Today we cats were very grateful that on September 11, we didn't have a loved one on United 93. Not just for the obvious reasons, but because we think a double-fist-pump is probably inappropriate when one arrives for a memorial honoring that doomed flight's valiant dead.
So yes, people are commenting on ths a lot. Also on Benedict Donald's first tweet of the day, which wasn't about the terrorist attacks or the nearly 3,000 people who died — it was about himself, and how victim-y he's feeling about the investigations swirling around him.
People are also sharing the audio of Trump's tasteless observation on TV 17 years ago that — with the destruction of the Twin Towers — he now had the tallest building in Lower Manhattan.
Awful behavior all around. But our attention today was grabbed by something else: Trump's claim in his oddly (for him) subdued speech that the US would "never, ever submit to tyranny."
That line sent us to the good folks at Merriam-Webster. A tyranny, they tell us, is an oppressive power, especially when exerted by a government. It is also a government in which absolute power is vested in a single ruler.
While we don't doubt that it exerted a form of tyranny over the minds of its highjackers, and that Osama bin Laden* was its unquestioned leader, al-Qaeda was not a government. It was and is a terrorist organization. So we must take issue with Trump's use of "tyranny," even though we know he was just parroting Republican talking points and is too stupid and lazy to ever look it up.
One more thing: A "tyranny" sounds like Vladimir Putin's Russia to us. So we'd say that our nation has, under Trump, definitely already submitted. We cats HISS.
*Finally brought to justice by President Obama. Just sayin'.
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