I watched the second plane hit the WTC on 9/11

And then I went to work

It was a Tuesday morning in Arizona

I figured others had died going about their business

I had no family to protect

So why shouldn't I just go about my own?

Of course, nothing happened in Arizona

And I didn't know anyone in New York

Or D.C.

Or Pennsylvania

But people couldn't stop watching

There were televisions set up all over the office by midday

They remained for a week

What really struck me was the aftermath

The creation of the Department of Homeland Security was a massive expansion of the federal government

The Patriot Act

The TSA

Few objected

It seemed like a lot at the time

In hindsight

It was criminal

If you're angry about 9/11

Be angry about the fact that 3,000 Americans died so that you could lose more liberty than had been given up in a century

Arguably the most egregious abuse and expansion of Federal power since the Civil War

How soon we forget...

Of course, in a single generation, we've forgotten

Less than two decades later

We roll over at the mention of some distant, statistically meaningless fear

And we give up even more of our freedom

Willingly

Enthusiastically

For our safety

For the greater good

9/11 is a bitter memory for me

Not because of the lives lost

Not because of the foreign wars that came afterward

But because we learned NOTHING

The government got away with a massive power grab

And they learned that they can do it again

Republican

Democrat

Doesn't matter

All opportunistic scum

Democrats did it during the Great Depression, WW2, and Vietnam

Republicans during the Civil War, 9/11, and COVID

No crisis goes to waste

And they are worshiped long after

The American people haven't held their government accountable since they were British subjects

That's a fact

One could argue the CSA tried

But they failed, and paid terribly for generations

Tyrants have long memories

And peasants have short ones

All your weak protests

All your virtue signaling

It's just another way for you to serve one master or the other

You'll win nothing from it

Because blood is the price for freedom

And nobody wants to pay it anymore

#NeverForget