish and monstrous, but if only folks I care about (meaning family, you all, and the rest of the conservative/libertarian types) could figure out how to not be there when they do, then perhaps the lesson might be learned without burning too many innocent hands. Americans tend to require Alamos, Maines, Lusitanias, Pearl Harbors, and Twin Tower catastrophes before we get off our butts and do anything about it.

        4. I have written here before of what may happen
          the former president gave Iran the means to make a nuclear device. Iran will pass on to a terrorist group. terrorist group will target the US. the city the represents what these people most HATE about us is Ney York City. so the city that contains the majority of the national media, the group that lied to cover Obama, will almost certainly be the city destroyed. along with what 7 million others? I shall laugh and weep. for the fools and my country men

          1. What if they decide to nuke LA instead? If they nuke Texas they’ll wish they were dead!
            WTC wasn’t just a building to me. My brother had worked there.

            1. Perhaps eventually, however I suspect that it would first set off a civil war when the progressives refused to strike back at the guilty because it couldn’t be proved and/or because of the collateral damage.
              Personally, if we are nuked by an Iranian device, I would say nuke every town and city in Iran, then try and execute Obama for treason.

              1. It will be more unorganized than that. We’ll just chase them through the neighborhoods and beat them to death with their “resistance” signs. Note this is not an outcome I WANT but it is the likely one.

              2. I thought that OBL was dead already. I know that it’s easy for me to say this, but, some keisters need to be kicked and few places need to be nuked. Bad actors need to be afraid of us.

            2. LA is big, but New York constantly pushes itself into the spotlight. And it’s got more people living in it. Plus, LA is on the far side of the country, which would presumably make it easier to smuggle something into NYC (though given that both cities are on the coast, that’s not a terribly big problem).

              That to me says that New York would make a more tempting target.

              1. Port of Los Angeles is huge.

                BUT… the mountain ridges in LA would make anything like that far less effective.

            1. I had heard of some comedian saying, during the cold war, we should nuke Chicago ourselves, tell the USSR that we *lik(ed)* Chicago, and do not make us angry. And the fellow who relayed that to me? Chicagoan.

  13. Oikophobia strikes deep
    Into your life it will creep
    It starts when you’re always afraid
    Step out of line, the men come and take you away

    We better stop
    Hey, what’s that sound?
    Everybody look – what’s going down?

    Not liberals, per se, but Progressives seem to harbor a deep hatred of themselves, a hatred they externalize into hatred of America, a nation which has failed to recognize their talent, failed to accord them the honors they deserve.

    America, OTOH, thinks the honors they deserve involve feathers, tar and a rail, and that if they’d simply stop making so much noise, buckle down, and apply themselves to honest labor they might actually earn the honors they want.

  14. No, they are a threat, because they still have some structural power, and because they are blissfully unaware of how their behavior, their beliefs, their reactions, appear to the rest of us.

    What is astonishing is how many people I encounter who are “woke” on the Right. Here’s an example from yesterday:

    Raised an RC, I’m taking Adult Instruction & Bible study classes at an LCMS church (i.e., the not-crazy Lutherans). Yesterday morning at the beginning of Bible study, the pastor talked about senators applying a religious test to a judicial nominee (http://tinyurl.com/yaepmv9w)*, and pointed out that very soon *all* Christians will need to defend their faith. Now, the pastor is not crazy; rather, he struck me as a well-educated and common-sense sort of man, who clearly understands the issues facing the faithful, especially children & teens.

    (*just use “Senate + religious test + judicial nominee” for more results)

    1. Part of the problem is that we on Teh Right are expected to restrain our extremists, to smack them down when they get rambunctious. And so we should, so we should. But in alignment with that expectation is the lost one that those on Teh Left do likewise with theirs, not excuse them nor justify them. It takes both sides to do this dance and if they won’t step to the music they should not be surprised when the tune is changed. McCain was racist, Romney was racist and sexist, so eff ’em, take Trump and suck on it.

      And who knows, perhaps they may even calm down and accept their responsibility (ain’t a’holding my breath, tho.) The president of Notre Dame has rebuked Feinstein and Durbin. The president of Princeton (a former clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens) has rebuked their efforts at instilling a religious test (and Dame Feinstein, you ought bloody effing know where such religious tests lead!) for federal office. And this morning the New York Damned Times has reportedly published an oped rebuking them.

      This people need to stop listening to their worser devils and instead contemplate Thomas More’s lecture about hedgerows. You might imagine there are no enemies to your Left, but remember always that you are to their right.

