9/11: Forbidden Thoughts

otm w glibertarian

In another interview, Parker and Stone further clarified the end of the film which seems to justify the role of the United States as the "World Police."[33]

Because that's the thing that we realized when we were making the movie. It was always the hardest thing. We wanted to deal with this emotion of being hated as an American. That was the thing that was intriguing to us, and having Gary [the main character] deal with that emotion. And so, him becoming ashamed to be a part of Team America and being ashamed of himself, he comes to realize that, just as he got his brother killed by gorillas — he didn't kill his brother; he wasn't a dick, he wasn't an asshole — so too does America have this role in the world as a dick. Cops are dicks, you fucking hate cops, but you need 'em.

as with most movies, the filmmakers' insights don't really matter to me

nor do the stuff dumb idiots take from it. some people probably took "slavery, fuck yeah!" at face value, too.

I watched the second plane hit live, I had came back from an open day at a university

exact same for me, don't suppose it was uuuuuh actually i've forgotten, strathclyde i think?

Anybody else get recurring bomb threats at their college in the days after? We had at least two in our library

No I actually still drove to school that morning and every class was just 4 or 5 students and the teacher looking sad and cancelling class. I ended up hanging out with my best friends and we went bowling and I'm not sure if that place was closed or not but it is always good to be with the people you love in the face of such horror.

we should never ever ever "get over it." that's a fucking awful thing to say.

I think as we've killed a few hundred thousand people who had nothing to do with it in response, we should PARTICULARLY get the moth-er-fuck over it.

It is the killing that we should get over.

so true, and out of respect for lost lives I will not trench that

I also resented the "9/11 brought the country together" narrative and talked of the unity of the nation in the days following. I felt like any 'unity' was short-lived. I really felt like it brought a lot of ugly out of the civilian population - what with the civilians who committed "revenge" murders against people they thought were Arabs in the days following, people who used it as excuses for xenophobia, etc.

like we were all back to hating each other's guts by the weekend!

― Hammer Smashed Bagels, Saturday, September 12, 2015 4:54 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This reminds me that shortly after the Iraq war began I went to work at a small newspaper in New Jersey, and I learned of but was unable to write about a little french cafe that began to suffer from harassment and reduced business during the "freedom fries" episode -- eggings, people yelling shit out of car windows, etc. The owners were an American Vietnam Vet and his Vietnamese wife.

(was unable to write about because the owners didn't want any more attention and I couldn't really write the story without being able to quote them anyway)

oh christ, the "Freedom fries" debacle.

it really was a drag to be alive in the US in 2003-2004.

Yeah, I mean it's really as much or more that kind of shit vs 9/11 itself that shook my sense of security in the world, sort of like realizing you're on a ship with no captain and no course.

Coalition of the Willing would make a good Depeche Mode album.

Would not like Australian PM John Howard's solos on that

It's going to be a real drag to live in the US from 2018-end

we'd have ya but I'm worried you might be a little too catholic tbh

we should never ever ever "get over it."

I'm not sure what it would look or feel like to obey this dictum, but it strikes me as unnecessarily absolute, especially since the ceaseless wars, the Patriot Act, the xenophobia, and all the other 'responses' to the attacks have affected my life much more directly and much more negatively than the original attacks ever did.

Thinking of 9/11 makes me rather wish that our leaders had showed a lot more wisdom and far less naked political opportunism afterward. Maybe if we finally "got over it", we could disengage our emotions long enough to walk back a few of the stupider, uglier and more harmful consequences of that day.

oh christ, the "Freedom fries" debacle.

it really was a drag to be alive in the US in 2003-2004.

― Hammer Smashed Bagels, Sunday, September 13, 2015 3:20 AM (Yesterday)

yeah the lead-up to the iraq invasion is the single most horrible time in recent history for me, just an endless stream of idiots defending the indefensible basically everywhere you looked, ppl you'd normally think of as sensible and decent buying into the bush horrorshow. and all these years later i still run into ppl who are like "well, they attacked us first!"

it was a dark fucking time

remember that time george w bush won an election because he was the ceo president who just needed to delegate effectively because we were approaching the end of history and permanent prosperity? that was awesome.

it's disconcerting for me personally cuz on a personal level things were p great for me between 2000-2008 (marriage, first child born, busy w cool stuff etc.) but then on the macro level everything was such a colossal fucking bummer

I participated in 2 anti-war protests on campus in 2003. The level of vitriol spewed at those participating was nothing liked I'd ever seen. Strangers came up and screamed at us. Everywhere I went, some friend or acquaintance was talking nasty rhetoric about "anti war protesters" without realizing I was one. I was depressed knowing that the war was going to fuck both our country and Iraq up in terms of lost lives and destroyed economies, and nothing anybody was going to say was going to change it.

