I play the 9/11 card often in my blog.
I play it because I live five miles uptown from Ground Zero; it happened on my Island, in my borough, my city, and why I always feel I should apologize for not living closer or being there then is beyond my imagination.
There was the “uptown” v “downtown” argument; but that’s a hometown argument best left to verbal sparring, in a restaurant or actual home. I believe we argued all we could about it several years ago–because if there’s one thing New Yorker’s love, it’s a good argument.
When I was in grad school sometime before this happened; I had a teacher, from a far away state, who couldn’t understand how we could spend our class time sometimes screaming at each other, and then leave for lunch together, laughing about something totally insipid.
It’s in our genes; maybe the water we don’t drink; arguing allows the steam valves to function properly. We live on top of each other; our streets are crowded; and we have learned that a good argument solves many problems. Maybe most of us come from cultures where arguing was viewed as the proper way to converse.
My city has never had a major race riot. Never.
When I travel far from New York, people always do seem a bit disapointed that I live in Manhattan and wasn’t in the immediate vicinity of the terrorist attack. Always feel that my value as a real New Yorker who was here that day goes down to bargain basement rates.
Something I have pointed out before that never fails to amaze me.
I know many people who survived the attacks; personally I don’t know one person who died that day.
But I’ve only begun to be able to look downtown again. I’ve only begun to feel like my old self again.
What I don’t get and the
http://www.libraryladymom.blog-city.com/
lady, Elizabeth–sorry I still have to master how to link in Word Press–pointed out in her comment on my prior post–the further you get from New York or DC (except of course for the admin and everybody who loves them) the more people support military action.
The more rabidly patriotic they become.
I don’t get it, Are we in a test to see who loves America more?
I don’t get why every Democrat is a whiner; and every Republican is an upbeat happy wonderful person who does everything perfectly, and is clearly superior because they have moral values while we have city (lets get real–ghetto ) values.
They acted as if 9/11 happened in their backyard. Yes I know it was the nation’s tragedy and the world’s and belongs to all of us.
But it happened here to us dirty people of all colors and ethnic backgrounds.
We don’t represent the right America.
While New York’s boroughs have, probably, the largest amount of religious book stores, and thus people of Faith, they don’t go around trying to convert us to their point of view. if anybody has earned the right they have.
But we all know that in order to survive as a city, we have to keep the steam valves functioning properly.
Why don’t other people get that?
In the 1977 blackout there was much looting. In the 2003 blackout, there was hardly any.
People stood at street corners and waved traffic through.
People bought water and gave it to other people; then stores began giving water away.
We know what it means to really suffer. The blackout didn’t even register on the radar.
We know what true tragedy feels like.
That doesn’t make us better people. That makes us less innocent.
We lost our innocence that day.
The “red” people in red states seem to have had the opposite experience.
They and their president became validated.
Bush never had to account for the Florida election.
I know, so old, I’m harping on past events.
But I’m not. Since Bush was never forced to really account for his stolen election, he felt that he was really elected. Was he?
His supporters seem to believe that he became annointed that day. Holier than holy, he didn’t have to account for anything.
A friggin two percent win became a mandate. Did he really have that two percent win?
Were the Diebold machines in proper working order?
Excuse me, they worked for Bush so they must have been in proper working order.
I believe that we lost something precious during the Florida recount. I believe that we’re no longer a working democracy. How can we be when we don’t know the real results of the last two elections?
God help me for thinking this–if there is a God.
I don’t really want to go back to 9/1o; I want to go back to the prior November. I want a real recount not one orchestrated by the Bush family and their followers.
That’s when our way of life was forever altered.
But we’re not supposed to talk about this.
We’re supposed to be all be perky and cheery about our country, Social Security reform, and a tax reform.
Forgive my innocence but a tax on the total amount of money spent?
I don’t understand that. It goes against everything our country is supposed to stand for. It’s regressive. Will I be taxed on the amount of money I spent at the dentists this year? My insurance doesn’t cover that; I’m supporting the office for a year; and it can be argued that much of the work isn’t necessary but cosmetic.
I’m purposely doing something that’s done all the time in Republican blogs; I’m arguing about something I know nothing about. I can go on and on; I could probably convince some of you to see things my way. I’m good at that.
Being good at arguing without facts doesn’t make it right.
Invoking Faith and God doesn’t help an argument either.
I began this post because 9/11 and Iraq have nothing to do with each other.
People who weren’t personally affected by 9/11 can’t tell me how to think.
I can’t tell the family of a victim what to feel.
I haven’t walked in their shoes.
Until you walk in somebody else’s shoes, you have no right to tell that person anything.
I believe that’s a basic concept in most religions.
I believe that until neocons–a term I hate–try seeing things our way there is no hope for this country.
Me and my fellow New Yorkers live among the wreckage–and I don’t mean Ground Zero–yet we are the ones who are supposed to compromise; we are the ones who are supposed to fall into line.