      1. BTW: Read ARE YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN?
        Article VI of the Constitution prohibits a religious test for public office. So what was Senator Dick Durbin doing asking Notre Dame Law Professor Amy Coney Barrett — President Trump’s nominee to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals — “Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?” How is it that Senator Dianne Feinstein thought it could be proper to observe of Professor Barrett: “When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.”

          1. When it’s to their advantage. Or possibly when they are too frightened of Catholics not to.

            Odds are — never in this century.

        2. My question is:
          Why didn’t the chairman of the committee gavel them out of order and tell them to get the heck out of the room for the remainder of the hearings, then bring up a motion for censure before the Senate?

          The problem here isn’t just the progs. It’s the political class that allows the progs to do what they do without any consequences. Because, ultimately, if there were consequences, they might be held to account for their phony-baloney jobs.

          1. Possibly Chairman Grassley expected that him to gavel them out of order would have made him the story and was permitting the [expletives deleted] as much rope as they would pull.

            “Nevertheless, she persisted.”

            The GOP political class, unlike Trump, has been trained too cower when the MSM lifts up its paper.

          2. Chairman should have ejected the Senators for violation of the Constitution, and called for a vote banning them from the Senate for the remainder of their terms.

      2. ah, we police our idjits because they are idjits and deserve policing, but the right is expected to do this by the extreme left that are running the show over yonder fence-line. Their idjits are running the policing not vice versa.

        1. “Their idjits are running the policing not vice versa.”

          Yep. Consider the recent kerfuffle over the suggestion that the Democrat party permit a minority of representatives oppose abortion in order to let the thus enabled majority to vote government funding of it.

      1. But it’s worth remembering the end of that quote: the fourth replacement helps rebuild society out of what’s left.

      2. Considering Pope Francis’ behavior, it looks like he’s trying to turn the Church membership around by appealing to the young Progressives, while throwing the rest of the clergy under the bus.

          1. Funny that much of the vocal opposition to him was, originally, from communists upset that he’d turned some of them in to the authorities while a parish priest

            2. He is a proponent of Liberation Theology. Marx, God added. Add race to it and you get . . . Barak 0bama, Rev Wright, et al.
              Remember, Robespierre was sent to Madam Guillotine by fellow travelers as well.

          2. This was my biggest concern with Francis’ rise to the papacy. I rather miss Pope Benedict. I remember reading about the rise of Church attendance – especially among younger people, 30 and younger – under his papacy.

            On a tangential note, I can never remember poor Pope Benedict’s name without struggling past “Pope Palpatine” first. I gotta use a different mental bookmark for him. Papa Ben, maybe.

              1. Oh, I like that. That’s a good one. “Pope Palpatine” annoyed me because the meme made it stick and I knew it was an unfair bookmark because he is a good, upstanding man and undeserving of the moniker. Papa Ratzi is more likely to stick in my memory.

                  1. I just call him what he is “the anti-pope”. Benedict is the pope. This one is a distraction, the result of a liberation-theology palace coup. Like Obama, he too shall pass.

                    1. Hopefully.

                      On the other hand, the people who elected him (or their successors) will probably still be around when Francis leaves the Papacy.

                    2. On the bright side, they’re less likely to go “hey, the real liberation theology rah-rah guys are angry at him, the communists are angry at him, the guys serving the gov’t are angry at him– he must be perfectly fine!”

              2. I had the immense luck to attend two masses he celebrated. In one of them, a mass to students in the city of Porto, I had the further honor of laying down the cloak of my University uniform for him to walk upon.

          1. Two things to keep in mind about him:

            1. What the MSM reports about what he — or any prior pope — says is likely to be corrupted in the translation:

            Pope makes general remarks on US politics, press pounces … again
            Pope Francis told reporters Monday that he is not familiar enough with the details of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to have an opinion on the matter. He added that no good could come from splitting up families.

            It wasn’t quite a full-throated condemnation of the White House’s possible plans to reverse former President Barack Obama’s executive order allowing illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors to receive renewable two-year deportation deferments. However, from reading press accounts of the pope’s remarks, you’d think the Holy Father had staked out a much tougher position on the issue.

            2. What the Pope learns about American politics is filtered through the MSM and thus corrupted.

            This is not an endorsement of the many ill-informed gratuitous opinions proffered by the current pontiff … but it is a recognition that (virtually) no matter what his opinions expressed the MSM will contort them to appear in agreement with the MSM’s agenda of the moment.

            1. Just like with Benedict the 16th, since they decided he’s evil, anything he said would be twisted so he was evil, wrong, stupid or a combination of the above.

