Don’t let your patriotism blind you to what’s been happening the past decade; things have gotten pretty out of control.

September 11th is a perfect example, as our country has put it on a pedestal in the ultimate act of martyrdom on the world stage. Why commemorate it? It’s obvious our nation hasn’t learned the lesson it was intended to gain from this tragedy. To those who have family who died in the attacks, clearly this should be a day of mourning, but nothing more.

There aren’t words for how I feel when I see this event misinterpreted and misused on a yearly basis. 9/11 has become more than a day or a tragedy (a rather small one in historical terms, I might add) in our nation. It has been turned into a tool politicians use to manipulate the public.

Do you need to drum up some quick patriotism to rally for yet more “intervention” in a foreign land we have no business being in? 9/11 might be able to help.

Want to make your constituents think you have any humanity left? By all means, pay respect to those who died among the Towers, but only if you have those cameras rolling.

It’s our leaders’ senseless selfishness that killed nearly three thousand people that day, their senseless selfishness that still refuses to understand the lesson that was presented that day.

Why can’t we learn? The sucker punch that was 9/11 was supposed to teach us that meddling in other regions uninvited is wrong, and that our arrogance to believe that we are destined to be the world’s police is unfounded.

Still, here we stand, twelve years later and trillions of dollars further in the hole, none the wiser and pushing for involvement abroad yet again.

Truly, our government is the most stubborn of pupils.

It’s an insult to history that we repeat our same thoughtless policies and are aghast when it blows up in our faces. Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results; it’s some surprise then that those in Washington haven’t been committed yet.

It’s an insult to us citizens that politicians on both sides of the aisle continue to pass the torch of idiocy and war between each other, which basically tells us that they don’t care what we think. They use 9/11 and Islam as scapegoats to justify military action, then they use the “war” they created to justify spying on every citizen in the country; all while having their wallets padded for being good boys for the defense industry.

Finally, this is the biggest insult to the families of the victims of 9/11. They don’t deserve to have the source of their grief displayed and continually misused for violence and political gain. Mourning is all this day should have ever been about; not sensationalism of terrorism, not commemoration of our government’s failing of Foreign Policy School for the umpteenth time, not anything else. Let it be.

Sean Kennedy is a freshman with no declared major who enjoys taking trips to Kokomo and making subtle Beach Boys references. Letters and feedback can be sent to letters@collegian.com or @seanskenn on Twitter.