K. I guess I'm not done with 9/11 yet

[hkellick]

I was going to sleep, but my mind is whirring too fast and I do actually really want to post this.

To everyone who felt the need to commemorate yesterday. Especially to those of you who weren't there and didn't lose (or even nearly lose) anyone:

Has the accident with the Columbia destroyed your birthday? How about the Challenger?
Do you weep on the anniversary of Waco?
Do you NEVER FORGET the lessons of Oklahoma City?
Do you hug your children a little closer on the anniversary of Columbine?
Do you consider staying home on the anniversary of the Olympic Park Bombing?
Do you care whatsoever for the innocent lives lost the day George Bush declared war on Iraq?
How about Flight 800? The Unabomber? The Washington DC Sniper?

These are things in your lifetime that you don't even give a moments notice to.
What makes 9/11 so different? What makes 9/11 so special?

Comments

[skrshawk.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how rhetorical your questions were, but I feel like throwing my two cents into the fray.

I think the ongoing media debacle is causing a lot of the perceived problems - but I also have a first-hand anecdotal way of saying that the problem you speak of isn't as severe as you might think. I am a telemarketer. I make my living pissing off America one phone call at a time. I worked a full shift yesterday with about 20 coworkers and not ONE of us got any complaints about our calls yesterday. Despite the media debacle, people are returning to their complacency and this is bad for the President's hopes of getting reelected (fear driven voters).

Americans are ignorant and I train people at work in how to exploit this ignorance in the name of profit. I'm not necessarily proud of this, but I am good at it. Another reason the TV keeps blasting the 9/11 message is because people have short attention spans. Know anybody that sits in front of the TV constantly changing channels? Tradgedy holds people's attention and captivates an audience - the footage of the day resembles train wreck footage in almost every way, including right into advertisers' pocketbooks.

It is the fickle nature of this country's citizenry coupled with a feeling of nothing being worth defending not in one's tiny sphere of influence that makes us such an easy target.

[circa.livejournal.com]

I've already said most of my points of view on phelyan's comments page, so here goes for a quick post from a Brit totally unconnected to the whole incident.

Here, where I live, in Scotland, it was mentioned in the news. It mainly had interviews with the British relatives of those who had lost their lives, so the coverage wasn't as strong here as I imagine it would have been in the US.

As for how I feel about it - well, if it hadn't been mentioned in phelyan's journal I probably wouldn't have remembered. That's not me being in sensitive or uncompassionate, it's just that it didn't affect me, so I have no reason for my memory to store the date.

Over here we've had our own terrorists and tragedies. The IRA being the main culprits, but no, I don't remember the dates for any of those attacks. Why? Because, again, they didn't affect me.

There is only one date that I remember that is due to a tragedy, and it was for Piper Alpha - an oil rig that caught fire and killed hundreds of men. Why do I remember it? Because my dad was offshore when it happened, not too far away, and it was my birthday when it came on the news. BEaring in mind I was young at the time, I thought my dad might be in it - thankfully he wasn't, but because of the shock I got from that, I remember it. I don't mourn on every anniversary though. Sometimes I thank whoever's looking after me above for not taking my dad, but thats very rare now.

I think what makes 9/11 so special was the sheer scale of it, and the effects it had physically on the city, as well as the death toll. But as I said in comments on other journals, eventually 9/11 will fade and only be remembered by those affected by it - the coverage will get less and less as newer tragedies take over the limelight.

[lite.livejournal.com]

I do agree and HOPE that one day 9/11 will fade. I guess what surprises me the most is how strongly it's still celebrated after two years.
Two years after Oklahoma City, I don't recall "Oklahoma CIty: Two Years Later. What have we learned?"
To be honest, between the two, I find Oklahoma City more ghastly than 9/11. We should have seen 9/11 coming. It may turn out that we DID see 9/11 coming. Oklahoma City came out of nowhere. A madman with a homemade bomb who parked his bomb right in front of a child care center.

I think, to be honest, what's really driving 9/11 is the media and the administration. The administration doesn't want to let it fade because we're justifying our entire war on terrorism because of it.
I guess what kills me the most is that the people still gnashing their teeth the most are the people least affected. I don't know too many New Yorkers, but among them, none of them wrote a soppy LJ story. None of them want to talk about it or think about it because they're still inwardly grieving.

[cheshire23.livejournal.com]

I have a friend from college who was one mile away from the WTC when it blew up.

Yesterday, his only post on the topic was to link back to his original post about what it was like to actually be that close to ground zero, about what people were thinking at the time, etc and to say "I am going to say no more about this."

I believe the post is public. The LJ is lwoodbloo, if you're curious.

And you're right. It INFURIATES me that so often those who do the most "isn't it terrible?" about any of the above are those who were least affected. Especially when they do so to grandstand politically.

I don't remember the Oklahoma City bombing very clearly because it happened around the same time a close friend of mine committed suicide. I DO remember Columbine VERY clearly, and of the list, that's the one I carry around the most anger about, for what happened, for all of the "how can this happen HERE?" handwringing that went on (so, if there were any justice, it would've happened in an inner city instead? *growl*) and for the "Geek Profiling" aftermath that, among other things, convinced a very talented young man to take a career path other than teaching high school English because he didn't want to watch the kids most like him being branded as potential dangerous psychotics, let alone participate in the branding.

[circa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think the reason it gets coverage here (although less than there) is because our dear Prime Minister adores your wonderful President, and he is also using a tragedy which had no effect on him whatsoever, to go to war with the US.

People are weird. I think the most of the people wailing about it are either
a) People using it as the politicians are, to justify their own actions, or
B) Those people who feel the urge to mourn EVERY act - like when Princess Diana died, over here thousands of people grieved and wept and sniffed, more than they ever would for a family member - they soon became known as 'serial mourners' - any tragic event, they'd be there weeping and wailing.

But thats just my two cents. Those who were affected seem to have their own personal, quiet and dignified grief, and do not feel the urge to inflic it on the masses. And for them at least, we should really stop making every year difficult for them, by having it thrown at their faces every minute of the day. But that's the media and the administration for you.

[kareila]

I remember the anniversaries of the shuttle accidents, but that's because I'm a space case. If either accident had happened on my birthday, I'd be affected by that... as it happened the Challenger accident was on a high school friend's birthday, which ironically made it easier for me to remember her birthday.

Rhetorically speaking, what makes 9/11 different from the incidents you mentioned is (a) the fact that thousands of American lives were lost, not tens or hundreds, and (b) that the tragedy was caused by foreign terrorists. I'm not saying that this necessarily gives it some sacred meaning, just that this is what makes it different from your other examples. It's more like Pearl Harbor than anything you cited above, and a lot of (older) people still remember 12/7 as "the day that will live in infamy". It took a long time to fade, and I think 9/11 will too.

Here's something that might cheer you up a bit - the only media exposure I got yesterday was in the car with Alex, since he always has NPR on. They were interviewing some people who had been flying across the Atlantic on 9/11 and were diverted to a city in Newfoundland I'd never heard of, and they had someone from the city on the line too. They were talking about how being thrown together on that day and helping each other through the craziness had forged lasting bonds of friendship and reaffirmed their faith in their fellow man. It was really touching, actually.

[circa.livejournal.com]

Times of tragedies can make friendships. It's the small good thing of them. My father susequently made many friends through his work, of people who had been airlifted and rescued from the rig and put to his while he was on duty. And hearing about such good things, makes the whole event less terrible for us not directly involved.

Hmm.

[angiepenguin.livejournal.com]

I commemorated yesterday not as the two-year anniversary of the WTC attack... I commemorated it as a year and 11 months with .

(telumehtar)