              Francis would annoy me no matter what because his personality is the kind that drives me nuts, as best I can tell. (Imagine a tiny me standing on his shoulder– you pick which– screaming “STOP AND THINK, PLEASE!!!!”)

            2. One would love to see his reaction to the suggestion by a senior senator that Catholics are unfit to serve in the US government.

              1. As if any reporter would ask such a question.

                It ain’t as if reporters are falling all over themselves asking Bishops and Cardinals how a Catholic can be pro-abortion and remain in good standing within the Faith.

              2. At least multiple families– they didn’t exactly publicize names and such, but the goal was to lead the way in each parish “adopting” a refugee family.

                I can only imagine how much the Swiss Guard are drinking.

  15. the sound of the maggots feeding on our living flesh.
    They’re worse than maggots. Maggots only eat dead flesh.

    Festering wounds create heat and fever.
    Fever is a good sign, it means your body is fighting the infection. It’s only if the fever gets too high that it might hurt the body it is trying to save. Let’s hope our fever never has to rise that high.

    1. “Festering wounds create heat and fever.”

      Those of us who have served as staff to cats know the signs and risks of abscesses. What is important to remember is that wounds to the heads and shoulders indicate the cat was charging the foe, while wounds to the hindquarters mean the cat was fleeing.

      Our nation needs to stop focusing our attention on the abscessed butts and tend first to those on the other end.

    2. How you treat a wound:
      Stabilize the patient.
      Debride and clean the wound.
      Apply a sterile bandage.
      Administer broad spectrum antibiotics to fight infection.
      But keep in mind that antibiotics are in fact poisons that simply attack infection more than the body’s living cells. Much the same can be said for chemotherapy or radiation treatment for cancer cells.
      Our country is wounded. If 9/11 was a body blow we are now living in the death of a thousand cuts. Bandaids are fine, but we are not going to get well until the rotten flesh is removed and dangerous yet necessary treatment has been applied to the infections.

      1. And sometimes you have to carve out the rotten bits and cauterize the area with fire.

        The fuse isn’t nearly as long as it used to be, and it’s still burning.

        1. Well, according to the Richard Sharpe historical chronicler Bernard Cornwell, Maggie the Maggot was a useful aid in Peninsular Campaign wound recovery by removing dead flesh from a wound so it wouldn’t rot and fester.

          1. Before the practice of sterilizing medical equipment became common using maggots to debride dead flesh from a wound was actually safer and more sanitary. I’ve also heard that in some cases when reattaching severed fingers they will use leeches to drain the extremity of extra blood until the veins reestablish. Sometimes natural solutions can be icky, but they still work.

            1. Maggots have bee tested in recent years and do as well as manually techniques of debriding, with less pain.

              1. That less pain is a real biggie in favor of maggot therapy, so is minimizing any damage to healthy flesh.

        2. Things people don’t know: the first American revolution had a VERY long fuse. In the rest of our history, we’re not roused to anger easily.
          Right now we’re in the slow burn stage. Almost inevitably something sudden and unexpected will propel us into full anger.
          May G-d have mercy on the souls of our enemies internal and external then. Because their souls are the only thing that will remain.

          1. “Things people don’t know: the first American revolution had a VERY long fuse.”

            Of course it did. Days between places even by fast horse, let alone the time to cross the ocean. Lead times to print even a stack of broadsheets, let alone pamphlets or books. Organize a mob in 30 seconds, as opposed to several hours.

            And of course, not nearly so much 24/7 propaganda and distractions.

  16. They will learn this truth to everyone’s sorrow:

    “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.”

    I wish that you didn’t have to go through this.

  17. My Canadian father is a communist and I am mostly convinced he’s a high functioning sociopath and all his comrades in left wing movement also have similar mental issues. My father and his mates were delighted with 9/11 because it was an attack on anglo capitalist system that has been imposed on world.

    Ive long believed that left wing ideologues are people with severe mental issues, they are deeply neurotic, who don’t like themselves but their brain protects them from misery by projecting their bad behaviours onto others.

    1. I will say that every communist I know has some very weird behaviors in common (including a ruthless and remorseless tendency to betray friends and benefactors) and can be identified by what I call “the smirk.” This is a fake-benevolence, extremely superior smile. You can identify them on facebook by the expression. Like the pedophile “look” it’s a real thing. It might very well correlate to mental abnormality either bred in or acquired.

  18. For me Sept. 10th was for guns like daylight savings time switch is for fire detector batteries. Clean them, zero them, etc. then put them back in the safe before the 11th.

