(no subject)

[changeling]

Jeezus! Can you people stop posting? 300 posts is far too many for one day. I know I normally bitch about not having enough to read, but I'd planned on doing more this evening than catching up on my friends list. And I skimmed. Dammit, I only had an hour and a half!


Where has QueerasJohn gone?? I thought he was keeping his old username... Woe, I tell you, WOE. I really hope he undeletes it soon.


I have no emotional connexion to September 11. I mark this here because I have been hearing about it all day. Do you know what happened on September 11 30 years ago? Pinochet took over Chile with the help of the military. An estimated 3,000 people were killed or "disappeared" because of that regime. That's something we should all think about. (Yes, I listen to Triple J. This is the only reason why I know this.) This event is now unrecognised, because of one act of terror against a nation that previously thought itself invulnerable. Whose government actually supported and encouraged Pinochet's takeover. And by the way, I didn't even feel particularly emotionally connected to the "Bali bombings", where Australians actually died. The self-righteous bleatings of White Men In Power doesn't help me connect to the dramatic impact of these events, and I still maintain that worse tragedies are happening all over the world, any day of the week. The US has facilitated this with their invasion of Iraq, but even before that...

Think famine relief posters of small children with malnutrition-fed pot bellies, with flies feeding off their sweat.
Think of people under oppressive regimes where having a blog and speaking your opinion of your government and country could get you killed, and your family murdered.
Think of women abused by their husbands. Think husbands abused by their wives (which happens, although it's likely to get ignored). Think four year old girls and boys never learning to trust because everytime they're babysat by their uncle, he hurts them and touches them in private places.

I understand your own personal pain, and the fact that this tragedy is important to you, but please THINK. If you were thinking, you'd know that September 11 was inevitable with America's "Big Brother" foreign policy. Do something about it. Write to your congressman (or -woman). Run for government. Campaign. If all that's a bit too much, for deity's sake VOTE. Australia's voting may be compulsory, but I signed up at 17 in preparation. I couldn't wait to have my voice heard, even if it was lost amidst the rabble voting for the Liberals and National Party members.


Hmm. That's a whole lot of post for an event whose significance in my mind more in America's violent reaction/retaliation than anything else. I'm getting jaded. (Getting?)


Misty, Nat and Sara came over tonight, and we worked on putting our notebooks together. It took ages (as I'd suspected), and we got very little done. Much fun, though. I cut out the covers, and covered the back one. That was it. Ah, well.


Only one more day left at Current Job. I hope I can stay awake... I spent most of today needing matchsticks.

Comments

[scott-wells.livejournal.com]

*Applauds*

Excellent. I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

Thanks. It's nice to have people of a like mind. :D

[ex-fastertha931.livejournal.com]

Hear hear. Just happened to surf by through "friendsfriends" page and saw your entry. Well-spoken.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

*bows* Thanks. It's something I feel passionately about.

[mattador.livejournal.com]

Amen to that.

[jessindistress.livejournal.com]

Notebooks? The bound books you're making?
*is interested*

~Jess

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we're making notebooks. To write in. :D

[jessindistress.livejournal.com]

Brilliant!!! :D

[billradish.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying anything about it in my journal unless the hype gets too bad on my friends page (and so far, most related posts I'm seeing are like yours. how strange) but I feel much the same way.

What really pisses me off though are the people who end up doing things that I consider disrespectful to the country in 'honor' of 9/11. Last year and after the bombings, a house near me put out this big flag...which they hung upside down and let trail on the ground...right next to the road where the mud puddles and litter got splashed up on it. I might be wrong, but I thought an upside down flag meant surrender...and the rest of it's just rude. It makes me nuts.

[scott-wells.livejournal.com]

I believe it means distress rather than surrender, which is rather apt. The rest is rude however...

[gaski.livejournal.com]

I was confused when I saw that John deleted his journal, but I think he might have done it due to the date and such. Atleast it sounds like a plausible explanation in my head, so I'm crossing my fingers for that being the reason. It'd suck if he just disappeared.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

It was for another reason. all sorted out now, thank goodness. :)

[mystrylane.livejournal.com]

Even as an American, I felt completely anattached to 9/11. Maybe I'm unemotional, maybe I've read too many books and seen movies, or maybe I feel that it was bound to happen. It pisses me off that the US is anit-environment and anti-schools but pro-war, pro-Christainity, and pro-idiocy.

