From the Depths: You can take your "Patriotism" and shove it!

[AFK]

The following is a rant I posted on a Political Form.  I share it with you

For sinking to a level of vile filth.  Last night, at the convention the following 9/11 "tribute" was shown. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw1vEzqld0I

This was no "tribute" to those who lost their lives in the terrorist attacks.  This was the organizers of the RNC using those innocent lives as a shameful political prop to win votes.  It was a fear mongering, propaganda video, complete with imagery of one of the explosions from one of the planes impacting the trade towers.  Complete with the graphic imagery of watching one of the towers collapse.  It was a horrid thing to watch last night, and the complete rage that filled me, watching how the suffering and death of innocents was being used as a political pawn, I can't begin to explain to you how angry this makes me.  It's bad enough that Gov. Palin and other Republicans have decided to mock my profession, now they are going to use the dead to win their election.  It is shameful.

Anyone who filmed, edited, spliced, signed off on this video is a stain of an American.  To think, to actually think that using these horrific memories, the dead of 9/11, as a political ploy, to think that is acceptable is hard for me to imagine.  This was no "tribute", this was taking a wound, reopening it, pouring salt into it, and then holding a knife to the necks of Americans and saying, "Vote for us or this will happen again!" 

And it is people from this side who dare, who have the unmitigated gall to question Barack Obama or anybody else's Patriotism.  Is it "patriotic" to use the deaths of the 9/11 victims as a means to win votes?  Is it "patriotic" to use the fear conjured by the 9/11 attacks to scare the American people into voting for you?  Is it "patriotic" to spit on the survivors and loved ones of 9/11 victims by using their grief for their gain?  If this is the "patriotism" you want, count me the fuck out.  This is vile, awful, and has NO place in America.  The people responsible for this video are refuse-stained holes.  I don't want to be a part of their America. 

This, of course, is not going to get ANY play in the media.  You all think this is a liberal media.  No, it isn a corporate media, and they are ALL cowards.  This should be an issue.  The heartlessness and callousness on the part of some in the Republican party will use the deaths of the 9/11 victims for their gain should be an issue.  If we really want to live in a "land of the free" we need to act like it.  This kind of reprehensive BS needs to be decried and we need to stand up and DEMAND that this crap cease.  Debate issues, debate policy, hell, go ahead and sling mud at each other.  But I will be damned if I am going to sit and watch people in our country use the innocent dead and the living victims of the horrific attacks on 9/11 as a means to their political ends. 

If you don't have the same gut reaction that I and many others have had to this piece of slime belched forth on the RNC stage, I don't know what to say.  You obviously have a different set of values that I can't begin to relate to.  If you can't see how these poor excuses for humanity have denigrated the lives that were lost in those planes, and in those towers, and in the Pentagon, then I don't know how to convince you otherwise.  You clearly have a different set of lenses that allow you to accept this kind of sick propaganda.  And that's fine, I have no quarrel with you.  But this is just completely sick.  I'm not a religious person, I don't believe in heaven and hell, BUT, if I did, I would expect that there is a very special place made just for those who allowed this travesty to unfold on National Television.

[Payne]

Unfortunately, I can't watch the video.

I say unfortunately, but only because that's what your rant was about.

The image that many people overseas have of America is based on that kind of opportunistic behaviour on the part of the GOP. It's very very sad.

Patriotism is something that I always have problem with anyway. It's too easy to adapt it and morph it into something monstrous.

In this case, they've taken the steel gauntlet, wrapped it in the Stars and Stripes, and are now threatening all voters in the most insidious, back handed and patronising way.

Of the people here who actually saw the live coverage of the 9/11 attacks, like I did, what were your thoughts and feelings when that second plane struck?

Now do you want people to use that as blackmail for your votes and support for the rest of your lives?

[AFK]

If you do a google search for "911 rnc tribute" you'll probably come across a site with the video that you'll be able to watch.  My wife and I have been watching bits of the Republican convention for kicks.  She's a hardcore Democrat, I'm an Independent, but I will be frank in that I more often disagree with the Republicans than I do the Democrats.  Anyway, the video came on and we were just completely dumbfounded watching it.  I think about 5 minutes passed before one of us even spoke.  It was just so completely fucked up.  And they completely duped the networks.  They called it a "Tribute to 9/11 Victims" but there was hardly anything about the victims.  It was all doom and gloom and "We Can't let this happen again!".  It was so 1940 in the way it employed fear mongering. 

[Payne]

Less to do with having problems with youtube, more to do with a really slow connection.

I don't really want to watch it anyway.

A sick attempt to cash in on human life, tragedy and suffering is all very well. But for something as ultimately meaningless as VOTES?

[AFK]

Yeah, you don't want to see it.  The only thing that's worth seeing is Keith Olbermann's comments on it.  After it was done and Brokaw made a couple comments about something unrelated, they tossed back to Olberman and he said the following:

I'm sorry, it's necessary to say this and I wanted to separate myself from the others on the air about this. If at this late date, any television network had of its own accord showed that much videotape, and that much graphic videotape of 9/11, and I speak as somebody who lost a few friends there, it, we, would be rightly eviscerated at all quarters, perhaps by the Republican Party itself, for exploiting the memories of the dead and perhaps even for trying to evoke that pain again. If you reacted to that videotape the way I did, I apologize. It is a subject of great pain for many of us still and was probably not appropriate to be shown.

