2005-11-19T13:36:00.000-08:00

Remembering Who We Are

I'm beginning to think that America is in the grip of some sort of weird, collective Alzheimer's dementia. We have forgotten who we are. Now, I don't like to joke about Alzheimer's; my mother is now confined to a nursing home lockdown ward, in an advanced stage of it. I know well and good that dementia is nothing to laugh at. My mother no longer remembers her own name.

We no longer remember who we are. If that isn't dementia, I don't know what is.

These terrorists, of whom we are supposed to be so afraid, want us to be like them. They hate everything about America, and their values are totally alien from those we cherished for so long. What part of turning into foaming-at-the-mouth, theocratic fundamentalist, warmonger nutcases is going to help us win the "war on terror?"

How will turning our backs on science help us defeat the terrorists? The ayatollahs of Right-Wing "Christianity" are nothing more than atheists, dolled-up in a religious disguise. If God really does exist, then "He" is the God of What Is. If God is real, then God must be the God of reality. Science -- good science, well done -- is a form of worship. Opposing the teaching of evolution, out of some misguided loyalty to a "literal" view of Genesis, is a pathetic, cowardly and dishonest attempt to prop up a fairy-tale.

I was born on September 11th. Hence the name of this blog. (Not in 2001, it's true, though as to the year of my birth I will demurely leave my readers guessing.) Though I know my own loss can't possibly compare to that suffered by so many other Americans on that fateful day four years ago, I did, in a very real sense, suffer a loss. Those terrorists blew up my birthday. For the rest of my life, every time I tell anybody when my birthday is, I have to hear them say, "oh, yuck," or "poor you!" I want my birthday back the way it was, but Osama and his bunch have
marred it forever.

I don't believe you have to be the grieving survivor of somebody who perished in the World Trade Center or the Pentagon in order to have a valid opinion on America's glorious war on terror. No, you don't even have to have been born on 9-11. But you do have to remember what America has always stood for. And you must never forget that -- among so many other wonderful things -- it is the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

THE. TERRORISTS. WANT. US. TO. BE. AFRAID. What part of that is so difficult for so many in this country to understand? Now, nobody is ever going to confuse Lori Heine with a rocket scientist. But as a seasoned word-wielder, I believe in the power of a word.

One of the few things Rush Limbaugh ever said that I agree with is that "Words mean things" -- which, I assume, means that no word ought to be misused until it is rendered useless. It is his own crowd, currently reigning on the Potomac, who are now in the process of sucking the blood out of the word "terrorism." We who stand up, here at home and around the world, and tell us not to succumb to the fear that terrorism would inflict upon us are being called cowards and accused of wanting to surrender to the terrorists. What an upside-down and inside-out, Alice-through-the-looking-glass world our accusers live in!

My father was too young to make it into World War II. By the time he turned 18, it was over. But did he say, "Whew! Dodged that bullet...time to party hearty?" No, he enlisted in the Army and served in occupied Japan. He was a hundred times the man that these whining little Nancy-boy, do-nothing, stay-at-home, chickenhawk supporters of this war will ever be.

September 11, 2001 changed everything. The world was born anew on 9-11. And in this blog, one thing I will always do is tell the truth. I'm going to call the shots exactly the way I see 'em.
I'm a liberal-Christian, Christian-liberal, feminist lesbian who backs down from absolutely nobody. We live in an era when cowards must be cast aside.

So let me state this for the record. If you believe in this war, and you are of military age, you need to get your sweet little precious ass in uniform and go out there and fight for your country. There are girls, just out of high school, taking bullets over in Iraq and Afghanistan because so many young men are too cowardly to enlist. If you believe women should be in combat (as I do), then that is fine. But if you're one of the many Captain-Rock-Ribs, God-is-a-Republican types who claims that women don't belong in combat, what a pathetic joke of a man you must be not to be willing to let them go to a job you're too cowardly and selfish to do yourself.

There are military families who are literally losing the mortgages on their homes because the breadwinners keep getting re-upped into action. Don't tell me you've got anything to do stateside that's more important than they have. You think you're just too important? Tell it to Pat Tillman. Tell it to any one of the now-over-two thousand brave folks who will never make it home.

My father and I disagreed about politics. He supported this war, and of course I do not. But my father had the right to support the war. He was among the few and the proud who were willing to serve.

The President my dad loved is turning disintegrating faster that the Wicked Witch of the West did when she got wet. The only good thing about Dad's passing is that he won't live to see the pathetic spectacle that conservatism -- both political and religious -- is degenerating into.

The Left -- again, both political and religious -- will rise again. And I can't wait to be a part of it.

Born on 9-11