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by SamReidHughes
6414 days ago
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This reminds me of something that happened to me after 9/11. In my teenage immaturity, I made a comment insinuating that America got what was coming to it. I'm not sure why I did that (the mind is good at rationalizing behavior after the fact, so I can't trust my own memories on the matter), but I think it was a reaction to the complete unanimous sorrow going on in the forum. Everybody thought that the attacks were a horrible thing, that the deaths were such a tragedy. It might have been that I was struck by the complete irrationality of their reactions -- people don't feel so angered about annual traffic accident fatality numbers. After their angered reactions, I apologized and gave an excuse somewhat like the parent comment. Having been in this situation, I'd say that tdavis probably posted that under the same state of mind as I did. And now that I look back, I can't help but conclude that taking that state of mind is the right thing to do. After events like these, certain ideas become treated like "correct viewpoints" that good-thinking people have to have. Such as that America is the good guys, or that this event here was so tragic and that you should be mournful. And now that somebody has come along with a different attitude on the matter, we get to witness a hailstorm of people who don't simply disagree on the matter, but who hate him because his reactions are different to theirs. |
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However, the people in the towers weren't "America", they were people like you and me, and they were not guilty of "America"'s foreign policy any more than you and me are, and it is a tragedy that they ended up being the victims of this event.