But you're right, there's so many more important things to fight. And I will vote in the next election. They just make it difficult for college kids to vote via absentee ballot. One more year until the US changes governments. One more anniversary of September 11.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

It pisses me off that the US is anti-environment and anti-schools but pro-war, pro-Christianity, and pro-idiocy.
Alas, they're not alone; we abuse our environment terribly, and it saddens me that so much money that could go into education is being wasted in Iraq.

I think Howard would be really happy if we were all Christians. Probably. He's not quite as fanatical as Bush is, thank god. He's more a pro-monarchy man.

[sidherian.livejournal.com]

Well said. I was listening to JJJ as well.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I felt so sorry for that woman, how she talked about the way the Reagan administration had taken everything from Chile, and now they've taken their day of mourning as well.

[icefalcon.livejournal.com]

Amen!

I dislike the undertone in a lot of the hype that presumes than loss of an an American life is so much more important than the loss of any other life. An American life is an infinitely precious thing - just like every single other person's life.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

I dislike the undertone in a lot of the hype that presumes than loss of an an American life is so much more important than the loss of any other life. An American life is an infinitely precious thing - just like every single other person's life.

Yes! That was what I was blindly reacting to. Thank you!

[tocomfortyou.livejournal.com]

No.

Yes, I understand the world is a dangerous place and this is not the worst thing to happen in the world in the past 30 years.

Yes, I understand that our foreign policy helped create this worldwide hatred of the US.

Yes, I understand that our retaliation and everything else after 9/11 has been reckless and there's so much wrong I can't begin to start.

But September 11?

This is not about Bush. This is not about the government. This is not about Donald Rumsfeld. This is not about invasions or weapons of mass destruction or liberation or autocracies or self righteousness or the United Nations.

This is about waking up on a clear Tuesday morning to watch the economic symbol of the nation collapse, to watch 2,000 people perish due simply to the fact that they woke up and went to work. This is about realizing that even on the West Coast of the US, people have died. This is about realizing the next telephone call we recieve could be a loved one saying goodbye. This is about calling every person in New York to see if they're safe and not being able to get a call because the antenna just went down with somebody's father. This is about waking up to a painfully cruel autumn morning and the fact that there are people out there who hate us so much they would kill our children, they would kill me and they would dance in the streets afterwards and proclaim themselves merchants of faith.

There were no politics that morning, there were no declarations of our country being the best or the most powerful. There was only fear and shock and the thought that you were next.

So pardon me while I cry today because my country came of age at 6 A.M. in the morning two years ago today and we're still in shock. It is always a tragedy when peace is replaced with terror, whether it occurs in America or France or Ethiopia or the Czech Republic. Our own progress became our hubris and it stings every time I duck as a plane flies over. It stings every time I drive past the nuclear labs downtown and wonder how strong a target I am. It stings every time I go through a metal dector, every time our school has a lockdown drill, every time a news bulletin interrupts my programming, every time I get a phone call early in the morning, and it stings when I read a list of the dead that never seems to end.

9/11 was not about politics. It was about people.

[salix-03.livejournal.com]

welcome to the rest of the world!

[tocomfortyou.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, because it certainly salvages my grief to know the rest of the world experiences this pain on a regular basis. Nothing helps ease the pain than knowing the rest of the world has seen so much devastation they grow indifferent to tragedies. Pardon my naivety and inexperience in the ways of terrorism and mass carnage. Allow me to pack my bags for Israel, please hold.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

This is exactly the right reaction. This is a reaction I can agree with. I agree with you, it's not about politics. That's precisely what I'm trying to say. I can't connect with a patriotic 9/11. But people grieving people? That makes sense.

Just don't expect me to grieve with you. I can empathise, but I didn't lose anyone. It's not my country. It would be hypocritical of me to beat my breast and cry "woe is me!" I think that would be the worst thing I could do, because it would cheapen your fears and sadness.

Do I feel deeply sad for my American friends this has affected? Yes. Just don't try to get me caught up in flag waving. It's not my flag, and Australians have a different method of dealing with such issues.