    1. I know you mean *now*. But for me it rather eerie. I had just purchased a CD of WWII-era tunes and was dubbing them to tape (the car had a cassette deck, but no CD player) ont he night of the 10th and one tune was Arms, for the Love of America or something like that. The haunting line? “They say Over Here, we have nothing to fear, but let’s get ready just in case.” Yeah, on the 11th it certainly came to mind.

        2. I like humming that one, in the knowledge that none of the liberals around me are likely to recognize the tune or know the lyrics.

  20. “their cultural megaphones have been negated by technology,”

    “managing to make most images of 9/11 disappear from online, even from the free image sites like Pixabay (seriously, go look up twin towers, there)”

    Sarah, those two statements are absolutely contradictory. They are doing an excellent job of retaining control of the cultural megaphones.Look at what happened to The Stormer. First, they were kicked off Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google. Then their hosting company. Then they couldn’t even register the domain. They even tried going overseas; unfortunately, since Obama relinquished control of ICANN just before he left office, that wasn’t possible either. Think it won’t happen to you? I’ve got a link I’ll post below that shows it is happening to bigger sites than yours, and the First Amendment won’t do a thing to stop it.

    And yep, they were just a bunch of Nazis, white supremacists, alt-right, so who cares? What do they call us again? Niemoller in action.

      1. Wanna know something interesting? Bing doesn’t fuck with the search results the way Google does. And yes, I’ve been aware of this kind of thing but since it’s a REGIONAL result filter… I haven’t talked about it. Because it’s not something I think most people in the US can reproduce. I don’t trust Bing either – but it’s shown that it’s not screwing with search results. I prefer DuckDuckGo for politically ‘sensitive’ searches, or even just news. Yahoo also screws with results, so sod that search engine.

        I suspect though that Bing will inevitably turn Left when the traffic use of it goes up.

        What really should change is the use of “google” as opposed to ‘search engine.’

        1. As far as using google it rather than search it, it does have the good effect of nullifying Google’s trademark, and that could not happen to a more deserving company.

            1. I think he was using the google in its verb form; meaning to search; not in its proper noun sense of a certain company whose corporate motto used to be “Don’t Be Evil.”

        4. I occasionally hear people say “Bing it.” I’ve been known to use it myself, since I use Bing as my main search engine.

          I’ll still use the verb ‘google’ sometimes, though.

    2. Steve, they’re not contradictory. Compared to what they used to have, what they have is nothing.
      As for their efforts to hold us down, my guess is it will backfire.

  21. Hm. I just noticed that *this* year, I haven’t seen the usual DHS alerts about how we should be ready for a 9/11 reprise.

    MAGA…

  22. Proof that even a Canucklehead rocker can grasp truth.

    In memory of the heroes of that flight and to those who stood against the foe in Benghazi this day five years ago. As Mark Steyn pointed out at the time,

    It’s easy, afterwards, to say that nothing would have made any difference. But, at the time Deputy Chief Hicks was calling 9-1-1 and getting executive-branch voicemail, nobody in Washington knew how long it would last. A terrorist attack isn’t like a soccer game, over in 90 minutes. If it is a sport, it’s more like a tennis match: Whether it’s all over in three sets or goes to five depends on how hard the other guy pushes back. The government of the United States took the extremely strange decision to lose in straight sets. Not only did they not deploy out-of-area assets, they ordered even those in Libya to stand down.

    Emphasis effing added.

  23. I remember 9/11. One of my co-workers came running into the cubical area saying a jet had crashed into the twin towers. I got to the conference room where the TV was in time to see the second jet run straight into the other building I remember saying to myself, “Holy Sh*t! Tom Clancy was right. Just had the wrong target.”

    1. I read that book, too. And I wonder whether OBL read it and the PA jet was headed for the Capitol.

      1. Yeah, I’d read it, as well – and was hence completely at a loss when many a talking head made remarks about the 9/11 attacks being inconceivable. Really? Within the decade before 9/11 Clancy had published “Sum of All Fears” about a mass-casualty attack by Islamic terrorists, and “Debt of Honor” where a a jetliner is used as a missile by its pilot. My thought when I saw the second tower get hit was “I think the terrorists were reading Tom Clancy.” Yet it was inconceivable to many in the media. What does that tell us about the intelligence of our media?

        2. “Inconceivable” (Princess Bride ref., yes…) is like “controversial” to the talking heads (Not the band). It translates as “We don’t understand this at all.”

