How dare you say anything honest about the origins of 9/11!

This isn’t in my usual style to write a serious rant where my ‘truthiness’ isn’t slathered with a thick layer of disdain and sarcasm. But here goes:

I am really fed up with the idea that if you discuss the origins of 9/11, you are somehow a coward, not a patriot, not an American, a terrorist sympathizer, or somewhere else between bottom feeding scum and social pariah who thinks too much for one’s own good. I’ll be honest, I’ve never been the biggest fan of the Ron Paul Phenomena and I didn’t watch the majority of the Republican debate. In fact, I only was able to watch the part of the debate with the most significance — where Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani exchange words over the origins of (Watch the exchange and read a more extensive briefing of the exchange at the Nation).

Now, the basis of the argument that occurred is the following: Ron Paul had the fucking audacity to say that September 11th and the rising Islamic/Jihadist movement may have some origins in America’s less than stellar record in the Middle East. Never mind that the 9/11 Commission reported on the blowback from American involvement in the Middle East as a contributing factor and that anyone with a functioning frontal lobe could connect the dots between September 11th, and say, a couple century’s worth of outside interference by the West. After Paul stated the case between these connections, Giuliani quickly stepped in and said in so many words, you are one anti-American fuck and twisted Ron Paul’s words around to make it seem like he insinuated we deserved the attack. And with that, a crowd of overweight arm-chair bullies started hooting and hollering at the South Carolina Republican Debate.

All I could think about when I watched this was these are the people were interested enough in politics to attend a debate and this is their appropriate level of discourse. All that has to be done or said is September 11th and suddenly everyone feels very coy and shy about their beliefs. The sacred cow is also the most profitable one: I never thought Rudy “September 1tth” Giuliani could win the nomination simply by talking about September 11th until my mind explodes, but it’s seemingly working. Despite being a social liberal, Rudy is pretty much coasting through the polls as the Republican front runner because his speeches are jingo games of ‘terrorism’, ‘9/11?, ‘jihadists’, and ‘Islamo-Fascists’. And sadly enough, people eat this shit up. Well, not quite people, but Republicans, but my sense is this would play out in a similar method in the general election as well.

Anyway, I’ve digressed. My point being is that September 11th was not an event in which upon reflection should cause us to curl into a ball and cry for Rudy Giuliani or George Bush to save us. I’m not saying that America deserved to be attacked by a bunch of crazed religious zealots or that we brought this upon ourselves. I am saying that September 11th should have woken us up to the fact that America’s foreign policy has been seriously misguided since the start of the Cold War. We’d do a tremendous favor to ourselves if we realized the cost of an invasive, military-dependent foreign policy bent on serving our short term interests.

The First Thing I Saw On The Way To Work

It was the Spring of 2005 and having just graduated from college, I was doing my first work abroad as an intern with the US State Department. A Romanian journalist was recently beheaded in Iraq, and worse, a US marine had just killed a Romanian pop star by bull-dozing his car while driving drunk. I was on my way to my first day of work and had to take the subway to the embassy. Much to my bemusement, this was the subway car that stopped directly in front of me on the underground platform:

To The Woman Cheering During Game 4 By The Mic

Listen, I know you like the Cavaliers a lot. A lot a lot. But that is no way to cheer. Simply put, it sounded like you were having an autistic orgasm 3 feet from Jon Barry. And it creeped me out to have to listen to it for the whole fourth quarter.

par for the course

due to an unwavering inability to poop out anything worthwhile, i am on blog hiatus until morning. scat humor to closely follow.

An All To Candid Love Letter to Jessica Valenti

Dear Jessica,

This has been a long time coming. I saw you on the Colbert show and thought it is finally time to act. I’ve actually been a fan for a long time — I admire your work and despite smear campaigns that would say otherwise, we love women. I am going to pick up your book after I finish reading the latest free-market critique, because I know you too have chosen prose before hos. I know this may seem a bit transparent and opportunist, but this is not a flaccid effort: I need you. Big time.

Irrelevant factoids about me that you should consider while deciding how many of my offspring you want to carry:

– I am white, middle-upper class male, and full of guilt for all of the previously named attributes. I’m sure I’ve done plenty things off-handedly that have reinforced the pervasive socio-economic, racist, patriarchal institutions that continue to make things so rotten. I’m plenty sorry and I occasionally throw handfuls of coinage towards homeless and colored people before I go off screaming in the other direction. But this is great for you, because you can take advantage of me to no ends! I bet you have all sorts of dark hair clogging your drains, which I am happy to clean. I’ll even clean your toilet with my toothbrush and hell, I’ll even use it afterwards, because I’m a closet freak.

– I’ve read many comments on your site and others referring to the fact that girls have to get ‘dolled up’ and wear clothes of questionable comfort. To that, I’d say I’d agree mildly, but have you ever tried to wear a full men’s suit in the summer, especially in somewhere humid like Washington DC? Because if you do, your cooch will be literally riddled with sweat. It’s terrible. This is why I want to be the first guy to wear a business skirt to work, and if I ever get the chance, to Capitol Hill. I’m also not going to wear underwear, because I imagine that the majority of the comfort derived from skirts is the fact that air is constantly going up ‘there’. Also, how do you move laterally with a skirt?

– A full-blown erection is a part of my gym get-up. Lots of things are negotiable in my life; this is not one of them. I’m sorry, but nothing feels better than getting spotted at the gym when you’re sporting major wood. Plus, you meet lots of new people this way.

So how about it Jessica? I’ve laid it all out on the line for you.

Love and curtsies,
Alec

PS. If you ever do a piece on how even impartial fame brings out the crazies, can you make me the centerpiece??