Tenure

[AFK]

  

Well, fuck.  Now I need a drink.

Why, there happens to be an empty stool right here.  Belly up to the bar my friend.

[Adios]

 

Well, fuck.  Now I need a drink.

Why, there happens to be an empty stool right here.  Belly up to the bar my friend.

Save me a seat.

[Luna]

Likewise.

[Kai]

Theres an exhibit about it at El Museo (I'm going to start calling it that, because while I don't want to say the name here, I do want to talk about my time there). I went to it today. Lots of pictures, a few artifacts. I was startled though, not because I hadn't seen it all before, but because it really moved me and choked me up for perhaps the first time. I think it was, instead of focusing on the actual event of the planes hitting the buildings and of them crumbling (which is what most "memorials" do), it focused on the tragedy of human lives lost and the desolation that went along with. It was about people and disaster with no moralizing and very little in the way of nationalism. My favorite photographs were those of the shoes left behind, and the dust coating statues, of the writings and drawings made in dust on windows.

I think we're afraid to talk about the Burning of the Trade Centers because, in public, the conversation always goes to "where were you?" and "Gawd bless amurrica" and "we got that damned Osama". But if you just focus on it outside the politics...two of the tallest buildings in the world burned to the ground and killed nearly three thousand people, a number of casualties not equaled in "North America" (I hate to say the United States here, because it feels like Nationalism) since the events of December 7, 1941 in Hawai'i. And actually, it was more deaths than Pearl Harbor; nearly 500 more deaths, and civilian. Which would, if I am correct, make it unmatched since the Battle of Antietam.

I don't think it's wrong to feel something about this. And I also don't think it's bad to be upset about the idiocy of people who moralize upon it. And I wish I could take this middle ground without feeling guilty for all the idiots.

Edit: And, I might add, for the awfulness that came afterwards, especially that which Cain was quoting.

[Suu]

Can we finally stop singing God Bless America during the 7th Inning Stretch, now? I miss Take Me Out to the Ballgame. 

[Freeky]

I agree with everything said here, except for

9/11, like the Holocaut, has been built up into a monument of Absolute Evil.

this made me confused, because genocide, apart from being mind-blowingly, uncomprehendingly huge in most average people's terms, is very evil. 

9/11, while a horrific stunt made by people who are/were stupid monkeys, and yeah it was also bad, I don't really get why it is considered a lesson of Absolute Evil.

And I'm just saying this knowing that I'm aware evils large and small are happening every day by people everywhere, and I most likely won't hear about them until I start digging around in the history mud myself. 

[Placid Dingo]

I agree with everything said here, except for

9/11, like the Holocaut, has been built up into a monument of Absolute Evil.

this made me confused, because genocide, apart from being mind-blowingly, uncomprehendingly huge in most average people's terms, is very evil. 

9/11, while a horrific stunt made by people who are/were stupid monkeys, and yeah it was also bad, I don't really get why it is considered a lesson of Absolute Evil.

And I'm just saying this knowing that I'm aware evils large and small are happening every day by people everywhere, and I most likely won't hear about them until I start digging around in the history mud myself. 

What's being articulated is the difference between the attacks of 9.11 and "9/11"

The holocaust of the Second World War and "The Holocaust"

When an event gets simplified into a ten second soundbite that resembles a Hollywood cliche,  we can no longer learn from our past because it's not just the past; it's a symbol of GOOD vs EVIL.

That's what that's all about.

[Freeky]

Oh.  Yes, I guess that makes sense.  If you don't automatically think of the surrounding events that actually happened, you just hear a trigger, a meme, and your trained reaction is one of national pride instead of somber thingy, yeah I can see where no learning can occur.  That sort of thing?

[Don Coyote]

an example of memetic false consciousness?

[Freeky]

Maybe.  I still don't get that, and Dok was explaining it earlier today.  I probably just need to read whatever he read about it.

[Placid Dingo]

The way the point was first made to me, is if we look at the holocaust we can determine what kind of events caused it, what it says about human nature, what we can do to avoid a repeat etc.

If we look at The Holocaust we know the Nazis were evil and Jews were good.

