I don’t think I can even compare these two things. “Depressed” is a weird word to use about 9/11. It was all so wrong that I don’t think I completely processed what had happened emotionally for at least a year. I think *ivylass put it so well, it’s like BC and AD.
If you had asked me cold if I was depressed about the election, I probably would have said yes. However, the question of “which was more depressing, 9/11 or the election?” – my response is “what election?”
Those are two very different questions. I was more depressed as an immediate response to 9/11. There were feelings of vulnerability that I haven’t had since Kennedy was in office. But when the country pulled together and the flags went up, I was comforted. When that unity was manipulated and wasted and ultimately divided our country, I was depressed again. It is totally impossible to separate that manipulation and wasting and dividing from the election itself. It is a continuum.
Three years from now, I think that our country will be in a much more frightening and depressing state for those who love liberty, diversity and peace and for those who understand and value civil rights than it was three years ago.
Depends on what you mean by “depression”. For a few days after 9/11, I did my part to decrease the growth of the economy by remaining, shocked, in my home watching the TV, no interest in anything else, mind numb. That’s closer to “clinical depression” than what I felt on the election (altho certainly not clinical depression, since it had a exogenous cause and only lasted for a few days.)
Whereas after the election I felt a lot more “teen angst”… feelings of uselessness and random flashes of anger.
Neither of these feelings were strong enough to be world shattering, but nonetheless they held important differences.
Neither event depressed me. Right after 9/11, the feeling was more of apprehension and uncertainty. Some sadness too for everyone who was personally affected by the tragedy. The resilience of the New Yorkers was also quite uplifting. I visited Ground Zero after 9/11 and the feeling was overwhelmingly sobering.
Also no depression after the recent election. Hey, it’s just an election and there’s still an opposition party. Besides, no one stays in power indefinitely. Politics is filled with ups and downs. Actually, if anything, what I’m feeling is relief, not depression. I got so tired of each side completely demonizing the other side. Of course, right after Nov 2, each side makes nice. :rolleyes:
9/11, without question.
I was an absolute wreck for quite some time afterward, and still haven’t been able to bring myself to visit ground zero.
The election, while a terrible event, just kind of made me think “Fucking flyover-country morons. Oh well…”. I console myself with a little-considered fact – local elections have a much greater impact on a person’s day-to-day life than presidential elections ever can. And things are pretty good, locally.
You know, on the day of the terrorist attacks I wasn’t feeling depressed as much as sick. My stomach and head hurt physically, that much I remember very well. But as for the several weeks after that, they were actually a good time for several reasons. The massive outpouring of support and condolence from all across the civilized world, even from countries not well-disposed towards the United States, was an afirmation of our species’ dedication to living together peacefully. At the same time the sympathy and charitable contributions from Americans to the vicitms was a mass repudiation of the philosophy that we can all live selfishly and without regard for our fellow people. And lastly it led to the fall of the Afghan Taliban, an event which should have by any means brought as much joy as the fall of the Nazi and Soviet regimes.
The election, on the other hand, has not had and will not have any positive effects whatsoever. The result of the election is a vindication of the Republican strategy, which was to continuously launch the most vile, aggressive, and slanderous attacks imaginable, to totally avoid taking responsibility for any mistake no matter how large or small, and if all else fails then bash gay people. Now every politician, regardless of which party they belong to, knows that if they want to win they have to do exactly that. And that can’t have any positive consequences for anyone (except maybe Republican politicians), and that’s depressing.
I wasn’t depressed by 9/11, just pissed off.
And for the election…not depressed, just kind of vaguely dissatisfied. (But, in all fairness, I would have felt vaguely dissatisfied if Kerry won, too.)
OTOH, I was unfazed enough on 9/11 that I went home and took my regular afternoon nap. So it must not have been that bad.
Seeing something about 9/11 can still make me cry sometimes, and I’m not a very easy cryer. I was so upset that day, and I’ll always remember everything about it. And I didn’t go to work the day after, because I just felt too emotional.
I went to work the day after the election, but I’m still depressed and bitter. And I feel far more hopeless and pessimistic about the future than I did after 9/11. All I could think after the election was that I was glad I don’t have any children.
A sudden disaster, I can cope with and heal from, but a slow erosion of everything I value with no end in sight and feeling like a stranger and a second class citizen in my own country is pretty unbearable.
Neither.
I was saddened(not depressed) by 9/11 and I am really happy about the election.
9/11 made me want to dive under my bed.
The election made me want to crawl under my bed.
September 11th shocked and horrified me. It didn’t register with me as an act of hatred, but an act of pure violence. I believed that it was a call to action, that despite the horror and the sheer inhumanity of the death toll, that we could rise to defeat it. We could find the enemy and put an end to it once and for all.
