Indiana Jones in Reverse

Remember after 9/11, when all kinds of bloggers posted that clip from Raiders of the Lost Ark?

You know: The one in which, bored with an Arab swordsman’s show-offy moves, Jones pulls out his pistol and shoots him dead?

Seeing all those posts really cheered me up back then.

“Wow,” I thought. “America is gonna go kick some ass!”

And then those same bloggers and pundits — many of whom I respect mightily — kept repeating the words of some Iraqi guy during the invasion, who was gleefully shouting, “Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!”

Those bloggers and pundits were certain that this meant millions of Muslims had been dying (literally) for the good guys to rescue them.

They wanted the same things we wanted. George Bush said so in his Second Inaugural.

I wanted to believe. But I wasn’t so sure.

Any more than I was as certain as these bloggers that the future lay in the latest cool gadgets, and how cameras and computers were getting cheaper all the time, and Bush just got reelected and hey, Who’s going to the Rose Bowl this year?

Maybe because I’m Canadian.

Maybe because I’m a girl.

Maybe because I was raised Catholic.

Maybe because I’m naturally contrarian.

For whatever reason, all this boyish bluster, I thought, didn’t bode well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46pQwwF8uww

I’d heard it before.

I had relatives who’d grumble in their angriest voices, “If anybody ever laid a hand on MY kid…”

But one of them did lay a hand on me.

And they did absolutely squat.

That’s why I know better, or should.

Anyway, this week, we all know what happened.

I can’t even type the words right now.

(Then again, I still can’t watch TV shows and movies about 9/11, so.)

I went to the 10th anniversary ceremonies for 9/11 in New York City, though.

I’ve written before that nobody in that city seemed that busted up about what happened.

Some even dared to mock the proceedings. I went after them. I was alone.

“If all these cops weren’t here,” a kind young man assured me, pointing to the “Truthers” and “God Hates Fags” types in our midst, “We’d all beat them up.”

I knew he was lying.

And that’s when I really started to panic. I stood there crying and shaking like an idiot, across the street from the 9/11 Museum pop up gift shop, with its red, white and blue everything for sale.

Everything I’d thought, not just in the previous ten years, but for most of my life, was a lie.

What about all those tough New Yorkers of song and story, who wouldn’t let anyone attack their damn town and get away with it.

Humphrey Bogart had lied to me.

How could that be?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTsg9i6lvqU

It is almost 15 years after 9/11, and Muslims are still trying to kill us.

And we are still letting them move to the West, which is a little like hiding Nazis in your attic during WWII.

On my 50th birthday, I’d sworn off blogging any more about Islam and Muslims because I’d been doing it every damn day for years and I couldn’t take it any more.

Well, that was a fun six month vacation.

Now I have to start doing it again.

So I’m one of those people (funny, lots of them are Canadian, too) who have HAD IT UP TO HERE with all this #JeSuisCharlie b.s.

Thanks for coming out, you media jerks. A lot too late.

You too, you civilians.

Singing “The Marseilles” outside the French Embassy in Toronto the other night, just like in Casablanca, except it was 20 below.

I was there, even though “It’s not particularly my beloved Paris…”

But I remember you people:

You’re the same ones who went to candlelight vigils on 9/11, with your little “We are all Americans now!” signs.

That lasted, what? Two weeks?

The blood was still on the floors and the walls in Paris the other day when — just like on 9/11 — even allegedly intelligent, “on my side” people started tweeting their apologetics and nuance.

I answered them here:

“The SS is banging on your door, and you’re going, “Well, the Treaty of Versailles was pretty bad…”

You know that Westernized Muslim kid of your dreams?

Or maybe you even see him on the subway or the bus.

The one who loves “dance, photography, drawing and super cars”?

Who drinks Red Bull and listens to hip hop and dresses just like your son?

He likes to photograph trees and flowers.

That’s him, tweeting at the top.

Yep, same kid.

Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!

And here’s Mark Steyn, talking with Hugh Hewitt on Thursday:

I think it’s at war with a culture that basically does not have the spirit of liberty and the spirit of intellectual inquiry. So you can come up with the most devastating, witty, trenchant argument, and the other fellow is just going to reach for the scimitar and slice your head off.

Indiana Jones in reverse.

It’s not that “Han didn’t shoot first.”

He didn’t shoot at all.

And the Nazis have the Ark.

Meanwhile, everybody’s taking selfies at the 9/11 memorial.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper just gave a stirring little speech, post Charlie Hebdo, about how “this means war.”

But since 9/11, he’s doubled the Muslim population of Canada. With predictable results.

Me and my husband?

We’ll keep running “Mohammed cartoon” contests and telling the truth on our blogs because it’s too late to stop now anyway.

I have a gun (while I’m still allowed to have one up here, especially if the Mounties read this.)

I like to think I’ll shoot first, but maybe I won’t get the chance.

Maybe I just don’t care.