If you speak against the president and his policies you are a traitor to America.

Remember those days? The very same people who spit those words are now the ones who hold protesting against the president and his policies as being patriotic.

It was easy for the weak and paranoid to follow the guy who talked and looked like them. Let?s face it, after 9/11 we were all weak and paranoid. The shock that this country was hated brought out the lies and platitudes to assuage any blame or guilt upon ourselves.. We believed it because the truth is too introspective and painful. It isn?t the American concept that the world community derides or dislikes. To see what those outside find amusing and antagonistic, just watch the news or listen to the radio. Like many places, the misguided minority who think truth comes from he who speaks loudest, poison the entire population with stereotypical reputations.

Of course we are younger, being only a couple centuries old is a mere child, spoiled and self centered. We didn?t have a Renaissance, Middle Ages, and weren?t the playground for world war. Like many children today we have the benefit of the past without experiencing the consequences of learning.

Patriot, activist, freedom fighter, rebel, fanatic, nut, terrorist.

The Boston Tea Party, Civil War, native and Japanese internment, the McCarthy era, Oklahoma City, the Patriot Act

They?re all different degrees of the same thing, it just depends on the interpretation and where the interpreter stands at any given moment. Once you remove the nobility by delusion, ignorance or violence you can mask hatred and fear with semantics for the masses. They in turn can lie to themselves to reclaim that noble title like a funhouse mirror in a carnival. The image is warped and distorted. But only to those who open their eyes.

So did we learn anything from 9/11?
Evidently not. We?re still nation building, still putting the corporate personage above the real person and still screaming in a way only Americans have memory for.