#NeverForget : 9/11 Mission Creep And The Creepy Ways It Is "Remembered"

A store in San Antonio, Texas reportedly had to close after running a commercial where two towers of mattresses 
were knocked down to advertise a sale of any size mattress at a "twin" price. Details here.

If you work in public schools like I do you may have been treated on Friday to the annual government-sponsored ad to "remember" 9/11. It's a manufactured memory, because even the oldest students in my school were not born in 2001 when the U.S. equivalent of the burning of the Reichstag was staged. Thus it is important for the powers that be to continue selling their version of the burning of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. As adults surely remember, it was this catastrophe that officially ushered in the era of the endless "war on terror."

You might think that the many, many, many corporate media spectacles selling 9/11 brand patriotism would be far more effective than school administrators interrupting classes to read a script calling on staff and students to stand up and observe a moment of silence. This had to be done on Friday, September 9 this year since 9/11 will fall on the weekend. This had the effect of making the "remembrance" effort aimed at kids even more contrived. 

You might not realize that middle school students seldom read newspapers or magazines these days, and hardly ever consume broadcast television unless it's a sporting event (more on that later). They are busy snapchatting, texting and watching YouTubers that amuse them. 

If it weren't for schools giving students weekly magazines like Time for Kids, Junior Scholastic and other corporate media designed for their consumption, they probably wouldn't even know which two candidates for president the corporations have selected for them. Or which event kicked off the wars they have always lived with which funnel mad profits into the coffers of the most wealthy corporations on the planet.

A teacher I know recently reported her middle school students could not identify pictures of any of the candidates, and 40% of them could not identify a picture of the current president of the United States.

Who they could identify is the quarterback for the New England Patriots football team.

Their whole life the media spectacle of false dichotomy has been sold and sold hard via professional sports. Not only by the subliminal message of two teams, one with red shirts and one with blue, applying superior force to become wealthy and famous; additionally, their parents' taxes have been spent by the Pentagon paying NFL and other sports teams to stage patriotic spectacles.

As Maine's dumb-like-a-fox corporate-sponsored governor recently said in promoting his allegation that drug dealers in our state are predominately black or Hispanic (a statistic the FBI disputes): 

“Look, the bad guy is the bad guy, I don’t care what color he is. When you go to war, if you know the enemy and the enemy dresses in red and you dress in blue, then you shoot at red."

So the governor understands what every kid "knows," that all the guys can be divided into two groups and you're always on the good side. This firm belief allows your government to sell weapons to the country that most of the 9/11 hijackers were alleged to hail from -- Saudi Arabia, which has been bombing the civilians of Yemen to smithereens these past several years -- thus siding with apparent "bad guys" while magically remaining good guys yourselves.

This is the real message and lesson of the 9/11 tragedy that killed thousands that day and then provided the pretext for killing millions more in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria that had nothing to do with it. There's a (false) dichotomy, and you had better know which side you're on.

Kids are afraid to be seen as unpatriotic now. They don't really know why it's so important to always support the military and always believe that their country is good, but they're getting the message loud and clear that they had better go along to get along. Or else.

Because if they fail to comply they might find themselves on the wrong side in an endless war with no goals, no victories, no exit plan, and no purpose other than self-perpetuating profits and resource theft.

And if that's not a good enough reason to "remember" 9/11, I don't know what is.

Why I Will #NeverForget911, The Pretext For Endless Wars Of Empire

School children in the U.S. will be bathed in nostalgia today urging them to "remember" the events of September 11, 2001. In case you missed it, the president directed that all flags on public schools be flown at half mast, and that a moment of silence be observed at the time the first plane hit the World Trade Center. There is also a movement to have students sing the national anthem at 1pm. You know, the anthem that portrays "bombs bursting in air" as if that were a good thing and something to be proud of.

Attacks by the CIA-sponsored Osama bin Laden and his band of Saudi extremists created a media sensation that must be kept alive for each successive generation. Those attacks provided the pretext for ushering in decades of endless wars of empire on innocent Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and potentially Iran. The relative handful of non-innocent Muslims that form militias and fight the U.S. and NATO -- al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIL/ISIS among others -- receive funding and support from the U.S. to continue providing a plausible reason for funding endless wars. They, too, receive vast amounts of corporate media attention and hype to keep the U.S. population in fear and complacent.

But as the enormous refugee crisis these wars have engendered demonstrates, the chaos of endless wars reaches your shores eventually.

The Pentagon continues to get the lion's share of federal funding each year and to have the largest carbon bootprint of any organization on the planet. No corporate news outlet ever questions this or raises a concern about the climate change implications of a free pass for the military. Because... 9/11!

Our civil liberties guaranteed under the Constitution are in tatters even after years of a constitutional scholar in the White House, with no relief in sight. Because...9/11!

Torture is regularly practiced by our government, and attempts to examine its effectiveness or even its morality are feeble. The torture prison at Guantánamo continues to detain Muslim men, some who were cleared years ago of any wrongdoing, and some who were arrested before they were even adults. Because...9/11!

Hate crimes aimed at Muslim citizens and immigrants are a national epidemic and disgrace. But the hate speech spewing from media outlets and candidates aspiring to live at the White House roll on. Because...9/11!

The German people were told by the Nazi Party that they were under threat from Communists and Jews, and a state of emergency after the burning of the Reichstag shut down the press and jailed many candidates on the eve of an election. A sensational event to shock the populace into submission can be very, very handy for fascists. Who dares to question? Who dares to appear unpatriotic in such an atmosphere?

I do. Perhaps you will join me.