[Freeky]

That's something to chew on. 

[Pæs]

Mittens to this thread.
Bracing for NEVER FORGET Facebook spam.

[Cain]

I agree with everything said here, except for

9/11, like the Holocaut, has been built up into a monument of Absolute Evil.

this made me confused, because genocide, apart from being mind-blowingly, uncomprehendingly huge in most average people's terms, is very evil. 

9/11, while a horrific stunt made by people who are/were stupid monkeys, and yeah it was also bad, I don't really get why it is considered a lesson of Absolute Evil.

And I'm just saying this knowing that I'm aware evils large and small are happening every day by people everywhere, and I most likely won't hear about them until I start digging around in the history mud myself. 

I have no problem agreeing genocide generally is extremely evil, and so by logical extension, the Holocaust was as well.

The problem is the enshrining of certain acts as examples of pure or unadulterated evil, as the Holocaust often is, with the implication that this level can never be reached before or again.  Because it, by necessity, trivializes every other genocide in history.  Since WWII, there have been acts of genocide perpetrated against Chechens (Stalin, then Yeltsin/Putin), Yalmyks, Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs who ended up on the wrong side of the India/Pakistan partition, Aborigines in Australia, Arabs in the Zanzibar revolution, Bengals in Bangladesh during the Liberation War, Tutsis and Hutus in Burundi, Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda, Tutsis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Bubi in Equitoreal Guinea, the Khmer Rouge self-genocide in Cambodia, the East Timorese, Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon, the Ethopian Red Terror, the Kurds, the pygmies in the DR Congo, the Bantu in Somalia, Bosnian Muslims, the Hazara Muslims in Afghanistan and several other groups I could probably name with half an hour on Wikipedia.

I'm fairly sure for the victims and the families, these acts were every bit as evil as the Shoah.  But because the Holocaust is enshrined as the Absolute Evil in popular imagination and thought, these acts never compare.  Just look at the amount of writing devoted to the Holocaust....it's at least double of the amount that has been done on all of the above combined.

Selective blindness would be another word for it, and selective blindness tends to lead to dismissing of the victims or willful ignorance, which tends to lead to certain historical acts being promoted for the purposes of currently existing political structures.

[Cain]

I suppose another way to put it is that positing the uniqueness of an event is an attempt to resist putting it in any sort of historical context.

Pay attention to the 9/11 "nevar 4get" crowd.  Pay attention to what they leave out.  Do they mention that 9/11 was carried out by a group that grew out of the Arab Mujahideen, a hare-brained scheme cooked up by the CIA, ISI and Saudi Arabia to bleed the USSR dry?  Do they mention that Bin Laden's network was operating in Kosovo and Albania, on the same side as the CIA, against Serbia?  Do they mention several of the hijackers managed to get into the United States through a consulate in Jeddah which previously issued visas with minimal checks, to terrorist groups seeking training from said CIA?  Do they mention that elements of the ISI likely had advanced warning, but did not see fit to pass these concerns onto the USA?  Do they mention Bush Jr was warned in August that "Bin Laden determined to attack USA" and there was the mention of planes being used?  Do they mention Dick Cheney, on the day of the attacks, issued an illegal order to the military to shoot down any plane suspected of being hijacked (an order the military thankfully ignored).  Do they mention during the assault on Afghanistan that the ISI arranged for large numbers of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to escape via the Kunduz airport?  Do they mention the fallacious linking of Abu Musab al-Zaqarwi to the Al-Qaeda network and the fear that Saddam Hussein may pass weapons onto him was the key argument for invading Iraq and unleashing the earlier described hell on earth there?  Do they mention how Bush, Addington, Cheney and Yoo spent near on a decade shredding the Constitution and shrieking about terrorism whenever someone objected.

9/11 does not exist outside of history.  It cannot be viewed simply as The Event Itself.  It had precursors and consequences.  But certain people would likely for only The Event Itself to be considered, because the grief and anger that should rightfully and naturally result from such an act can then be channeled not towards those with greatest culpability and responsibility for the event and responses, but towards any number of designated enemies the media chooses to throw up.

That's my objection to what is inevitably going to happen.