19 years ago, during my teenaged and young adult angst, I was sleeping in my apartment a block away from the county jail. I worked graveyards and partied a lot. My brother woke me up with a phone call and told me to turn on the news. I was reluctant but he told me about the attack on the trade towers. I turned on the news some hours after the planes had hit both towers. Every channel was covering the attack nonstop. I watched in shock and anger for about an hour. Then I couldn't contain myself. I felt disgusted, infuriated, depressed, and anxious all at once. I paced around the apartment cursing and ranting about government, politics, history, economics, and the human condition. I knew it would be the excuse politicians would use to remove more of our civil liberties that have always hung by a thread.
The Patriot Act was a massive document that they never bothered to even read and passed within 45 days of 9/11, with only one member voting against it. I tried reading that 342 paged monstrosity. I barely made it through a quarter of it. I skipped to sections that removed rights and placed new policies. There were far too many. It was mortifying. This piece of shit allowed the NSA to monitor any and all US citizens without consent or knowledge, a blatant violation of privacy, among many other things. That's what Edward Snowden blew the whistle on and he is still considered a traitor to this day. The NSA kept surveillance on US citizens until 2015. The measure passed in The Patriot Act were supposed to expire 4 years after it was signed into law. Yet, every single time it's supposed to expire, Congress votes to extend it. In fact, they just did again in November of 2019.
There are teens becoming voting adults this year who have never known life outside of this repressive nightmare.
We created these terrorists. The US government and US military are worldwide terrorist organizations. Even if they are not ISIS, our military industrial complex made them multiply like Hydra operatives. We trained them back in the 80's and 90's. We've supplied them with weapons for decades. We've turned them into repeat customers. Even while acknowledging that they disagree with us fundamentally and are prone to aggressive and horrific tactics.
Never forget.
Tell your representatives and congressional leaders that you do not support their incompetence and gross inconsideration. Tell them they must stop violating our civil liberties and the constitution. Otherwise, history keeps repeating.
"Those who would sacrifice a little liberty for security would lose both and deserve neither." -Benjamin Franklin
"A government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take away everything you have... history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases." -Thomas Jefferson