pResident declairs 9/11 "Patriot Day"?!

[gully]

:eyes:

Talk about capitalizing on the death of the 911 victims.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/09/20030904-7.html

:puke:

[jmm]

1. Hallmark was selling "Patriot Day" cards last year.

I'm not sure if they did this year, because I haven't been in one of their stores since then.

[ScotTissue]

2. Thing is, he didn't need to

Thing is, the pResident didn't need to "declare" September 11th a holy day. It already is: sanctified by the violence of that Horrible Bullshit which occurred two years and a day ago. No one is ever going to forget that.

FDR didn't--I don't think--declare December 7th anything: except "a day that will live in infamy." And a day that lives in infamy it is and remains, again because of Horrible Bullshit that several generations from now will be remembered.

Remembered a lot more than the fact that anyone ever called Sept. 11 "Patriot Day." And I say that as an unapologetic patriot.

Of course, perhaps Congress or FDR did in fact label 12/7 something and it doesn't endure in our collective memory. Wouldn't surprise me since politicians of all types do tend to memorialize things in a smarmy and patronizing manner.

[qb]

3. Might not be such a good idea

They've completely sullied the word "patriot" with AssKKKroft's un-American pet project.

[sybylla]

4. Holidays should inspire hope and happiness

None of our current holidays recognize the dark events of our past. They honor people (vets, presidents, parents), the end of wars, the birth of our nation and our flag.

Seems to me, making 9/11 a holiday only diminishes the unspeakable and keeps us in a state of pereptual mourning, which is never good.

We never made holidays out of the challenger disaster, Pearl Harbor, nor the day Kennedy was assinated. And yet we all still manage to remember these events and keep in our collective hearts sympathy for the pain and suffering these events caused. Now forty years out, can you imagine what a JFK Assination day would be like? Would feel like?

Sounds pretty rediculous, doesn't it?

And now we will perpetually celebrate a holiday in which we will forever mourn, have moments of silence, cheapen with patronizing political drama, and relive a horrible day named after people who were no more "patriots" in the real sense of the word than you or I were that day. They just happened to be in the WTC, in the Pentagon and on airplanes while Bush was president.

On edit: perhaps a more fitting Patriot's Day would be September 17, the day our Constitution was signed by the patriots who founded a new nation.