Stop Me Before I Vote Again

MJS, you are so out-of-step with the times. New holidays, few as they were, were totally 20th century. The rich aren't quite sure where to park their money, so anything that costs them another nickel ain't happening. Not even this lovely drivel...

Remember that every university would ignore the Federal Holiday. At the rate we're going, next year it will be time for another security threat.

"Weeping firemen and jut-jawed policemen." Otherwise known as the working class. But objects of mockery, derision, and condescension here. And you wonder, MJS, what classism is supposed to mean.

"Nineeleven" may be a source of snickering from your lofty class perch, a cute phrase, a punch line. But to the lower orders --- you know, those members of the laboring classes for whom "lefties" claim to advocate ---"nineeleven" remains a source of mourning and a symbol of sacrifice. But, eh, who cares what they think? They're just The People.

""Nineeleven" may be a source of snickering from your lofty class perch, a cute phrase, a punch line"

I can't speak for MJS but I still mourn the lost on that day. I certainly don't have much truck for the shlockfest memorials that have come after it. And that's how I read his post. YMMV.

I'm glad you have a genuine regard for the sufferers and survivors, Geoff. There are not many who do. I doubt they've benefited at all from the rhetorical grave robbery, the unctuous and empty pieties and the hijacking of their tragedy that's been foisted on them for the last nine years. Nor have they benefited from being chiseled out of compensation. Symbolic gestures towards the suffering are a pretty shitty substitute for a genuine regard, don't you think?

I agree entirely, Al. Well said.

On Fox News a map shows that the 9/11 victims remains stretch all the way to the proposed 'mosque' site.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/fox-map-911-body-parts/

A much earlier revelation indicated that human remains from the 9/11 event were mixed with road-repair aggregate, extending the 'footprint' of 9/11 to an unknown extent. Somehow 'we' have gotten past that earlier misfortune. It was too complicated to fix. Something on the order of the mercury amalgam fillings problem.

Residing far from NYC and having long been aware that 9/11 type events occur all over the globe year after year, frequently with the participation of Uncle Sam's security apparatus (in which I was once a minor functionary), I have never been able to identify with the tragedy. Good people died then, good people have been dying ever since in the US revenge operations, and good people were dying long before 9/11 from US state terror operations.

I don't think that there is necessarily any classist element in MY emotional isolation from 9/11 or my unwillingness to be moved by the regular commemorations of the tragedy. The commemorations always seem manipulative to me, justifications for more imperialist stretch and extensions of what I regard as an infantilizing narrative.

This stuff always brings me back to the sage Oscar Wilde: "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing."

His point, I take it, was about resistance to emotional manipulation. That's why I decline to join these orgies of orchestrated grief: I don't have a heart of stone.

The Nineleven dead have not gone unnoticed. For whatever good it does them, their passing has been much remarked, and the occasion for floods of facile public tears, as well as much genuine private grief.

The private grief deserves to stay private. Taking it to market -- as too many of the Families have done -- debases it a lot more than anything I could say or do.

As for the public grief and piety -- the hell with it.

Geoff, the working class is not fond of schlock and manipulation. The people who cherish the glurge and the ghoulish symbols of victimhood are those with the time and money to develop anti-social neuroses. And believe me, there's no shortage of ridicule for them in bars where you can't smoke anymore.

Why do Geoff's posts seem to hold such an empty form of sincere empathy for The Labouring Classes? What's wrong with my Sincerity Detector, anyway?

You are an evil rethuglican agent provocateur trying to lead left leaning naifs away from their natural home with the noble democrats. Of course your sincerity sensors are fouled up. Be honest with yourself. Tear off that mask. Grab a tea bag and start swinging.