I"m not sure how you quantify such a statement. Sure, there have been genocides since the Holocaust, but it doesn’t mean that the world isn’t more responsive or aware of such things when they happen (or as they could potentially happen). So it is entirely possible that facing the truth of the Holocaust - how ordinary civilized people could commit mass murder - does in fact help prevent future atrocities.
At the very least, it requires us to take bigotry, racism, intolerance, and _______ more seriously. I remember when I saw a Holocaust speaker for the upteenth time and the last thing the she said was, “Don’t be a bully. When you see someone being bullied, stop it.”
Not unpopular with this American. You sound sane, sensible and smart. Sorry that my country has gone insane with spectacle and recreational grief/tragedy porn.
I have turned off all radio and TV. Even NPR was yakking about “the largest terrorist attack in history!” earlier today. There are attacks and there are attacks. I’m pretty sure that somewhere in human history, 3000 people have died quickly due to the evil machinations of other humans. I see no reason to make a fetish of this day.
It would seem that the navel gazing for America is complete: we’d rather wallow (a very good description of what goes on each year at this time) than actually do the work of responding to the challenges posed by 9/11 in proactive ways. Pissing away the good will of the world was not proactive or even smart–thanks Bush et al! Waging war in 2 countries and opening secret prisons and not-so-secret ones was neither proactive or smart, either. Homeland Security is the biggest Gment growth on record-this from the party that crows about starving the Beast and cutting Gment waste. I could go on, but I won’t bother.
As for the claims that disliking the maudlin insanity of this week makes one heartless or lacking in empathy, the claims are both pompous and silly. Why does the 9/11 anniversary make you turn off your brain? You can feel bad for the victims w/o needing to relive the experience. The victims don’t care about your bad feelings: they’re dead. Their families may or may not care; somehow I doubt it, given that the first responders have had to fight for every inch of medical coverage, the families have been denigrated when it suited a political purpose and most of them have worked through their grief as they should: in private and it’s damned hard work. Why don’t we leave them alone, instead of making a public fetish out of their loss?
[QUOTE=Bosstone]
So are we mourning or celebrating?
[/QUOTE]
Dunno…eye of the beholder and all that. Ever been to a Christmas day parade? For a guy who might or might not have lived over 2000 years ago? Least we know that 9/11 actually happened, ehe? Well, I think there as some Truther types who think it was all faked, but most people know it happened anyway.
[QUOTE=Spoke]
Did I mention that the flags are only $20?
[/QUOTE]
Is that more or less than you pay for them on the 4th of July? I wouldn’t know, not having bought one. But since they are putting a gun to your head to get one, could you check the price next time? Just curious.
Don’t think I’ve been to one, but I know they exist. Easter parades too, judging by the musical. Far as I know, there’s never been a Good Friday parade, or an Oklahoma City Bombing parade, or… well, technically I guess there *were *some Holocaust parades, but they mainly took place before and during.
Honest question : assuming that you had no connection with any victim, what makes it painful, and what kind of pain are you feeling? What makes it different from, say, the recent tsunami in Japan or the current famine in Somalia?
More aware, most certainly. Which makes the “not more responsive” part even more ashaming. Look at the genocide in Rwanda for a blatant example of this.
Is that what I said? Wow. I have to be more careful.
Note the use of wallowing in the thread title.
I said day one, rebuild it as fast as possible, just like it was. Show then they can not change us that easily. I was wrong they did change us.
But after the attacks, Bush, Cheney, Condi, and every damn Republican pounded it to death. There was no putting it in perspective. They were using it as hard as well as they could. They still are.
But I never said there were no Dems caring about it. That would be political suicide with those who revel in it. It is way past time to move ion.
Wallow in it… I don’t know. But remember it? Of course people are going to remember it. In terms of actual human suffering 9/11 was pretty small potatoes really, but in terms of spectacle we are talking unparalleled. Two huge airplanes crashed into gigantic skyscrapers which eventually collapsed into heaps of rubble in the middle of an otherwise untouched metropolis. There has never been any event even remotely similar in it’s ability to bring immediate shock to a country not at war. The film of the Hindenberg disaster is still remarkably compelling after all these years, the “Oh the humanity” quote is still incredibly powerful. The towers going down is another order of magnitude more astonishing. Add to the images the phone conversations, the news commentary, the flight logs, how can you not be absolutely touched horrified and captivated? I think most people realize that many far far worse catastrophes have occurred all over the globe, but the starkness of the destruction in the midst of the otherwise untouched city and the absolutely mind boggling sight of an airliner flying into a building (twice!!) is something most people recognize as a once in a lifetime shock.
It’s just fucking shameful to show this to non-Americans. Now while I agree that ‘First World Problems’ is a somewhat bullshit dismissal (it’s pointless to argue whether a rich socialite routinely subject to sexual abuse in Norway is still better off than a poor-but-loved rancher in Argentina) there is still such a thing as a degree of misery. It just feeds into the whole Ugly American stereotype of being self-absorbed and entitled, like, ‘oh, WE deserve a lot more crying and commiseration because of… reasons’.
At the very least Holocaust remembrance led to something good in the end. Millions of people dying was totally not worth ‘learning our lesson’, but if that’s what it took to shock the world out of its thousand years-long trend of racism and anti-Semitism so be it. Even if it does reach tragedy porn–and I think that it does–it can at least be argued to get people to take a second look at the absolute worst trend in history.
What does 9/11 wallowing do for society exactly? There’s no lesson in it, nothing to be taken from it. In fact it can be argued that if America had just collectively shrugged its shoulders we wouldn’t have been in two wars. So it’s not just a ‘there’s a moral to it’ like the Holocaust or even ‘shameful but harmless’ like Jon Benet memorials but there’s a very strong argument to be made that it’s making you a worse person morally and politically by wallowing in it.
Too many of the people doing are just insincere attention whores trying to push a point and wear big shiny halos. Jesus was spot-fucking-on about praying in private and that line of reasoning applies to this, too.
So much for that “Christian nation” WWJD? (meant ironically)… We can’t forget–there’s no possible forgetting as has been said. The never forgive for me is much more problematic. What is there to forgive? How does a nation “forgive” a small band of extremists? We certainly went about it the wrong way-forgive or no.
What needed to have happened and still needs to happen is for us to learn from this. Might does not make right, using this tragedy as an excuse to further a political agenda is sickening on many levels, and refusing to move on or grow from the experience pretty much ensures we will be a future target.
Out of sheer perversity, this morning I’m remembering the Anglo-Irish revolutionary Robert Erskine Childers, executed in 1922, whose last wish was that his teenage son go around and shake the hand of every man who’d signed his death warrant.
I also looked up the exact words sent by Kemal Attaturk to the mothers of Australia:
*
Those heroes that shed their blood And lost their lives…
You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.
Therefore, rest in peace.
There is no difference between the Johnnies
And the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side,
Here in this country of ours.
You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries…
Wipe away your tears.
Your sons are now lying in our bosom
And are in peace.
After having lost their lives on this land, they have
Become our sons as well.*
Not to say we should have shaken OBL’s hand, but if there is a seed of reconciliation anywhere in today’s mountain of grief, that is what will make today a good day.
I came here to say this. I’m currently in Norway, and just got back to my hotel room to watch BBC News to catch up with what’s happening. Apparently literally nothing is happening in the world apart from reporters chatting shit with photographers about how they felt that day and a long litany of names being read out from Ground Zero.
I get it. It’s perhaps too soon for Americans to forget. But Jesus H. Christ, we’re talking about wall-to-wall coverage of an event that happened ten years ago in a different country. Time to start reporting news.
