Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “Thoughts on the Eighth Anniversary of America's Awakening”

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September 11, 2009

Thoughts on the Eighth Anniversary of America's Awakening

Hatched by Dafydd

I've never had anything personally stolen from me.

There's a reason for this: When I walk or sit, I am always conscious of who is around me and what he's doing. My optometrist told me (based on marks on my contact lenses) that I actually sleep with my eyes half open.

I've noticed this: I'm almost never fully asleep. If someone enters the room where I'm "sleeping," my eyes open fully and I observe the person. If I know him or her as a non-threat, I go right back into what passes for sleep to the reptilian eye, and usually I don't even remember waking (others tell me what I do). But if it's a stranger or someone I don't trust, I'm awake immediately... watching.

When I'm out and about, and someone begins giving me the fish-eye, I look him back immediately, staring directly at him. Generally he breaks eye-contact and drifts away. Occasionally it's gotten me into trouble (dominance games I'm uninterested in playing), but generally serves me well.

Why am I telling you this? Because in this way, I am America -- as she should be.

I'm wary but never afraid; I won't back down, but in a fight I move well, left and right, forward and back. I stand by my friends, even if I think they were foolish for picking a fight with some troll who can kick their heinies; I'll double the defenders and see what transpires. I don't take crap from people -- but my usual punishment is to ignore them thenceforth. I'd rather not do damage, but I'm not afraid of it, either.

We were all like this during the first half of the twentieth century and earlier; we began to lose our edge sometime after the Korean War, and we hit our nadir towards the end of Vietnam. We weren't defeated; we just lost our nerve, lost our sense of self, lost our belief in our own decency, goodness, and especially in our traditional American principles. Instead of thinking of ourselves as the defenders of the underdog, we began feeling like the underdog ourselves, in a world where being weak invites not allies but attackers.

Ronald Reagan rekindled the American soul, but the flame didn't survive long after he left office. The bitch-slapping of September 11th, 2001 reawakened us. What happened since?

Some immediately rolled over and went back to sleep. They're now running the government.

Some were awake and vigilant for a while, but then their minds wandered, they drifted, and now they're back somnambulating through life, just as they were on September 10th.

But others have stayed vigilant and awake... I think it's enough of us. More than were awake eight years and a day ago.

We won't be hit the same way again; that's for sure. Yet it's equally sure we'll be hit, hurt, hard yet again by some means we haven't thought of yet.

But because of the vigilant ones, the men and women on the wall, our response will be swifter than after 9/11, with less fum-fahing around, less wheel-spinning. The sleeping giant has had his coffee, and he's not ready to drift totally off to the land of Nod just yet.

Go ahead and be proud to be an American; but that's not the important part. It's much more vital that we all understand that to be American is to be the champion eternal of liberty, individualism, and Capitalism -- and that means we must accept our duty, take up the free man's burden, and not allow the half-awake drones to lull us into Europeanism, the belief that there's always Somebody Else who will protect us from blue meanies and green crescent rolls.

The only person who is always there when you're in trouble -- is you, yourself. Always be ready to become an army of one, to defend you and yours... and odds are you won't have to do, because very few Moloch worshippers, human sacrificers, and cannibals really want to attack an army.

They prefer to go after the sleepwalkers.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 11, 2009, at the time of 8:59 PM