[Payne]

Wow. Someone with at least a semblance of a conscience.

[AFK]

Yeah, but he will be ignored because he is "partisan".  And honestly, he does have a liberal bias, but that, of course, doesn't mean he is wrong.  Goddamn I'm really hating the Republicans right bout now.  First, Palin decides to talk down community organizers.  Now, I'm not exactly a "community organizer" by definition, but some of the work I do is in that spirit, so I take a certain level of personal offense to that bullshit.  Now this.  Fuck em.  I mean this in all seriousness, they should shove their heads in bags. 

[LMNO]

Was it Palin that did that, or Thompson?

[Roo]

I'm completely agreed with you on this, RWHN. It's dispicable.

But I just wanted to comment that when I first read this part: This was no "tribute", this was taking a wound, reopening it, pouring salt into it, and then holding a knife to the necks of Americans and saying, "Vote for us or this will happen again!" I read that last bit as "Vote for us AND this will happen again!"

[AFK]

Was it Palin that did that, or Thompson?

Palin and Giuliani.  And the thing of it is, Giuliani should fucking know better.  Does he really think he, and he alone is responsible for all of the improvements that happened in NYC?  Fuck no.  It's the people on the ground like community organizers and non-profits that were that exerted the sweat equity to make it happen.  He's a fuck-head, screw him. 

[AFK]

I'm completely agreed with you on this, RWHN. It's dispicable.

But I just wanted to comment that when I first read this part: This was no "tribute", this was taking a wound, reopening it, pouring salt into it, and then holding a knife to the necks of Americans and saying, "Vote for us or this will happen again!" I read that last bit as "Vote for us AND this will happen again!"

Well, honestly, it could probably go either way depending on how you look at it. 

[Jenne]

I have considered writing such a rant, RWHN.  I think it stems from at one time believing in a SEMBLANCE of right-wing ideals...and then some sort of "coming of age" for me when I realized that those ideals were meant to fuck everyone else up the ass.

Yeah, I think I have another rant stewing in me about this...will do it later, though, as I'm pressed for time.

[AFK]

It actually kept me up last night.  Seriously.  I've always had an interest in politics, I've watched conventions and debates and stump speeches, for years.  I've never had such a visceral reaction to something like this before.  It just seemed so ugly to me and it really, really bothered me, and I don't even have any attachment to the event, as far as knowing anyone who died in the attacks.  It's just so galling to see them rail about "patriotism" and then to belch out this piece of shit.  That's "patriotism"?  Fuck it.  Give me a flag I'll burn it right now. 

[Mangrove]

RHWN,

Can't remember the name of the author, but I was browsing through a book called 'The Limits Of Power' yesterday and read the introduction. It's only a small book but the first 13 pages were quite thought provoking.

The author was saying that while the Bush Administration (and of course, Bin Laden etc) have a great deal of blood on their hands and their share of blame, he feels that to attribute all of 'whats wrong in the world today' to them, is to accord them more historical significance than they deserve.

He feels that a big culprit is this: The deeply entrenched belief that America is some how 'exceptional'.
He said that the word 'freedom' in US politics automatically nullifies critical thinking for many people. America has, since WWII and especially since the end of the Cold War become incredibly comfortable in the belief that it had somehow become 'unassailable'.

In 1991 everyone was like 'America is the only superpower'. This meme had grown to epic proportions that it was just the recieved wisdom that was never challenged and, as such the US spent alot of time, money, effort and lives poking around into other countries abroad while ignoring the security of it's own borders. The sheer inadequacy was write large on 9/11 when it was suddenly apparent that no one was 'minding the store'.

He thinks that the US needs a serious look at itself and develop a more realistic perception of it's own powers because, right now, it doesn't have the money, manpower or even the willpower to sustain itself.

I've always regarded excessive patriotism as the gateway to complete nationalized spaggotry.  America is a young country that is, unfortunately, ensconced in a web of adolescent self-mythologizing. Until more people realize that the country is 'just like everywhere else', then stuff like the RNC clips will still be effective in scaring people into voting, buying, thinking and acting to the lowest common denominator.

[AFK]

I think this was very apparent at the Olympics as well.  I happened to be visiting my family in Northern Maine for a few days during the Olympics.  Up there they receive a couple of TV stations from Canada.  Anyhoo, I decided to take one night and watch the coverage from NBC and the CBC.  It was one of the Michael Phelps swimming extravaganza hoopla fests.  The contrast was quite apparent.  Watching CBC was much more pleasant, even when they had someone in the race.  The US commentators were expecting a US win.  The Canadian broadcasters were just cheering their guy/gal on hoping they did well.  Two different sets of expectations. 

I think I need to go Googling and see if I can find that book.