My senses and sensibilities have been taken from me by our government

[Stinky The Clown]

I awoke this morning to see the reading of names from Ground Zero. Ordinarily an event like this would move me (I'm a sappy kinda guy under ordinary circumstances).

But this morning I watched them reading names. In place of the grief and sadness I expected to feel, there was anger. And not toward the terrorists. Toward our GOVERNMENT.

I KNOW what I should feel. I know what I WANT to feel. But I can't.

I sould be feeling deep empathy for those sad women sadly reading the names of their lost loved ones. I should be feeling anger toward the ones directly responsible for this.

But I can't. I can't find those emotions inside me. My filter is so akimbo, so out of whack, so distorted, so overworked, that EVERYthing gets filtered through a political screen.

What has become of me?

I changed to the real time rerun of the actual events being shown on MSNBC. Amazingly, that's better. In reliving the events of five years ago, I am able to direct my emotions more appropriately toward the men who did these awful acts.

Just how fucked are we that a man who is otherwise normal and rational is unable to feel appropriate emotions?

The phrase 'coup d'etat' keeps going through my head, too.

I need to turn the teevee off.

But I can't.

[Mist]

1. Just maybe the emotions you feel nowadays are appropriate for

the times. I feel the same way.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Stinky The Clown]

3. I envy you your clarity of vision .....

..... presumably borne not of any lack of insight, but of a safe certitude that we are who we thing we are.

[unpossibles]

4. I see what you mean, but it's far more complex than that

while the people who actually plotted and carried out the attack are definitely guilty, would you also not cast blame on someone who seemingly could have stopped the attack and chose not to?

Or who seemed to know about it, but chose to ignore the warnings?

Or who misdirected the 'return fire' to a country who was not involved, thus killing a far greater number of innocent people than were killed here on 9/11?

Or who has destroyed the very rights which give us our freedom, that same freedom which those attackers allegedly hate?




I don't blame the victims - the ~3000 people who died, and their families and friends - but I do blame the people who's job it is to protect America and to protect the Constitution, and have done neither in their own grab for power, glory, and wealth. I find their behavior 100% inexcusable and am not alone. Perhaps you can explain better why they are not equally to blame.

[welshTerrier2]

5. spinning around in circles

the time of impact came and went again this morning ... i felt an overwhelming sadness ... i see so many things wrong that led to the insanity of 9/11 ...

guilt and innocence are tumbling around together like children playing in a laundromat dryer ... it's not quite as easy to define the "who did whats" as some would have us believe ...

and i ask about the Middle East: "why do they hate us" ... and i answer that we have stomped with our big American feet all over their lands ... we have imposed our corporate greed on them ... we have imposed our military on them ... we have imposed our culture on them ... all for oil ...we talk in terms of the loss of "innocent lives" ... to be sure, many who died in this colossal tragedy were indeed innocent ...

but i can't help but reflect on the presence of so many stockbrokers whose companies were housed in the WTC ... and i reflect on how they bought and sold commodities and corporate stocks ... they did so "one cool remove" from the morality underlying the conduct of the companies they bought and sold ...

these stockbrokers, unfocussed and probably unaware and unconcerned, traded in the currency of the evil that came down around them ... i ascribe no malice to them ...

but still, we continue to raise generation after generation of "the great unaware" ... perhaps they are innocent; perhaps they bear some responsibility for their blindness ...

a great thread on a truly sad, and yes, angering, day ... k&r !!