        3. Bear in mind, the media is largely drawn from the same pool as Hollywood, where the justification for replacing the Islamic terrorists in The Sum of All Fears with neo-Nazis was that no one would be able to take the idea that Islamic terrorists would be able to pull something like that off seriously.

          1. I had the opposite reaction to the movie, though. “Really, Neo-Nazis? Those rag-tag bunches of nobodies? Meanwhile, do you *really* think that, if Islamic terrorists could get their hands on a nuclear weapon — and in the movie, they do! — they wouldn’t hesitate to use it?”

            1. The wikipedia page points to a quote by the director that basically says since Clancy wrote in the book that the Arabs got help from those well known nuclear weapons designers in East Germany, and by 2000 when the movie was in production East Germany was sadly no more, so obviously those dusky-skinned Arabs could never believably manage to put together a bomb by themselves (even given the starting point of a complete but damaged misplaced Israeli bomb). So the director had to change the story to a lighter skinned “believable” villain.

              No racism in Hollywood. Nope.

                1. well, they didnt want to use the other reason, which is that Muslim terrorists might put then on the owie list for a negative portrayal.

                  1. I recall (and the wikipedia page confirms) that, after news leaked out that the next Jack Ryan flick would be Sum of All Fears, CAIR ran a yearlong campaign pre-complaining about the bad guys being Arabs.

                    But the studio totally didn’t take that into account when the villain change was made.

                    Totes didn’t even notice.

                2. Hollywood is progressive. It is simply that pursuit of filthy Mammon forces them to compromise reality and pander to the prejudices of the benighted masses of Flyover Country.

  24. Sib called to wake me up to turn on the radio (no TV, phone-model internet). It was several years later before I saw video footage of the events of that day.

    First I was stunned. Then I was mad. I’m still really, really angry. I still want revenge.

    2. My desire for revenge is now fairly equally split between bad actors in the Middle East and bad actors in the District of Columbia.

    3. I, whether cold blooded, hot blooded, or iron blooded, have calculated that the policy I must support and endorse is their deaths.

      I don’t even hate them much. There are groups I hate very much significantly more whose deaths I have calculated cost too much, and hence regrettably I cannot endorse the systemic slaughter of.

      In my eyes the terrorists are human, respectable and likeable compared to the group I mention, which I have an unreasoning dislike for.

      And anyone who stands in the way of slaughtering terrorists who are foreign nationals when they are on foreign soil is racist against my culture.

  25. I worked at the airport in New Orleans and was under the wing of a plane when everyone else working a late flight disappeared.
    Second plane had hit, and everything went on ground hold.

  26. I was in Denver in a meeting with our Moscow office. Someone in Moscow said, “you should go look at TV; a plane just flew into the World Trade Center.” I envisioned a Cessna getting too close and getting caught in an updraft or something like that. When the second plane hit, they ended the meeting and insisted I go find a TV.

    After seeing it and trying to figure out what was going on for a couple of hours – we had, and still have, the live Dow Jones news feed – I got so paranoid about being on the 20th floor (in Denver, no less) that I had to go home.

    I don’t particularly want revenge (they took two towers; we took two countries), but I want other people to want revenge. Blowing it off as our fault is not acceptable.

    1. “It’s our fault they got mad at us.” Un huh. So what precisely did the Visigoths in Iberia do to torque off the Berbers and Arabs in AD 711 CE, pray tell? Or the Poles to irk the Ottomans in 1681?

      I have yet to get a good answer when I ask the Progs that.

      2. I still remember the woman who insisted that the Crusaders were responsible for annoying the Muslims and so the second capture of Jerusalem.

        Asking what triggered the first did not garner an answer.

    2. Yes, we took two countries, neither of which had their people on the planes, then we (morons) gave the countries back.

  28. I’m sad to say I was still enmeshed in the idiotic Canadian meme of “evil Americans, they deserve what’s coming to them”, which for me lasted till roughly 2005ish.

    I’ve brightened up somewhat since then, I hope.

  30. Pingback: A Day to Remember | Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos

  32. I was in 8th grade, I guess. In the nurse’s office. I had (still have, but nowhere near as bad now) a blood sugar issue that required I eat every few hours, but the dumb@ss Zero Tolenace school rules said “No Food In the Classroom” so I had to eat in the nurse’s office. The principal came over the intercom and said that a small airplane hit the World Trade Center. I assumed it was an accident, like the B-25 that had hit the Empire State Building back in the 40s. Then the nurse’s phone rang. I found out later that it was her daughter. The nurse blurted out, “They bombed The Pentagon?!” and I knew it was no accident. Though if I remember correctly, Flight 77 hadn’t actually hit the Pentagon by that point. I remember rumors that the White House, Capitol, LA, and other places had been hit.

