by aflurry » Tue 12 Sep 2006, 16:50:38
I don't see the connection between sentimentalism and patriotism.
This morning the headline on my local paper once again used the phrase, "The nation mourns..." The fuck it does. Nations do not mourn. People mourn. And I believe in giving a certain dignity to actual heartfelt mourning done by people, privately or however they choose.
nations are moved to irrational actions by manipulative sentimentalism.
I do not confuse the personal, private process of grieving with the sickening emotionalism shoved at me by corporate media profiteers goading me to feel something like outrage or kinship or righteousness, which are not true emotions.
I personally don't feel too much about 9/11, since you asked. I didn't know anyone directly involved. And i would think that anyone with any direct connection to the event should be personally offended if i came out weeping and crying and pulling my hair out and pretending to really have some connection beyond the general empathy I have for anyone from whatever country who has experienced some loss from war or any other political conflict, with "terrorism" on equal footing with anything else. which includes the 9/11 victims, and all of the families of Iraqi dead, and isrealis blown up on buses, and Palistinians trapped under bulldozers, and the goddamn branch davidian kids even, and the people in that train in spain, the vietnamese blown up by landmines, and on and on.
So to me, there's nothing particularly special about 9/11/06. Just another day in the life of the modern war state.
The display of American self-righteousness and exceptionalism following 9/11 to me was just gross. and to dredge up the increasingly distant echo of that ugly display on round numbered years has an extra distatefulness to it... like a hollowness and roteness that at least the original outpouring lacked. All of this memorializing sounds more like mocking to me. Like opportunistic empathy. It is our obligation to reconcile our emotions and move on so that we can engage in public discussion in a tempered and rational manner, like adults for chrissake.
Every person killed going to work that day is betrayed with each person, soldier or civilian, killed in Iraq or tortured in Guantanamo out of cynical profiteering or childish rage, and the insulting sentimentalism created around 9/11 is a tool for that betrayal.
yup, that's about it.