The delusions of pro-war supporters amazed me. I was at work at a retail store the day Saddam was caught and everybody kept coming up to me, excited, that we caught him. A radio deejay talked about how she was finally convinced the war would end (when by that point he was a figurehead and little more).

the freedom fries thing was insult to injury. You got your war, now you're bringing xenophobia and nauseating nationalism into it over fabricated wounds.

If there was ever an option to have lived in a cave with a fully furnished fridge, air conditioning, and no phone or television, 2003-2004 was it.

i had some horrible piece of shit middle aged woman go off at me on a flight from SF to London around this time because she (correctly) sensed i was anti- the war and went on this crazy bizarre mental voyage that meant i was anti-war because it was cool and the cool kids hated her in high school and they were all anti-vietnam and they were on drugs and so on and so on. she was sat next to me, and we only interacted because i showed this dumb piece of shit how to make movies come on the screen and she saw the book i was reading or something and started just being really vile and personal and nasty and i lost it and told her she was an awful piece of shit and that i could not talk to her any longer and just put my earphones on and ignored her for the next ten or so hours. like i was about to scream at her. it escalated so quickly, and i don't think i was to blame.

from SF!!

http://s17.postimg.org/6rkr08lpb/Screen_Shot_2015_09_13_at_11_07_23_PM.png

Islam is a cult that does not co-exist with other muslims. Can't argue with that logic!

never trust a Geer

yeah im really upset we didnt kill all 1.5 billion muslims 'while we were there'

odds are p good that this is the type of guy who when challenged even weakly, starts backpedaling and shouting things like "AIN"T I ENTITLED TO MY OPINION"

someone set us up the 9/11

hand me the 9/11

No one remembers the Lusitania.

let alone the maine

The Guy from Devo Is Sorry About His Twin Towers-Shaped Wedding Cake, Which He Says Was a 'Set-Up'

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CO8eE-vW8AAmeuE.jpg

(Yes, those are box-cutter party favors.)

respek knuckles for the supremely bad taste of that

I get sick each year of everybody recounting where they were on 9/11. it feels like morbid pageantry

facebook friend was all "so can we be real about 9/11 not being a terorist attack now" and unironically talked abt jet fuel cant melt steel beams

for a minute i felt like a grossed-out david attenborough

"defriend"

I am so glad FB didn't exist on 9/11

the other 'forbidden thought' (which I"m sure I probably posted in years past) is everybody remembering the "solidarity" we felt in the aftermath. it was a mirage - everybody was back to fighting and being dicks within a week, they just maybe thought an extra .03 seconds before flipping you the bird.

in a way it kind of helped accelerate the polarization of the parties.

Wasn't like that in New York - goodwill extended well into 2002, maybe up until the invasion of Iraq.

I posted a joke on Facebook this morning based on the fact that 9/11/01 was also the release date of Nickelback's Silver Side Up album, but took it down after about 10 minutes.

People still talking about 9/11 I guess

when 9/11 happened, Bush had approval ratings in the 90s. despite not being popularly elected, and the turmoil that surrounded his election, the country more or less backed him up. they trusted his judgment. they wanted him to succeed. even the most trenchant Democrats were not willing to tear him down.

now contrast that with what you know in your heart would have happened had Obama been President on 9/11. half this country would have blamed him for it, either by suggesting incompetence or even collusion.

most likely collusion. fuck you social media.

shame on me i guess i didn't really give much of a fuck about W bush one way or another until AFTER he invaded Iraq

the other

People still talking about 9/11 I guess

― slathered in cream and covered with stickers (silly), Sunday, September 11, 2016 2:54 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

because it still feels like yesterday in many ways. the 9/11 era hasn't ended. we're still mired in the middle east, it's more unstable than ever, ISIS has outpaced Al Qaeda, people feel more vulnerable to terrorism. the payback/relief/release that we've been waiting for for fifteen years hasn't come yet. everything is worse than it was on 9/11. the psyche of the country is so fractured and schizophrenic - trump is assisted suicide.

update on idiot fb "friend"... I couldnt stand just unfriending or hiding so posted a comment like "You have got to be fucking kidding me with this bullshit" and the meme of matrix morpheus saying jet fuel cant melt steel beams

he deleted his whole post, comments and all

:D

good. jet fuel can't melt steel beams drives me fucking nuts. stuff like that and the walmart coke case memorial feel like a kick in the head. i know this happens in time (thinking of a photo i saw of a inflated waterslide designed as the capsizing Titanic), but so soon...