Here is the disconnect.
They hold the ceremony.
They say the names.
They post “never forget.”
Then they honor people and ideas that spit on what that day meant.
Gad Saad calls this suicidal empathy — caring so hard in the wrong direction that you hurt your own country. Soft gratitude. Feelings for the preferred group first. The country second, if at all.
Drop the polite filter. Look at what they did. Say the names.
The pen — Zohran Mamdani / Ramzi Kassem
September 4, 2026. City Hall. One week before the 25th anniversary.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani signs orders for a Day of Remembrance and for better emergency prep. The words sound American. Remembrance. Security. Service.
Then he gives the ceremonial pen to Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and tells her to pass it.
She passes it to his top lawyer, Ramzi Kassem.
Kassem is not some random aide. He was a Guantánamo defense lawyer for Ahmed al-Darbi — an al-Qaeda man who pleaded guilty in the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker after 9/11. Al-Darbi’s sister was married to Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the hijackers on the plane that hit the Pentagon.
City Hall says Kassem got the pen because he wrote the orders. Fine. That makes it worse. The lawyer who defended that network writes your Remembrance papers — then gets the pen on camera.
Pretty words on paper.
Ugly meaning in the handoff.
Dennis Warchola — his brother Michael, Ladder 5, died in the North Tower — said what families thought. Council Members Joann Ariola and Vicki Paladino called it an insult. City Hall called it “duties.”
The soft filter says: everyone gets a lawyer, don’t be bigoted. The plain sentence says: in the week of the anniversary, the Remembrance pen went to the lawyer tied to that world — and you’re told to clap.
That is the disconnect.
American talk as costume.
The city as a stage.
“Some people did something” — Ilhan Omar
March 23, 2019. CAIR dinner. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota:
“CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”
The soft filter: she meant civil rights; CAIR started in 1994; Trump clipped the video; context.
Put the whole sentence back. Still hear it.
Almost 3,000 murdered Americans become “some people did something.” Then she moves on to her real point: our rights under pressure.
A Member of Congress from Minnesota shrugged at the worst attack on this country in our lifetime — then talked about grievance.
That is not honoring the dead.
That is using the dead as a doorway to a speech about yourself.
“America deserved 9/11” — Hasan Piker
August 2019. Big left-wing streamer Hasan Piker:
“America deserved 9/11, dude. Fuck it, I’m saying it… We totally brought it on ourselves.”
Later he said the words were bad, called it satire, said he meant “America” not “Americans,” went back to blowback talk.
The soft filter: he clarified; foreign policy; don’t share the clip.
The plain sentence is the one he said when he wasn’t careful: deserved.
Same minority from my last post — now with a huge audience and invites from Democratic campaigns.
The pathway — Abdul El-Sayed
Michigan Senate Democrat Abdul El-Sayed campaigned with Piker. Asked about “deserved,” he called it dumb, said Piker took it back, and still talked about giving Piker’s millions of followers a “pathway” into his campaign.
On the 25th anniversary he put out cleaner talk — terror, murdered civilians, attack on the idea of America — after years of using the date to talk more about Muslim civilians killed in the wars that followed.
See the play: stand near the “deserved” crowd, soft-walk the clip, keep the voters, clean up the anniversary post when you need to look normal.
That is not loyalty.
That is politics.
“Inevitable” — Melat Kiros
Colorado Democrat Melat Kiros beat a sitting Democrat in a primary. She told 9News 9/11 was “inevitable” because America “destabilized” the Middle East and people decided more violence was the only answer. She used the same “inevitable” line for October 7.
Inevitable is a soft word for deserved. The killers shrink. America grows until murder sounds like weather.
Death to America — Tlaib, Pressley, Porter, Ocasio-Cortez
April 2024. Dearborn. A rally in Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s district. Chants: “Death to America.” “Death to Israel.”
A reporter asks Tlaib, over and over, if she condemns “Death to America.”
She will not say it. “I do not talk to Fox News.” Then: racist tropes. Islamophobia. Anything but a clear no to death for her own country.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley got in a car and did not answer. Rep. Katie Porter would not take the question. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she hadn’t seen the reports and would check. The clear condemnation did not show up.
These people took an oath. “Death to America” is not hard English. They stay quiet because saying it out loud costs them their base.
That is soft gratitude with a badge: endless care for the chant’s feelings, almost none for the country on the paycheck.
Remembrance that moves the dead off center
Watch anniversary posts from this crowd. Start with the 3,000. Then jump to hundreds of thousands dead in the wars. Then millions displaced. Soon the day is not about what was done to us. It is about what we did next — and America is back in the dock.
Mamdani’s 2023 post did that shape: mourn New Yorkers, then say the dying “hasn’t stopped,” then count the foreign dead, then “a better world.”
Same move as Ward Churchill, nicer clothes.
Same move as Susan Sontag, with staff.
Deserved. Inevitable. Blowback. Some people did something. Same family.
Park51
2010: fight over an Islamic center near Ground Zero. Critics said the spot was a wound. Soft media said bigotry. Years later the same fight returns as: how dare you question who stands at the ceremony.
Plain talk: the issue was never “can Muslims mourn.” Loyal Muslim Americans do. The issue was whether 9/11 stays a hard moral line — or becomes a feelings meeting where the murdered wait their turn.
The stack — say it straight
Wrong-aimed empathy kills the host. This politics runs on it. The names:
- Mamdani / Kassem — Remembrance pen to the wrong hand
- Omar — “some people did something”
- Piker — “America deserved 9/11”
- El-Sayed — keep Piker’s crowd, clean the anniversary later
- Kiros — 9/11 was “inevitable”
- Tlaib / Pressley / Porter / Ocasio-Cortez — will not clearly condemn “Death to America”
- Anniversary posts that slide the dead off center and put America on trial
- Fights that treat Ground Zero like a branding problem
Each one has a soft excuse alone. Together they keep the holiday and change what it means.
Remember the three A’s.
Accountability: the hijackers did the murder. A lawyer can take a client. A mayor can hire staff. A streamer can rant. A candidate can chase votes. None of that makes the Remembrance pen a prize — or turns “Death to America” into a fight about cable news.
Assimilation: you don’t run New York, or sit in Congress, while treating 9/11 and anti-American chants like base management.
Allegiance: nice words are not loyalty. Loyalty is who gets the honor when the camera is on — and whether you can say no to “Death to America” without a script.
Next
This cut is power and the microphone. Names on the page.
Next, one at a time:
- Academic
- Social and popular culture
- Media
- Immigration
Lip service is not allegiance.
A proclamation is not a spine.
The pen showed who they honored.
The silence on “Death to America” showed the rest.
It starts in the spine, not on your knees.
LIVE GRATEFUL 🇺🇸
– A Grateful Immigrant
Grateful Immigrant 