The Sky is Falling !!!

Okay, so the 22 Minutes piece isn't exactly high art, but you get the point perhaps.  Just fourteen years ago, we watched terrorists crash jet-airliners into and bring down skyscrapers in Manhattan, with thousands dead.  Watched people throwing themselves from windows to escape the smoke & flames.  It hurt.  It shocked.  It scarred us.  And we reacted in panic, rushing through new security-powers, turning ourselves into cattle in our airports, starting two wars, one of which hasn't quite ended even today, and the other of which helped birth ISIS.

We endured those attacks, far greater and more traumatic than those in Paris, and some of us at least, had mind to later regret our initial hasty rush to act, our temptation to give in to the demands of politicians who promised to keep us safe.  Our stupid willingness to give the terrorists exactly what they fucking wanted.  To be terrified into undermining that which makes Western society great, and waging what they could easily portray as a war on the Muslim world.

And now here we are again, having seemingly learned nothing in the years since.  We have even worse politicians calling for more extreme action, demanding that we surrender what remains of our civil liberties in the name of security.  We have the same incessant drumbeat for MOAR WAR.  And we have an even more lunatic bunch of fanatical crazies trying to goad us into the clash of civilisations they so desperately desire.

We overreacted then, and we're on the verge of overreacting now.  Calm the fuck down people, for all our sakes.