The election just confirmed for me that after years of fighting, after years of death and hatred, that no one really has the answer. That we’re all just blindly fighting against an unseen enemy of hatred and fear and mistrust, and we’re all just setting up targets to knock them down, hoping that this next one will solve everything. We’re no closer to finding what we need, no closer to realizing how all of us can live on this planet together in peace.
So yeah, the election was more depressing, in that it just confirmed the overall feeling of dismay. After 9/11, it was “we have an enemy.” Now it’s just, “we have seen the enemy, and it is us.”
More than 1000 so far, and creeping up…
Anyone who has been an SDMB member for more than 5 minutes knows that I am NO fan of “Dubya” Bush. His winning the 2004 election made me depressed, angry and disgusted. However, to be honest, the events of Sept 11, 2001 made me feel all these emotions to a much greater degree.
Maybe I am using this as another avenue to bash “Dubya” but ever since Sept 11, 2001, what has Bush Jr. said or done to lift the American spirit? Franklin Roosevelt when first taking office in the midst of the Great Depression stated, “this great nation will endure as it has endured”. And after the attack on Pearl Harbor stated it was “a day which will live in infamy” but then went on to say we had a “rendezvous with destiny”.
No need to restate all of John F Kennedy’s famous quotes so I’ll just remind everyone of what he said when the Berlin Wall was constructed. He flew to Berlin and besides stating “Ich bein ein Berliner”, what stands out in my mind was - “Some people say communism isn’t so bad. I say - let them come to Berlin !!”
And about twenty years later, Ronald Reagan said “Mr Gorbachev, tear down that wall”.
George “Dubya” Bush was President during the worst attack on American soil. What did he say or do that was so inspirational that made us feel like working together? Oh sure we proudly flew the flag, volunteered our time, donated blood, gave money and so on. But I felt none of this was initiated by Bush’s actions or speeches. Is there anything that Bush said or did that brought you out of the horror of that day? Is there anything that Bush said that you can recall that really “turned things around for you”?
9/11.
I was, of course, happy about the election, so this poll isn’t so useful with me, except to cement some notions I had about others’ priorities and reactions.
I think that’s a pretty simplistic distortion of what people have said in this thread. Nobody is questioning the horror of 9/11. However, some of us are emotionally sophisticated enough to distinguish between depression and other emotions.
I was angry, scared and sad on 9/11. The attacks were a vivid demostration of terrorists’ willingness to use horrific violence in furtherence of our cause. I was angry because we’d been unfairly and viciously attacked, scared that it might happen again and sad for the victims and their families.
But I wasn’t really depressed. Depression is the loss of hope for the future. In a way, I was encouraged by the reaction to 9/11. It brought our country and the civilized world together. This unity gave me hope that we could overcome the atrocity the terrorists had committed.
The election, on the other hand, has shaken my hope for the future of this country. I am depressed because the election demonstrated how the electorate may be cynically manipulated to ignore the most damning facts and pressing issues if an emotional enough flag is waved in front of them. I am depressed because I believe the Bush administration will continue to erode our civil liberties, economic strength and world prestige. I am depressed that most of our voters either could not see this or want things this way.
Two things. If the question was “which evoked stronger emotions?” everyone would answer 9/11, I’m pretty sure. “Depressed” is, as many have pointed out, a bad word to describe 9/11. If I had lost friends or family, or if I had an emotional connection to the buildings, I would have been depressed. I did not. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t frightened, absolutely glued to the TV for a week afterwards, that it didn’t change my life and my outlook irrevocably.
The second thing is that the election was two weeks ago. 9/11 was three years ago. People are still allowed to be in shock at how badly the election turned out for them. One of the things about feeling depressed is that it prevents you from having meaningful perspective. It is like expecting someone who is mourning a loss to pop up and say “Well, at least this isn’t as bad as last time someone died…”
Asking the same question in three years will give vastly different results, I suspect. 9/11 will still be a somewhat unhealable scar, much like the death of a loved one. Depending on the next set of elections, this election will be viewed by liberals as a) a time when they came to realize that they were a minority viewpoint and should work as such (thus diminishing hopes for electoral success and making 2006 losses easier to bear) or b) the last time a radical conservative agenda was used to bamboozle the nation (after winning stunning victories).
9/11.
The election is like a cold. I’ll get over it. Actually, I am over it.
9/11 is like this tumor in my psyche that’s always there. Most of the time it’s dormant, in the background, but every once in a while something triggers it and it flares up. I don’t know how else to put it.
9/11 makes me weep in darkened movie theaters. The election doesn’t.
9/11 was far worse.
I’m allready over the election, I’m not sure if anyone will really ever be over the 9/11 attacks.
That said there is a factor that the ellection showed ‘we’ are mostly homophobic, and or bigotted. Whilst 9/11 only reflected badly on terrorists. I can see how someone gay in an anti-gay state could well be much more personally effected by learning the majority of people in their state don’t care about his/her civil rights.