    Anyway, I ran back to class. The TV was on, and I watched Flight 175 go into the South Tower. The teacher turned off the TVs until the end of class. Roughly 50 minutes later. Just in time to see the South Tower go down.

    I remember being terrified. I remember being pissed. And I remember deep down, even then in my immature barely-teenage brain, that we were going to war.

    I remember in 2003, when our troops had only just barely crossed into Iraq, the media and my teachers all bemoaning the fact that the war was already lost. Deep down, even then, I think I knew that we were f*cked.

    I didn’t understand, and still don’t understand, why it took us nearly a decade to find and kill the piece of equine excrement responsible. I remember walking from my dorm to the dining commons the morning after we ended said piece of equine excrement and seeing someone had painted over The Rock (big rock face that students would paint messages) all in black with white letters saying, “When Jesus said “love your enemies,” I’m pretty sure he meant “Don’t kill them,” and feeling anger and shame because I was fairly certain I knew who did it, and because up until that moment I’d considered them a friend. I still remember students and profs alike weeping (figuratively) about how “we had no right to kill him.” and “killing him made us just as evil as him.” And I remember biting my tongue because my graduation was a few weeks away, and knowing that speaking my mind would almost certainly cost me my diploma. And I was already in enough sh*t with the hardcore socprog administration. Long story. Don’t want to repeat it here and now. Too p*ssed.

    I remember Benghazi. I remember asking myself and anyone who would listen, “why the hell didn’t we rescue them?!” I remember “What Difference Does It Make?” I remember being p*ssed when she said that. I remember being the only one in the room who didn’t buy the YouTube video BS.

    I remember watching the first Toytoa Tundras adorned with black flags rolling across the desert. I remember thinking, “Two or three AC-130 gunships on overwatch would end those clowns in a week.”

    I remember thinking, way back when the towers fell, that we should hunt down and kill every single one of them. And every single man, woman, and child who gives them shelter, aid, or comfort. Part of me still thinks that. But, to paraphrase Tom Kratman in his short story, Okoyyuki, in Mad Mike’s new Forged in Fire anthology, our military and civil leadership has become a cabal of political whores that don’t recognize the realities of the world. So instead we wring our hands, rend our clothes, and apologize for every single tiny fault that those spineless, gutless cowards can imagine.

    It’s Monday. It’s the anniversary of one of the darkest days of my life. Hell, all our lives. So I’m pissed. My tune may change tomorrow, but of the hajji barbarians and their cowardly, pinko, sh*theel allies, I have this to say: Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.

      1. Luckily, that is one I’m pretty familiar with. Caedite eos. Y’all kill ’em. Fuck them. Or as most commonly translated: Kill them all.

        Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.

        This I’m weaker on. Dominus here can only be Lord. It agrees in gender with eius, and that sunt means they are (‘I am’ in the third plural.) I happen to know that the translation is to the effect of ‘The Lord will know his own’.

        So, it can also be idiomatically translated ‘kill them all, and let God sort them out’.

        It is alleged to have been said by a clergyman during the suppression of the Cathar heresy in France. Our friend Foxfier’s research suggests that this is not true, but in fact something a monk fabricated and attached to the story for some reason.

        1. The suggestion I heard for why on earth he did that was basically because it sounded bad-ass…and I would guess, a bit cynically it supported an argument the monk wanted to make, so he appealed to the authority of the guy he knew. Quite possibly he figured it was “fake but accurate.”

        3. When Christpher Frayling was knighted, he chose as his motto:

          “PERGE SCELUS MIHI DIEM PERFICIAS”

          As translated by the College of Heralds
          “Go ahead, punk, make my day.”

      2. Roughly translated, “Kill them all, the Lord will know His own.”

        Like I said, I’ve been a really foul mood today. And to be honest, 9/11’s only part of it. It’s mostly just personal BS that I shouldn’t have let get to me but did.

        1. Who needs a foul mood?

          If you put the words to ‘Felis Navidad’, you can sing it joyfully.

          Caedete Eos. Caedete Eos.

          Caedete Eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.

          You’ve got to kill them all. You’ve got to kill them all.

          You’ve got to kill them all, and let God sort them out!

        2. I’m agnostic, so I guess if my mood gets grim enough I’ll have to use:
          “Blast ’em all, let the archaeologists sort ’em out.”

