Do you remember 9/11? or would you rather not?

[TrackerNeil]

I see the difference is that facts don't support your narrative, and they do mine. So for you they are not relevant, because feelings, I guess. Microagressions, for the love of God. Everyone encounters microaggressions. If microaggressions upset you that much you probably need a thicker skin. But then I guess the whole idea behind microaggressions is to promote perpetual feelings of being victimized.

You can't be the thought police, you can't make everyone like each other. Microaggressions as you said, are not against the law. You can't police them. You have nothing to support your opinion but immeasureable supposed microaggressions, while I give stats on measurable actual crimes, but somehow, you think you really got me because your statement is unprovable.

 

Deb, this discussion is shifting to new ground, which is fine, but the fact is that those data do not support your initial assertion, which was that microaggressions reported in the wake of 9/11 were overblown. The data you cited are about hate crimes, which DO NOT EQUAL microaggressions. I don't know how else to explain that, so I guess we will have to just disagree that apples do not equal oranges. 

 

As to your other point about microagressions, you are certainly entitled to think that people who are told that their religion makes them more likely to be terrorists are being thin-skinned. I think it's a damned shame, but YMMV.

[NoneofYourBiz]

 
Deb, this discussion is shifting to new ground, which is fine, but the fact is that those data do not support your initial assertion, which was that microaggressions reported in the wake of 9/11 were overblown. The data you cited are about hate crimes, which DO NOT EQUAL microaggressions. I don't know how else to explain that, so I guess we will have to just disagree that apples do not equal oranges. 
 
As to your other point about microagressions, you are certainly entitled to think that people who are told that their religion makes them more likely to be terrorists are being thin-skinned. I think it's a damned shame, but YMMV.

I agree we are going down a rabbit hole. However, my initial comment had nothing to do with microaggressions at all. My initial statement was that these "9/11 = We hate brown people" statements are overblown. There are no pogroms, and statistically, while there indeed was an uptick in hate crimes against Muslims post 9/11, (which you actually could point to as some validation of your point), the fact remains that overt, criminal aggressions occur at a much higher percentage rate against Jews. So I find that more worrisome than microaggressions. I find the whole microaggressions concept just an attempt to keep people in perpetual victimhood. Some people need this, I guess. Many people find it pretty easy to slap down a microaggression with some simple words. If people want to cower in fear because someone said something mean to them, or let those words define them, I find that to be a pretty pathetic state of existence. To each their own.

Rational people understand quite well the difference between radical Islamic terrorists and everyday Muslims. Unfortunately not everyone is rational, and will find irrational reasons to hate someone else. I'm not sure what you can do about these people. You cannot use logic against people who are illogical.

I understand quite well the terrorist talk. I experience it all the time. I just don't let it define me. Sometimes I take it as an opportunity for conversation.

[litechick]

TN, through this conversation you have been moving the goal posts in order to make your point.  It is particularly funny in conjunction with the fact that even in the linked Howard Stern clip, Howard Stern indulges in rampant xenophobia and racism yet stops short of advocating violence against 'brown' people.  When a caller suggests that they go out and beat on people who appear to be Muslim, he shuts it down and refuses to entertain the notion.  Maybe he did that with an eye to the political and legal ramifications rather than in the spirit of tolerance but the fact remains.

 

Likewise, people who complain that American reminiscences are too self-centered seem smug, like they are trying to fit the evidence to the crime.  If you find Americans to be narcissistic, you have a right to your opinion but I don't think that our observation of 9/11 is proof of that.

 

The facts of the attack can be summarized in a paragraph but the implications and the affect are far-reaching and beyond comprehension.  Whatever our connection to the tragedy, we all witnessed it live.  I would bet that nobody in America was more than three degrees of separation from it.

 

"Beyond comprehension" I say that because even 14 years later I can't really wrap my head around it.  There are the people on the planes, the people who almost boarded one of the planes, the people who were sliced by the box cutters, the people who witnessed the slicing, the people who were on other non-hijacked planes, the people who were rerouted and/or stranded,  the friends/loved ones of all the above.  The workers in the buildings, the people who had visited the buildings, the first responders, the people who had to run from the debris, the people who jumped.

 

In order to attempt to wrap your head around it all you have to give consideration to every level of trauma and today we even have to embrace the POV of people who were too young to get it or particularly care at all.  I too am torn between 'it's time to move on' and 'remember.'

 

Sometimes I think of America as a big, shaggy dog--fetching and slobbering and hoping that people will love us--and 9/11 as the big reality slap that No, lots of people don't love us and think we got what we deserved.  Some of those people are here in America.  The gratitude I feel for all the international people who expressed sympathy is juxtaposed with the images of people celebrating our grief.

 

Ideally we need to move on without forgetting.  I don't know exactly how to find that middle ground but I believe that it can be found in democracy.  Even if 80% of the people are wrong in either extreme, the average is pretty good.

[NoneofYourBiz]

Litechick, posts like your last one always make me wish for a like button.

TN, see Carly Fiorina's tremendous response to Donald Trump's comments about her face, not to mention the ad she ran after he said it, to see how a person handles a microaggression with class.

[Errant Bard]

Likewise, people who complain that American reminiscences are too self-centered seem smug, like they are trying to fit the evidence to the crime.  If you find Americans to be narcissistic, you have a right to your opinion but I don't think that our observation of 9/11 is proof of that.

The posts you refer to are not about narcissism or self-centeredness, but about the way the event is expressed. I'm not sure it is narcissism to recount an external event in a way that makes you a bit more part of it... is it?

 

Sometimes I think of America as a big, shaggy dog--fetching and slobbering and hoping that people will love us--and 9/11 as the big reality slap that No, lots of people don't love us and think we got what we deserved. Some of those people are here in America.  The gratitude I feel for all the international people who expressed sympathy is juxtaposed with the images of people celebrating our grief.

It's all part of the different reactions that you mentioned a bit before: the levels of trauma, those who don't care, and those who do care in a way or another. Isn't it incredibly normal that some people in the world would cheer at a terrorist attack results?

The way you simplify it is uncomfortable, it seems like even with your presentation of the complexity of wrapping your head around it, it boils down to :

• Your society is not fragmented: if they are not traumatized, the citizen in question are either too young or un-american.
• America has done nothing wrong to anyone over the years and in fact is just some puppy wanting to be loved.
• Internationally, people are either loving you or hating you, no middle ground.

Such tragedy naturally strike the nationalistic fibre, but even before 2001, the US were not "fetching and slobbering and hoping people would love them", they were a world superpower, involved in many shady businesses, perceived by some as arrogant, nosy and irrespectful on the international scene, tyrannical in the economical area, and they were certainly not looking only for love but for power and resources and security too and foremost.