It’s an odd thing when people simultaneously express empathy while simultaneously deriding other people’s empathy.
In the last two weeks, more people have been killed in Sudan than in the entire two years long war in Gaza. So is it cool to say you’re out of touch for having empathy about Gaza while not caring about Sudan. You’re in the wrong because you care about a lesser number of people that died in the past because you don’t care about people who are dying in Sudan right now?
I wouldn’t say this because this seems like psychopath behavior to me. Feigning that you care about people dying while dehumanizing others that have died in the past.
The people that died on 9/11 weren’t evil imperialist colonizers. They were just people going to work at an office. Or fire fighters that were trying to save people’s lives. Seeing the collapse of those buildings meant witnessing the deaths of thousands of people all at once live on TV. It affected people that have actual empathy for human life, psychopaths that can only act like they have empathy on the internet (without actually having any) can’t understand the impact this had on people.
If you’re characterizing it to being wrong for being impacted by the deaths of thousands of people, maybe stop and think about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
What’s very interesting is I could pinpoint the exact location I was at when I heard about the attack. I know the location so well if I went online I could probably give you GPS coordinates.
What’s really interesting is I was like six when it happened, and frankly I didn’t really understand what was happening or care all that much. I’m remember being very confused about why the adults in the room were so upset about an event that was happening in America since we weren’t American and I never heard my parents really even mentioned the country up until that point.
Much later I learnt that the actual problem was that my uncle, that at that point in my life I had never met, worked in the building.
And here I thought it was just Americans that were creepily obsessed with it.
Canadians are technically Americans.
What would you propose the US use as it’s demonym?
USian works, though I’d generally prefer using “US” as an adjective as in “US citizen”.
😍 millions of arabs dead because of us imperialism
😰 hundreds of usians dead because of comparatively tiny payback
omfg, the last line
Yep. Same thing that got me. I was fascinated reading it like “This lady is fuckin crazy” but that last line got me laughing so hard… I’m a Canadian. Hell, I’m a Newfie. We had people staying in our house who were from the US because a ton of planes landed here in NFLD and a ton of us went to help. Not even I have a reaction that unhinged.
I lived half a continent away when it happened, and the whole office just stopped working for half a day to watch the news. That kind of response across the continent alone probably cost the economy billions. The next day I was arguing with people on the internet that we had a new war on drugs (no achievable goal, no territory, no clearly defined enemy) about to start.
Really sealed it.
9/11sonas is a very cursed concept
My 9/11sona is Gary, he decided to go out on his own terms and jumped from the top of the first tower. Then the plane hit.
I remember being in the 5th grade when it happened and thinking “Why is everyone freaking out so much about this? Like, sure it sucks but I see stuff like this when my mom watches the news all the time. What’s different about it? I mean, there aren’t even any tanks involved in this”
What I had seen on the news was most likely the various post-Yugoslavia conflicts in the Balkans throughout the 1990’s and into the 2000’s, although there were probably other conflicts around the world that my 10-year-old mind just filed away as “wars are happening in far-off places”. A lot of my classmates at the time were Bosnians who were displaced in the Bosnian wars.
There were 2,977 deaths from the 9/11 attacks, including the attackers. For reference, there were 42,196 fatalities from car accidents in 2001. That means 9/11 was less than a full month’s worth of car crashes. Imagine if we put anywhere near as much money and energy into making automobiles safer as we did to bomb brown people in unrelated countries for the next 20 years afterwards.
The attacks were not sensationalized because of the human loss, but the economic loss. Kill hundreds of thousands of poor people and no one bats an eye. Kill a couple of rich people and the whole media empire makes sure we stop at nothing to bomb unrelated countries in response.
I’m only a year older than you. I thought the point was that now on domestic soil, they’re able to do stuff like this and that we are no longer safe and “stuff that happens overseas and far away” could potentially happen here.
And then, it wasn’t much longer after that, maybe a year, that I realized that the big deal was that we keep pushing people around globally and pissing people off and making enemies and, “innocent” individuals aside, we, as the USA, probably deserved it.
‘Probably’
America worked so hard for that.
Americans deserve it like Russians deserve it. That being, yes, but also no. Many of the Russian people are, in fact, only guilty of innocent ignorance. As a northerner in the US, I try to remain optimistic and think that the vast majority of people, including the South here in the US, are the same; people can only act on what they know, and if you’re fed ignorance and fear your entire lives, to you, you might be doing the ethical thing.
I truly do believe that basically everybody is trying to do the right thing. It just comes down to who is backed into a corner, who has been tricked into the kill-or-be-killed mindset, and scarcity (or even only artificial/perceived scarcity) of resources.