    2. “Love you enemies” should come the the realization that sometimes your enemies need though love; and that circumstances sometimes force that though love to come in calibers of 5.56 or greater.

      But you shouldn’t hate your enemies, hate can cause you to make stupid tactical or strategic decisions.

  33. Pingback: A Cloudy Day | Shadowdancer Studios

  34. Sarah, I just read you article in pjmedia and my question is: Are you now to be know as the “beautiful but evil super secret space squirrel”?

          1. I is confoozed. Does “Beautiful” modify “Evil” or “Princess”? Is she Princess of Space or of Evil Space or of Beautiful Evil Space? Finally, does Space define her realm or her mental state, as in Space Cadet?

            I cannot pay proper fealty while distracted by such troubling questions.

              1. There is no dynamic tension between Beautiful and Evil — in fact, there is often a compelling aspect to evil which simulates beauty.

                Beauty being in the eye (and heart) of the beholder, the beautiful cannot be a lie; at worst it is cause to doubt the beholder’s judgement.

                  1. Also from the folks at Disney, this undeniably evil presentation …


                    Tangie, the little witch princess? I surely must have missed that Disney cartoon.

                  2. …you do realize that most people here are going to be twitching at the choice of the leggings or other fashion points, right?

                    Even I know that black knee-highs with that color of a dress are silly, and the dark brown? What?

                    Plus, White’s hat doesn’t match the outfit– either the hat and shoes should be black, or the corset should be brown with red accents. Maybe an apple pattern?

                  1. Have you ever experienced the warmth of your welcoming smile? No? Well then!

                    I think you are beautiful, and therefore I shall say so.

  35. Total tangent but except for several hours with out power and no timeline for recovery the wife and I are fine if wet in Atlanta after the city’s first ever tropical storm warning.

    1. Good to hear. Hopefully Irma continues to “power down” as it makes its way north, and doesn’t take out too many power lines in its path. Based upon past experience the local electric companies up here will have sent many of their crews south to help out in the devastated areas, so if there’s much in the way of storm-induced outages up here they’ll take a lot longer than normal to resolve – but at least they should be less widespread than in areas hit by the hurricanes.

    2. A quick check in:

      I thought Opel might have hit Atlanta with a tropical storm, but it could have only been near there. With that one, crews had to go north to assist.

      Every storm has its own personality, and this one, well, in over thirty years I’ve never seen this kind of damage from a tropical storm. I’ve been through Cat. 1 storms that didn’t leave this kind of damage. One of our linemen had a near miss when he was just finishing putting up a line and a falling tree almost got him – and snatched the wire back down.

      Hate to think about length of restoration. My negative nature is kicking in right now. On the dial, I can only pick up two FM stations, and that says something about how widespread this is. Anecdotal information (my cell phone) has service out over wide areas.

      Damage is all structural. I don’t know how many downed main distribution lines I saw yesterday, or how many broken crossarms and broke-out pole tops. The broken crossarm braces don’t count at this point.

      It’s a mess. Maybe tomorrow morning will be better.

      1. I am glad to hear you made it through.

        After a quick Google search I found that this was the first-ever Tropical Storm Watch issued for Atlanta. I was rather surprised.

        I thought that hurricanes had hit Atlanta, so I searched that. According to the site Homefacts:

        Atlanta, GA is in a very low risk hurricane zone. 26 hurricanes have been recorded in the Atlanta, GA since 1930. The largest hurricane was Eloise in 1975. The most recent Atlanta, GA hurricane was Lee in 2011.

        Opal crossed the far western panhandle of Florida and traveled north through Alabama, finally loosing its tropical status when it reached the Ohio Valley.

        1. ‘S OK. I got a few worried e-mails from college associates and friends asking me if I was OK and if Harvey had flooded me out. I did not point out that I’m 600+ miles from and 3400’ above the outer bands of Houston.

        2. I used to get ticked with people in Tennessee who thought that because I came from Philadelphia I might know so-in-so from Pittsburgh … as I was in the mountains east of Knoxville I would ask them how many people they knew in Memphis. Then I realized, they don’t have any idea of the size of Pennsylvania. (Schools really do a lousy job of teaching geography.)

          Most people have no idea what the scale of Texas. It is simply huge. I have driven I-40 across the panhandle of Texas. That was a long drive and I missed the majority of the state in the process.

          Forgive them, they know not of what they speak … and at least they are being concerned.

          1. Not always.

            Social circles tend to be small. If one of yours intersects with one of theirs, chances are *much* better that you might know or know of some of the same people.

