Never forget.

Never forget.

Never forget.

Ten years gone. It still hurts my heart. I think it always will.

Never forget.

Wah. Wah, wah, wah. Wah. I know it’s unseemly to gloat, but: Wah. We won. You lost. Wah.

At long last, after eight years of shame, I feel a sense of hope. Our long national nightmare is over. We’ve finally driven the rats from the White House, and we own Congress too. Now we can get some work done, some change done. Now we can start repairing the damage done over the last eight years.

We can start being America again.

Two gays whose blogs I read — I’ve never met them but they’re friends of a friend — got married recently, shortly after the California Supreme Court overturned the ban on gay marriage and gave them and other gays in California the legal right to marry whoever the fuck they want. The guy performing their ceremony opened with the following statement:

“Dave and Alonso have been fake married on two other occasions and signed domestic partnership papers twice with increasing legal rights each time. But the marriage performed today is guaranteed to be legal for almost five months, hopefully longer, and will be recognized in three whole states — for now.”

While I’m really happy for them that they were able to finally do this, it makes me sad that they were also able to make that statement.

I look at where we are, at what we’re becoming, and two verses from the Talking Heads Once in a Lifetime runs through my head:

And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!

and

And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go to?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right? …am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
My god!…what have I done?

This is not my beautiful country anymore. Like I said last year: They’re Winning.

It’s five years today since the attacks on September 11th changed our world. In that five years we have lost many of our civil liberties, been spied on by our own government, transformed a large budget surplus into the biggest deficit in US history, seen one of the biggest expansions of government in our history, invaded and decimated the infrastructure of Afghanistan and Iraq and made those countries a breeding ground for terrorists, wasted the good will of most of the world and turned us into one of the most feared — if not most hated — countries on Earth, killed innocent Iraqi and Afghan civilians on purpose, established secret prisons, tortured and killed prisoners, handed prisoners over to countries we know will torture and kill them, thrown away the Geneva Convention, ignored our own Constitutional protections of freedom and liberty, and given up the moral high ground in our “fight” against “terrorism.”

Those 19 terrorists wanted to strike a blow against America. They have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams: we have abandoned the principles that made America great.

What a sad lens through which to have to view this sad anniversary. I was so proud to be an American five years ago. I am so ashamed of my country’s leadership today.

I wonder: Would the victims be happy with the changes, the losses, we’ve endured in their name?