Renegade 911

Edit 3: Facebook has restored the original post and apologized. They are still looking into the details of what happened.

Edit 2: Comments on this post are now well over 200. If you want to see all of those comments, you have to go to the bottom of the page and click on “load more.” You may have to do this several times.

Edit: Addendum at the end of the post

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I made a Facebook post about 9-11.

It went viral.

It wasn’t even the first viral post I wrote this week, or the first to offend a certain segment of America.

And many people were offended.

Oh, yes, they were offended.

Those who beat their fleshy chests and wave the flag in righteous unending fury and bleat most bitterly about “Freedom” and “Liberty” and “Patriotism” were the most offended.

Because aren’t they always?

Aren’t they?

They attempted to hack my Facebook account.

When that didn’t work, they complained to Facebook in righteous anger, furiously waving their little flags.

Because that’s what you do when you love “Freedom” and “Liberty” and “Patriotism” -- not the real freedom and liberty and patriotism but the jack-booted goose-stepping version where everybody is lined up and made to salute the flag with a gun to the back of their necks.  The kind of “Freedom” that’s administered by serious men of pure Aryan descent with death’s heads and lightning bolts on their collars.

Eventually these patriots  succeeded in convincing Facebook’s idiot mechanical brain to remove my post for “violation of community standards,” even though nothing I wrote violates Facebook’s community standards in any way.

Now, I’m not particularly vexed by this.

First, because this is the risk you take when you post to Facebook. You don’t own it. You don’t control it. You are entirely at the mercy of poorly coded algorithms and the arbitrary judgement of some 20 year old Frappuccino swilling douchebeard somewhere in the bowels of the Facebook cloud.

Facebook’s interests aren’t yours, even if like me you make them piles of money by pulling in 130,000 people every day.  I knew this when I signed up. It irritates me, what they did pulling down my post because a bunch of fascist right-wingers got their delicate little Hitler Under-Roos all in a bunch, but I’m not in anyway surprised by the behavior of either party. It’s right there in the EULA.

Second,  Because the people who complained confirm everything I said about them.

And I’d be lying if I said that didn’t amuse me.

By getting my post pulled down they confirm everything I said.

They always do, these patriots, predictable as the next row of goose-stepping Nazis.

And what was it I said that was so terrible?

What was it I said that was deserving of censorship and death threats?

This:

You're expecting some kind of obligatory 9-11 post, aren't you?

Here it is, but you're not gonna like it.

15 years ago today 19 shitheads attacked America.

They killed 3000 of us.

And then ... America got its revenge for 9-11.

Yes we did. Many times over. We killed them. We killed them all. We killed their families. We killed their wives and their kids and all their neighbors. We killed whole nations that weren't even involved just to make goddamned sure. We bombed their cities into rubble. We burned down their countries.

They killed 3000 of us, we killed 300,000 of them or more.

8000 of us came home in body bags, but we got our revenge. Yes we did.

We're still here. They aren't.

We win. USA! USA! USA!

Right?

You goddamned right. We. Win.

Except...

Every year on this day we bathe in the blood of that day yet again. We watch the towers fall over and over. It's been 15 goddamned years, but we just can't get enough. We've just got to watch it again and again.

It's funny how we never show those videos of the bombs falling on Baghdad today. Or the dead in the streets of Afghanistan. We got our revenge, but we never talk about that today. No, we just sit and watch the towers fall yet again.

Somewhere out there on the bottom of the sea are the rotting remains of the evil son of bitch who masterminded the attack. It took a decade, but we hunted him down and put a bullet in his brain. Sure. We got him. Right? That's what we wanted. that's what our leaders promised us, 15 years ago today.

And today those howling the loudest for revenge shrug and say, well, yeah, that. That doesn't matter, because, um, yeah, the guy in the White House, um, see, well, he's not an American, he's the enemy see? He's not doing enough. So, whatever. What about that over there? And that? And...

Yeah.

15 years ago our leaders, left and right, stood on the steps of the Capitol and gave us their solemn promise to work together, to stand as one, for all Americans.

How'd that promise work out?

How much are their words worth? Today, 15 years later?

It's 15 years later and we're STILL afraid. We're still terrorized. Still wallowing in conspiracy theories and peering suspiciously out of our bunkers at our neighbors. Sure we won. Sure we did. We became a nation that tortures our enemies -- and our own citizens for that matter. We're a nation of warrantless wiretaps and rendition and we've gotten used to being strip searched in our own airports. And how is the world a better place for it all?

And now we're talking about more war, more blood.

But, yeah, we won. Sure. You bet.

Frankly, I have had enough of 9-11. Fuck 9-11. I'm not going to watch the shows. I'm not going to any of the memorials. I'm not going to the 9-11 sales at Wal-Mart. I don't want to hear about 9-11. I for damned sure am not interested in watching politicians of either party try to out 9-11 each other. I'm tired of this national 9-11 PTSD. I did my bit for revenge, I went to war, I'll remember the dead in my own time in my own way.

I'm not going to shed a damned tear today.

We got our revenge. Many times over, for whatever good it did us.

I'm going to go to a picnic and enjoy my day. Enjoy this victory we've won.

I suggest you do the same.

Horrible, yes?

How terrible that I should suggest we stop wallowing in this misery, that we stop allowing ourselves to be terrorized by men long dead.

Yes indeed, how terrible.

On Facebook, posts openly calling for the assassination of the president do not violate Facebook’s community standards.

Open racism doesn’t violate Facebook’s community standards.

Sexism and misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, bigotry of every stripe, none of these things violate Facebook’s community standards – or the community standards of supposed Christian Conservatives for that matter. 

Posts that directly call for armed insurrection, that call for militias and Sovereign Citizens to march on Washington and burn it to the ground, to hang the government from the nearest light poles,  don’t violate community standards.

You can use Facebook to organize Klan rallies and gather Neo-Nazis for Trump, to take over a bird sanctuary in Oregon or even to call down the wrath of your god upon everybody you hate.

You can openly call for the murder of a football player that you don’t think is patriotic enough.

All of these things are fine.

But don’t say you’re not going to celebrate 9-11.

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Addendum:  I can see that I’ve attracted a certain element and that I have to explain things that would be obvious to those of normal intellect. Very well: If you read the above piece and came away with the idea that I – a retired US military officer who was on active duty on September 11th, 2001 and who willingly served in the resulting war – that I am somehow saying that the US shouldn’t have responded to the 9-11 attack (or Pearl Harbor for that matter, because apparently you’re all reading off the same crib notes) then you are too goddamned stupid to comment here. So don’t bother. As previously noted, I don’t mind having enemies, but I do require they meet certain levels of reading comprehension and reasoning ability.  If you think that a measured response against an identified enemy is the same as invading a country that had nothing to do with 9-11, then you don’t qualify and your comments will not post. // Jim