            Also, it’s a throwaway conversational gambit. If the answer is “no”, you continue. If it’s “yes”, there’s not just further discussion, but future anecdotes. So asking is a win/win.

          2. Yeah, usually they’re just saying something to try to connect, to express their care– but given how mobile people are, it’s really not THAT far out there. Doesn’t everyone have one of those “hey, you’re from (state), do you know (guy who lives in city on far side of state)?” and the person being asked says something like: “The one with (specific hobby), about this tall with (hair)? Yeah, we (know each other from place).”

            My favorite was a guy who mentioned he has a job with the DEA, someone went “Oh, really? My friend is a contractor for them! Do you know (Bob Smith)?” “Uh, middle aged guy in the Knights? Balding, salt and pepper? Yeah, he’s at the desk right next to mine, just transferred in.”

            Based entirely on a nation-wide job, hired in different states. 😀

            1. Just a bit earlier today, I was talking opportunities with a company. Talking it over a bit later with a relative, I found out that some of my assumptions about how viable the possibilities are for me were probably wrong. 1) Midland does not ‘have to be closer than Houston is to here’. 2) Houston is apparently more challenging of a city than I was assuming. My Texas geography is still at the ‘lol’ level, apparently.

              1. I printed out a map of Texas and stuck it next to my PC, and I’ve got the mental metric that we can reach the San Diego coast faster than we can get to Huston.

                A lot of the problem is that we’re taught by maps, and maps don’t tell you how long it takes. Especially not if you live in a city– so you don’t get a sense for size and distance, you just give measures in time.

                1. I’ve driven almost all of the way to Houston, once. I just don’t know what Houston is like, because I’ve never actually been there. If I had ever placed Midland on a map, it had been long enough before that I had forgotten.

                  1. From DFW to Corpus Christi, DFW to Galveston, Abilene to DFW, Lubbock to DFW, Lubbock to Midlands-Odessa. Beaumont to Houston, DFW to Beaumont, Texline to Amarillo to Wichita Falls to DFW, DFW to OK, DFW to Ark. And back again. And that leaves out all the places in-between, like Athens and Waco and Waxahachie.

                    I’ve driven a lot of TX. And still not nearly half of it.

                  3. Driving I-40 across Tennessee shows that problem. It’s so hilly that the map distances are noticeably out of whack compared to odometer readings.

  36. I remember walking out my dorms one balmy fall morning, heading for French class, and a friend stopped and said, “Did you hear that terrorists flew airplanes into the Twin Towers?” and I said, “No, I didn’t”. He then added, “And they attacked the Pentagon, too!” to which I replied “Yeah, that sounds like something terrorists would do.”

    I said the latter part because when he said that about the Pentagon, I thought he was joking! How the heck would terrorists hit the Pentagon? But as I walked to class, I thought, “what if he isn’t joking? I’m *pretty sure* I’m going to find out when I get to French class”. And find out I did. For the rest of the day, any time not spent in class, was spent in front of a television.

    A few days later, I was tutoring someone in math, and she stopped and apologized for not focusing. She explained that her sister was on the plane that was supposed to go to Boston, but went into one of the World Trade Center towers instead.

    Come to think of it, when I was in the bathroom washing my hands, and my wife called out from the living room “Jerry Pournelle died!” I immediately shouted “He did not!” Not that I disbelieved my wife, mind you. For some reason, the very idea of Jerry was unthinkable. And this, despite me hardly even knowing him: I see his comments here every so often, and I visit Chaos Manor every once in a while (I *really* appreciated the essays about engineer types having a better understanding of the arts, and of soft sciences, than they give themselves credit for, particularly since it’s not unusual for an engineer to have a good grasp on technical issues, *and* be well versed in history, art, literature, and other such fields, whereas social scientists usually only know their field well, and sometimes not even that), and I *may* have seen a glimpse of him at a convention or symposium (but probably not).

    So it surprises me that hearing of Jerry’s passing hit me as hard as it did! I guess he’s so friendly, he can become friends even with people who aren’t aware that they are becoming his friends….

  41. By 9/11 they’d started making noises about “not done right” as though there were anyway to do “right” a regime that requires everyone to behave like angels and against human nature.
    ———————–

    By 9/11, they’d been yapping this for over a dozen years already. I remember hearing it in the late ’80s, which was back before even the Iron Curtain fell.

    1. As a general rule, what they mean by “not done right” is “not done by us.”

      Whatever criticisms one may have of communism, you have to concede that it often works out very well for those implementing it. Just ask Fidel or Maria Gabriela Chávez.

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