| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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I was playing Scrabble with a friend and referred to September 11 as "it" and he knew what I meant without having to ask. It is a day we all share, not matter where we are in this shattered World. My life seems to have moved and shifted since "it". Before I was afraid of saying things like "I love you" and now I’m afraid of not saying them, of not having the chance. The World I grew up in had an endless future. Apart from minor skirmishes and far-off tragedies, I knew everyone I loved would keep on spinning around and around on the planet with me until they peacefully dropped off. Now the axis has been bumped and the future is shaky at best. I feel the urge to check every day if the people I love are still here. Little trivial annoyances have faded to the background, and the very idea of making plans seems ludicrous. Sentences I speak are embedded with more meaning and friends seem so much closer. It is as if the core of me has arisen and I’ve found a new crispness to the art of living. I am certain of only one thing now - that love is all we have when everything else shatters. |
When it comes to the bottom line all we have are love and faith. |
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fits perfectly with my observation of the world and the way people are. i'm as displeased now as i was before. this is the way the world is. this is how we learn. this is our curriculum. welcome to kindergarten. |
I never expect much from mankind.And I am seldom disapointed. |
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en masse, not so good. i accept that many people feel the way i do. regardless, i will not join their ranks. groups are bad. groups require an enemy. groups are intolerant. i prefer to go it alone, questioning even those who feel the way i feel. question the way i feel; i'll tell you it's personal. |
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no offense mom and dad, but i'd rather spend time with people i can talk to. |
en masse, not so good." Dave, I whole-heartedly agree. |
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wave a flag & everything will be ok. do what the nice people on TV tell you to. belt out a chorus of "god bless america". well, that'll fucking show 'em, nimrod. people are acting like such sheep that it gives me the willies. quick, citizens, turn off your brains. however, having said that, i'm not sure i'm coping much better than the average flag-waving joe. i refuse to buy into the jingoistic bullshit...but that doesn't mean that i have any answers hidden up my sleeve. in the end, we're all the same. right wing, left wing. none of us are fucking bulletproof. i can be blown to cinders by a bomb, just like my next-door neighbor w/ the 200 little flags taped to her car. the threat of death eradicates all party lines. i loathe right-wing republicanism & have since my childhood, but in some weird way, it's finally hitting me that we're all in this together. |
Still, I have to wonder at how much of the security measures being inacted will in the long run make us into another Israel. Although, I flew last Friday and experienced all those safety measures, and everyone was calm and actually upbeat about it, smiling actually. Why couldn't they have done this long ago? |
too much information.....maybe. but its a huge huge huge huge HUGE change for us. I don't know what will come of it. And the practice may stop. It should stop. We just need a few more months. Yeah, another 6 months. Im disgusted at the behavior of many americans. Calling someone who questions our leaders as "unpatriotic". Bollocks! I love my land, I love being an American. I DON'T love my leaders and firmly grasp my right to think they are fucked, and embrace my right NOT to fly a flag, hell, even burn one. I, like crimson, look at them all as sheep. Media dissent is severely being reprimanded. Look what happened to Bill Maher for saying we were the cowards lobbing missles from 2000 miles away. The pussy came back and apologized. Im glad the network at least stood by him. Im afraid the masses will use situations like this to fragmentize the left, the antiwar movement, as it attempts to build steam. I was reading a bit in a local rag, they remarked how the extreme right and the extreme left, the Buchannans and the Nadars are actually for once one. |
- new yorker magazine. susan sontag is just plain sexy. she doesn't watch TV, though. she completely missed it when bill maher made her wishes come true. |
Anyway, I didn't catch enough to figure out what was going on, but I pretty much agree with Maher. It is cowardly not to risk troops. That's what they train for, that's what they want. THat being said, what we risk troops for needs to be assessed as well. Hopefully, our leaders will keep in mind Somalia, where armed thugs kicked the Rangers' asses. Where's G.I. Joe when you need him? |
Yeah Stern is a boob on the matter, but like you said, thats why i like stern. He's calling for just nuking them off the planet. I met a guy, come to find out, who was in the Special Forces, who took part in the Mogadishu raid. In fact when they stormed the beachhead there, he sawa CNN camera crew with their lights on. He took the butt of his gun and knocked they guy out and smashed the light. They say Mogadishu was partly a disaster b/c of the media. Thats part of the reason they arent talking now. |
My manager started a conversation last week about a recent incident on a Northwest Airlines flight. Three Arab men were on the plane, and the rest of the passengers became nervous. They asked the pilot to throw the men off, and he did. The Arab men are suing the airline now for racial discrimination. My manager was angry that the Arab men would sue. She said that Arabs in America should just expect to be treated badly and should accept it. "We're at war, after all," she said. At first I didn't want to discuss it with her, but after she brought it up the third time I lost my cool. :) I told her that racial discrimination is wrong, no matter what the circumstance. While the pilot of a plane has the right to take any action necessary to ensure safety, the targets of the actions have a right to contest any decision afterwards, especially if those actions break laws. She didn't see it that way, though, and that people should change the way they think "because of the times we live in." But that's not what changed me. Later in the conversation, another coworker brought up the stories of survivors from Sept 11th, and said that we should listen to every story, however gruesome they may be. He said that this would help us personalize the loss we've all experienced, help keep us focused on how horrible the event had been. My immediate response was, "Maybe we should personalize the starvation of thousands of people in Iraq due to UN sanctions as well." until that moment I hadn't personalized the human effects of America's foreign policy. I'd considered it "terrible" that so many people had to die, but that there could be a reason for it, and I didn't know all the details. There was no feeling behind the "terrible" label. But now that I've seen six thousand people die, I know what I should feel. If I want to know how to react to the horrible actions of our leaders all I have to do is recall the towers falling, thinking my best friend was inside. That's how I should feel. That feeling has changed my life. I want to understand why people like my manager have not been changed in the same way. I want to know if they can be. And if they can, I want to find a way to make it happen. |
The arabs were thrown off the plane simply because they were arabs. Unless they posed a threat to the other passingers or committed some other offence they had every right to be on that plane. Although the actions of the pilot and passengers are understandable. They are still wrong. And, this is the objective of the terrorists. Divide and conquer. |
Antigone's right. Who stops to think that everytime we drop a bomb on Iraq, some one never sees their family again? Hell, if some country was dropping bombs on me, and the seemingly main concern of that country was a TV show, well, I'd be a little pissed off too. Not to the point maybe where I would go strap a bomb to my chest, but still, the anger of a Middle Eastern person against the West is understandable. All I know is, 9/11 marks the start of either a new era of cooperation between nations, or a descent into a new Dark Age, and you can guess which is more likely.... |
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"How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared." -- Salman Rushdie [my hero] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55876-2001Oct1.html |