Anniversary rant

This farce which is what the media and public coverage of September 11 has become is officially worse than Christmas, I think.

God help us if we've gotta put up with this every year! I hate to sound heartless, but this outpouring of mourning on the anniversary of September 11 (from people who only knew of it via the media) doesn't appear to me to be a very constructive thing. People, instead of getting on with their lives and realising maybe how precious their lives and their loved ones are, are dwelling on the past, crying over people they didn't even know at the other side of the world and vowing revenge against a faceless enemy (usually someone who looks very different and doesn't live next door). It's psychologically unhealthy to dwell on this sort of tragedy.

All this rhetoric about an assault on democracy and the free world utterly disgusts me too. They attacked a large building which was fairly important in a country known for its aggressive foreign policy, which is not beyond destroying millions of innocent civilians for essentially political reasons. America, or for that matter any Western nation, is not truly free - it's just bound by a different set of dogmas. The fact they seem familiar to us, living in an individualistic/capitalist Western society heavily influenced by Christianity, is the only reason that we take them for granted and assume they are right.

There is so much heartache and tragedy already in modern society.
It's different if you knew somebody who died, or lived in the area - that I can very much understand and my thoughts are with you.

But for the others, I ask you, why does this matter so much to you? I don't want to hear an answer that I could get by turning on my radio or opening my newspaper (which I've chosen not to do today). I'm asking *you* personally, if you feel that way, why *you* feel that way. Why does this tragedy, as opposed to other tragedies which may even be on a much bigger scale, matter so much? Is it because of the media attention given to it by our American-dominated commercial television networks? Do your thoughts merely echo what was said on these networks?

OK, I'm over it. Back to work. :)


Update: The first anniversary was also the last to be truly commemorated. I came out of my 2003 blackout a day early to find noone was talking about it. It's amazing how quickly the US squandered their goodwill from 2001.