Not as long as I’m alive.
Well you certainly had one thing that i dont see on a certain red blog – common sense. That was actualy damn near beautiful. Wow.
9/11 hit very close to home for me. I flew out of New York the day before to San Francisco on one of the flights that, 24 hours later, would be used to destroy the WTC.
Why didn’t I fly on 9/11? Its my birthday, I don’t do anything on my birthday.
Alot of people died because of what our government has been doing around the world. We’re now approaching half of the death toll for 9/11 in Iraq, for what? To capture a brutal dictator we trained and armed? Woot!
9/11 has been co-opted by rednecks who scream their patriotism and then vote against it while decrying anyone not voting for Bush as a traitor.
Lunacy runs rampant in our nation, lunacy, lies and losers posing as leaders. I am sad for our nation and I’m incredibly offended by the legacy that the Bush administration is leaving behind. For the victims of 9/11 and for my own children.
I see the typical leftist rhetoric here. “Bush stole the election in Florida” and the great “a dictator we trained and armed!” Give me a break. You claim that other Americans can’t relate to the events of 9/11 as well as you because you live in NYC. I would have to agree with you on that. By that same right, you don’t know and can’t relate to what occurred in Florida in 2000. You can speculate all day long, but you don’t know–period. To think there is some “secret conspiracy” to elect Bush or that “we had it coming to us” because we were attacked are both absolutely ludicrous. You can sit all day long and present inaccurate rhetoric a la Ward Churchill or you can open your eyes to the truth. The majority wanted Bush elected. The majority in this nation want a conservative in the White House. The majority approve of what we’ve done in Iraq and the progress we’ve made there in liberating that nation.
To say that I even suggested “we had it coming” is ludicrious, and very wrong.
I can say that you don’t understand 9/11 the way we do because buildings exploded, people lost their lives and the city was paralyzed.
No I was not in Florida; but to compare the aftershocks of an attack to the aftershocks of an election is absurd.
Nobody save a few people knows what really happened in Florida.
To suggest that I could think “we had it coming to us,” is beyond sick.
I can’t comprehend people wanting to attack and destroy as the terrorists did.
That you can, Robert, says more about you.
Robert
Good point. Almost. Well not really. You see, to compare the impact of 9/11 and the Florida elections is to comapre apples ot oranges. Watching the events unfurl in Florida that year was something that didn’t require actualy being in the state – it was a nose story without a personal level of involvement on any bu thtemost absract of layers. I know – I live here. I lived here then. I live here now. I am acutely aware of the chicanery of Jeb and Katherine Harris. I am also aware that in an independent recount by several news organizations, if the whole state had been recounted Gore wins. These are Tribune papers, and for the record supported Bush in the 2000 election.
I also remember watching the TV the moment the Towers crumbled and it was sureal. It was infuriating and devastating. But it was not the same as being there. I can’t imagine on a concrete level what it is like to know people who had to run for the lives to escape death, or to lose a loved on in the tragedy. I can’t really understand what it is like to look at a huge pit in the earth where once stood a monument to mans greatness. It isn’t real to me the same way.
When you read the paper and see someones child died tragicaly you feel very sad.
When your the father – your devastated.
Thats the difference here.
FLorida doesn’t even register on the same radar as that.
stunning post.
i remember watching the towers fall – we were in our first biology class at an american college, and the teachers ran to the lounge to watch it. i followed, and we held hands and cried.
every time i think about it, i still cry. and every time someone like Robert takes any facet of the event and uses it to fuel hatred and lies, a little bit of my faith in humanity fades.
We’re “liberating a nation”? Well, Robert, from what I see of our government, it’s fine to “liberate” Iraq and give them civil liberties. Meanwhile the same government takes away our civil liberties in the name of “security”. Are the “majority” fully aware of that?
It’s highly ironic to me that the Shrub and his followers are attempting to install “Christian” government in this country while they are on the watch for the rise of Islamic based governments in Iraq. Gotta protect them from Islam while they force their beliefs on us. Sounds more like AlCaida than the Founding Fathers to me…….
I’m with Marie… stunning. (I found you via her blog.) Thanks for posting it.
(And if Robert is my brother, I’m going to kick his ass.)
Great post pia. Way to defeat the troll.
PS – It looks like we all found our way here via Marie!
Pia, your posts are incredible.
I in no way meant to compare the attacks of 9/11 to the election in Florida. Anyone that got that message missed my point. My point was to say that the author criticized other’s opinions on what happened in a certain geographic location when they don’t live in that region. Then that same person accuses those in Florida of rigging the election when in fact, she wasn’t there and doesn’t know. I didn’t mean in anyway to undermine the events on 9/11 in that way and if people took that out of context then I apologize. I certainly meant no offense. I didn’t meant to fuel any kind of hatred and I certainly didn’t mean to insult anyone.