I can’t say it better than Brooke at the bitter shackzilla has already done, responding to W’s proclaiming September 11th Patriot Day:
“The people who died in the World Trade Center did not die for their country. If anything, they died because of their country. They did not willingly lay down their lives for a cause, for God and a nation. They did not die chanting America the Beautiful. They died not knowing what the hell was going on. They died eating doughnuts and drinking coffee and shuffling papers and counting up profits and cleaning bathrooms and making meals. Some died thinking it was all just a terrible accident. Nothing about how these people died makes them patriots. But that does not make their deaths any less significant.
And, I would argue, nothing about my grief for their loss makes me a patriot, certainly not in the sense Bush is implying: That I am sad, and therefore I want open-ended revenge and I will call this reflex “patriotism” to make it sound better than what it is.
Just when you think Bush can’t stoop lower in exploiting tragedy for his own ends …
Besides, we in Massachusetts already have a ‘Patriot’s Day’.
Follow Me Here... 