A Day to Thank Our Government
So it’s 9/11, again, and it’s like the most painful thing EVER to admit this, but back when I was a winger I actually thought the ONLY thing we were supposed to do on 9/11 was remember all the people who died and stuff.
But now that I’m a leftie, I realize that 9/11 is much, much more, and quite frankly it makes the day easier to handle.
Because, when you think about it, we are so much stronger as a nation after 9/11 than we were before.
Take air travel, for example. Before 9/11, anybody could just skip up to any commercial airplane and walk right on, without even showing ID or having their luggage opened and checked or getting a patdown or ANYTHING.
People probably brought bombs onto airplanes all the time, and the only reason they didn’t detonate them mid-flight is that back then they could also buy cocktails and hot meals and even pay with cash if they wanted, and if they squinted they’s eyes and ignored the poking elbows of the person in the middle seat they could even almost pretend that they was flying first class and the attendants were waiting on them cheerfully and would soon bring them an ice cream sundae.
So they’d be like, I’m not really in the mood to blow up this plane, maybe next flight.
Then came 9/11, and our government realized how DANGEROUS we all are, and put procedures in place to make darn sure we wouldn’t forget it.
They created a whole new government agency, the TSA, staffed with excellent civil servants who have only our best interests at heart, and came up with all kinds of wonderful new ideas.
Like, now we have to take off our shoes, and turn on our e-readers to prove they aren’t bombs, and surrender our water bottles and hand cream, etc. etc. etc. Making us much much MUCH much much much much more safer than before. Like, infinitely safer.
It almost makes me terrified to think about it—how much safer we are today, which means that before the TSA we were really NOT safe, and could have all gone down in a flaming ball of fire every time we took a flight.
Oh, and also: they installed all those state-of-the-art whole body scanning machines, which were dirt cheap, because what company would get into the body scanning business if it wasn’t patriotic?
Most likely they practically gave those machines away.
And the TSA has promised to never look at the scans to see what we look like inside our clothes, because that would be prurient and they are extremely professional, as you’d expect. Also—might as well get this out of the way—the scanners always find every single weapon ever time, plus there is zero health risk from being zapped by their beams. I’m pretty sure there’s stuff about that on the Internet that is misinformation, so beware!
The scanners are amazing, if you think about it. Like, they can see us naked, even when we have clothes on. Did you have any idea we’d have that kind of safety in our country? I love technology!
Plus—get this—it doesn’t stop with air travel. The government also realized how dangerous we are even when we are NOT flying.
I mean, it’s awful to think about, but there really are terrorists in our midst, and despite what the racists would have you believe, there are a LOT of them who look just like you and me. We probably pass them on the street all the time and don’t even know.
Which is why the government decided, rightly so, that the best thing would be to keep a close eye on every single one of us 24/7.
Sadly, they aren’t quite able to do that yet, but believe you me, they are making tremendous progress, and before you know it they’ll get there.
Like, they will scan our car license plate numbers and track where we drive, to make sure we aren’t meeting with other terrorists to plot things, and they’ll use facial recognition technology to see where we shop, and tie that to our credit card data to see if we buy anything we can use to make bombs or something, and eventually they’ll be able to stop us from even BUYING bomb-making materials in the first place, so you can stop worrying about whether your winger neighbors are up to no good.
Because the government is ON it.
Oh, and also, we’ve all become more patriotic since 9/11. Which is truly a blessing. Partly because this new spying they’re doing was made legal by a law called the Patriot Act, and (obviously) if we have something called “Patriot Act” on the books, we all automatically become more patriotic.
It’s like an automatic upgrade from Microsoft: they installed a new, more patriotic operating system, and just like that. Boom. Patriotism 2.0, and we didn’t even have to DO anything.
And since we’re more patriotic, we’re also more conscientious about doing our part to weed out the non-patriotic citizens among us, which everyone knows is fundamental to a modern functioning society.
Like, remember after January 6? How the government put out photographs of the insurrectionists, and the good citizens of our country all immediately all came together, got online, and scoured the photos to see if they recognized anybody? And if they did, they called the government to turn them in?
I mean, that was not only patriotic, it probably saved us untold taxpayer dollars! Think about it: it made the government’s job easier, tracking down all those nasty people!
So if you want to take a moment and remember the ones who died that day, go ahead. I won’t judge. It’s actually kind of nice of you, to do that.
But maybe also take a moment to reflect on how much we have to be thankful for, too. We’re a better place than we were back then—and we have thousands of pulverized Americans to thank for it.