Insanity Wrap needs to know: Where were you on 9/11/2001?
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Answer: We’ve been collecting answers to that question for more than 15 years, and would love you read yours.
Shall we begin?
Spoiler: They Were Seen Again
“I didn’t know if I was going to be seen again.”
Is seen again after being briefly detained & let go. #PortlandRiotspic.twitter.com/FvIarcjCSF
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) September 11, 2020
This is what happens when victim culture is elevated — if that’s the correct word — to martyr culture by progressive thugs with approximately zero knowledge of history beyond “America Bad.”
Insanity Wrap will devote almost all of our energies to today’s 9/11/2001 memories, but we felt the need to post this bit of silliness first for a very serious reason.
Tom Wolfe noted many years before 9/11 that “The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.”
That isn’t entirely true. Today’s progressive street thugs would have been instantly recognizable to the frightened citizens of Weimar Germany, whether they wore brown shirts or red.
There is a fascist movement in this country — or to be more precise, a politically and culturally statist movement.
And it isn’t made up of people who want to cut your taxes and deregulate the economy, who want you to worship freely, who want to lift the crushing restriction imposed for half a year now by petty tyrants, who want to protect your children from indoctrination and sexual predators, and who want you to enjoy the liberty to walk the streets without being harassed (or worse) by preening thugs with a political agenda.
Remembering James Joe Ferguson
Our friend Bruce Carrol published this piece ten years ago today, remembering his friend who was killed along with so many others on Flight 77.
At Dulles International Airport, Joe stood with his group traveling to California and took some last minute photos. He and another colleague were scheduled passengers on American Airlines Flight 77, accompanying three D.C. public school teachers and three students on a National Geographic-sponsored field trip to the Channel Islands off Santa Barbara, Calif. After the photos were taken, they bid farewell to the children’s parents and proceeded to their gate.
At 9:37AM, Joe lost his life at the young age of thirty-nine when terrorists slammed the plane into the side of the Pentagon at 500 mph. A teacher and positive role model to young Americans was taken from the world in an act of sheer violence and viciousness.
Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.
Previously On Insanity Wrap: Trevor Noah’s Improved Gender Reveal Party Is ‘Yes, No, Maybe!’
Where Were You on 9/11?
We were still asleep in Colorado when the second plane hit the Twin Towers in New York City, to be awakened by a phone call from our mother.
“Turn on the TV,” she said with an insistence one wouldn’t think to question.
“What channel?” was our only question.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Before we knew what had happened, we knew in that moment that it was momentous.
There isn’t much of interest to relate about that hourlong phone call, since it was just the two of us watching our respective TVs, 750 miles apart, and not saying much.
Except for the moment when we realized that one of the towers appeared to have… disappeared.
It was hard to tell through all the smoke and dust, but it looked like one of the Twin Towers — those stabby monoliths that had dominated the NYC skyline since before we could remember — was simply… gone.
Skyscrapers don’t just go away, and yet one had. Soon to be followed by its twin.
The worst shock was the one that took longer to intellectualize than the more visceral reaction to seeing the New York City skyline violently rearranged, or our nation’s military headquarters on fire.
It was the realization that 7th-century savagery had reached out from a past we thought we’d long left behind. It reached out with airliners — our own tools of commerce and pleasure — to strike at the heart of civilization’s greatest and most modern achievement: New York City.
We’ve learned much since then, but not enough.
Improbably, something like peace is coming to the better parts of the Middle East, after decades of false starts, false hopes, and even a well-intended occupation that hardly worked out as intended.
We learned on 9/11 that the glue that held America together was still strong. The “blame America first” crowd briefly raised their squeaky little voices to ask “Why do they hate us?” but were quickly shouted down by the Sensible Majority.
We learned just how resilient we are.
What we failed to learn however is just how fragile civilization is, that it requires nurturing, care, and protection lest it fall back into savagery.
In Portland and other places, we no longer have to import jihadis to set fire to our downtowns: There’s enough domestic hate now to do the job locally.
New York City’s mayor is defunding the very police department that was there for the city — there for all of us, really — on 9/11.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s deadly insistence that those infected with COVID-19 be sent to nursing homes to share the air with the most vulnerable killed far more Americans than the 9/11 attackers did.
New York City was the place we all wanted to run to after 9/11, and now even some of its most diehard residents are heading for the exits.
The lesson we need to relearn today — not you, gentle reader, but the country at large — is that the barbarians inside the gates are far more destructive than the ones outside.
The lesson we must remember from 9/11 are that cities can be rebuilt, that barbarians can be pushed back outside the gates, and that it is the most American of activities to build, defend, and when necessary, to rebuild.
Never forget that there’s always hope.
One More Thing…
The greatest first pitch in history 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/6EOMCAKdqP
— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) September 11, 2020
We can’t improve on that. We think that maybe no one could.
That’s a Wrap for today.
Come back Monday, please, for more of our typical antics.
Now Where Were We
Previously On Insanity Wrap: Antifa/BLM Launch ‘Bring Your Daughter to Riot Day’