The problem is when there are people in high places corrupting every system they touch, and those who believe they’re exceptions. Even racists are just deeply ignorant people, probably believing they’re doing the right thing for the human species and community. And then, obviously, the compounding biases blinding them to reality. And this doesn’t make them inferior, they’re human, just like the rest of us, and prisoners to their circumstances.
just ignorant
No. Lots¹ of Americans are vicious hateful fucking orcs³. It’s not just about wanting to win; its about being willing to lose if you can make the other hurt worse. The ones who are upset with trump say ‘He’s hurting the wrong people!’ not ‘He was supposed to help us!’.
You’ve never seen these orcs interact with someone they knew was queer or a poc. That which they do not understand must be violently dominated or destroyed. Creating enough of a model to understand the other is a kind of attack/desecration on/of their very souls, and my existence is ontologically evil precisely because they could attempt to understand me and be made however fractionally impure.³
They can’t be talked with² negotiated with compromised with or cooperated with by their own choice. They are philosophically exterminationist, even if they haven’t read any philosophy, and many have narrowed themselves to vessels of that.
¹i don’t know about most, but I live here too
²meaningfully. You can exchange words but what you say to your house plants is more meaningful.
³not that the people you’re talking about don’t exist. The homophobic redneck who thinks eating pussy is just something you do for your best friend when you get bored, and of course she loves her friends, and no she hasnt had a boyfriend in a while, because 'men aren’t worth the trouble, why change the subject so sudden like that?'⁴, or the guy who thinks ’black people have super strength in like an x-men kinda way so they probably get paid extra for warehouse jobs; that seems pretty handy! Unless they have to hide it for secret identities or something. That must be hard!’⁴ it’s just that other kind exist too.
⁴i have met this person.
🫂
There is no need to qualify that statement about Americans. I can vouch for it as an American.
I was in high school and had the same thought. If a few thousand people dying gets you this mad you must be absolutely livid every day. I remember making a joke about it a year after it happened and the person I was talking to, who didn’t lose anyone and wasn’t pro-war or anything, got so mad about it. I decided never to bring it up again because apparently everyone was hypnotized by a news broadcast of it that I missed, and the whole country was agreed that this specific attack was the worst thing that had ever happened anywhere to anyone.
I can’t stop thinking “Shouldn’t you guys be so much more angry at the preventable COVID deaths? There were so, so many and our president at the time told us not to wear masks or quarantine. Surely the death toll should be generally related to the anger?”
I was in my senior year of high school when 9/11 happened. The only part that truly stuck with me was watching people I once respected turn into reactionary asswipes who where equal parts sanctimonious and cornball. Getting scolded about how I don’t appreciate “my freedoms” by an imbecile in Confederate flag board shorts and a “These colors don’t run” t shirt was one the highlights of my 20s.
It was also the first time I ever saw a national tragedy kickstart a merchandising bonanza. Crying eagle NEVER FORGET t-shirts, country singers climbing over each other to release the most sacchrine slow jam possible, and a whole lot of bizzarept homoerotic proto-memes of bin Laden.
See, the thing about invigorating your youth with patriotism is that you have to give them something to fight for. As it stands, the only thing this country has given its youth is things to fight against. Of course no one is going to want to fight for a country we all collectively agree should crash and burn.
we’re Canadian
Once I drove up to Canada to visit a friend from highschool, and we went to a pizza place for lunch one day. The lady who took our order brought up 9/11 while we were waiting, and kept talking about how it was an inside job set up by Bush. Whole thing was very surreal
And who can forget, Rudy Giulani, “Mr. 9/11”, who name-dropped 9/11 with every response in the debates when he was running for president.
“America’s mayor”, who helped instill Islamophobia in the us, and whose title has now been passed on to Zohran Mamdani, an African Muslim immigrant.
Out of all the underhanded, racist shit that got slung at Mamdani during the campaign, I think the very worst was the claim that New York would have “another 9/11” under him as mayor. What the fuck does the mayor have to do with 9/11? Is there a secret battery of anti-aircraft missiles that he’s supposed to be in charge of???
I think they meant that violent terrorists would invade and terrorize the city. Though in this case, it would be white supremacists and other societal tumors.
Yeah, and if he had any tangible effect on the odds of that… wouldn’t it be decreasing them?
The coldest line I ever heard Joe Biden drop is when he said you could sum up Rudy Guiliani’s entire presidential campaign as “I’m Rudy Guiliani and 9/11.”
No but seriously, I remember in middle school during lunch they fucking showed footage of the towers getting hit and shit. Teachers during the early 2000s and 2010s were obsessed with trying to traumatize children with 9/11. Like it wasn’t for educational value, it was obviously them trying to make kids share in the trauma. Everyone wanted to play victim (like the teacher in the post who had zero connections to 9/11) about this and trauma dump it on students. It was really fucking weird and backfired cause I am certain that that shit is why people make shitposts about 9/11 now.
“we’re Canadian” holy fuck that sent me
“9/11sona’s” also had me dying inside
Where were you when they built a ladder to heaven?
Watched the second collapse with my own eyes as we waited to hear from 2 missing peers.
Also Canadian.
Like, in person or on the TV?
Palantir,