[tocomfortyou.livejournal.com]

Oh, I wouldn't expect you too. I don't feel a particular grief over the Bali bombings, even though I know it's affected you Australians deeply; I wouldn't expect you guys to wave flags for us. It's just that I was deeply offended when checking my flist last night to see some posts talking about Bush and how stupid our country is and whatnot, and I just wanted to shake a fist at them and say "This. Is. Not. The. Time." And I'm tired of seeing my country defined by its politicians. Why does everybody do that? I don't define a country by Yassar Arafat or Jacques Chirac or Tony Blair, why does the international community find it perfectly acceptable to define my homeland by the actions of a man who recieved less than half of the country's votes, who goes against the opinion of the citizens, who overrides the wishes of the population? But I'm digressing again.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

I actually have little grief over the Bali bombings. I didn't know anyone, and it seems like most of the casualties were AFL players. I don't even like AFL, and I resented the media capitalising on the fact that they were famous.

I must say that my first reaction to the BB was that this was going to hurt Bali more than us; they rely so much on their tourism. This wasn't mentioned in the media until the second or third round of reporting.

Australia really isn't into flag waving much, really, nor are we really into the idea of patriots; certainly not the word. I think we as a culture would feel a great distrust to that sort of national identity. Our greatest heroes are Ned Kelly (a bushranger) and Don Bradman (a cricketer). I spent part of the year that we did Australian history learning about things like our aversion to the tall poppy syndrome, our general distrust of authority, etc etc. There is a certain culture here where we don't trust leaders with charisma, it's said. Paul Keating did some really good things for Australia, particularly in our relationship with Asia, but I think it was partly his charisma and arrogance that were his downfall. Howard is the anti-Keating. He has no charisma. He doesn't even have what Pratchett describes as charisn'tma: being so bad he's fascinating. Bill Bryson described him perfectly, which is in my journal here.

The problem with all countries everywhere, is that stupidity tends to rule. People are frightened, or not-clever, or lazy, or scared, and we vote in people like Bush. Or Howard. Or Blair. Granted, neither Bush or Howard got 50% of the vote, but they still got a whole lot. (I should note here that Howard didn't steal the election like Bush did, it's just that the Liberals [who are conservative, not liberal, in their politics] have a coalition with the National party in order to form government. The Liberal party did not have over 50% of the vote on their own. I think this sort of banding together should be illegal.)

I'm much better about separating the state from its leaders these days, ever since my ex-pat-American friend came and ranted at us about how some dickwit at her work had had the nerve to assume she wanted this war... because she was American. I'm not always as good at making it clear that the leaders and the countries are two different things.

That being said, as a member of The Rest Of The World (TM), the reason why we rant so much about your gov't, particularly at the moment, is because it has so much power over our lives. We didn't vote for those bozos! (Neither did half of America, but at least you had the option of voting for or against them. Unless you were in Florida, and they removed you from the list. But get the picture.) There is a real Axis of Evil, and its names are Howard, Blair and Bush. None of these three countries really deserve these three or their compatriates. No one deserves them. The AoE(TM) deserve to be buried up to their necks in elephant dung. Unfortunately we seem to be stuck with them, worse luck.

Basically, a lot of this comes down to celebrity. America is like the Hollywood of the world. (Or something. Hey, it made sense in my head.) You cop a lot of flak for this and everyone watches your every move. It's a hard-knock life, as those little scamps from Annie sing.

[tocomfortyou.livejournal.com]

Yeah, see, one great thing about Americans is that we're actually very wary about our actions. Perhaps you can't see it when you're not in the country, but for every issue, there is *always* another side to the argument, and we always try and think about how we appear to the rest of the world. We're like our own line of stylists and PR guys and hairdressers, but even they can't keep an actor from making a bad career move. The only thing that's every truly bothered me about the world's conceptions re:my country is attacks on our patriotism/nationalism.

My dad quoted someone and it's always stuck with me: "When you open a country's borders, which way do the people run?"

America always has a sense of unity, even though it's usually very small, etc. But I remember Bill Bryson mentioning in Travels in Small-Town America about the kindness of strangers. For the most part, ask someone the time or ask for directions or ask what's nice in this town, and we'll answer you, pretty cheerful, even though we don't know you. Sure, there are the assholes and the crazies and the thugs, but there's a dark side in every society. But that same kind of greeting foreigners seem to elicit is also felt by natural-born citizens like myself.

We feel proud because we literally built this country ourselves. Yes, of course, we had help from other countries and we wouldn't have won the Revolutionary War without France and a number of other European countries, but we left Britain and we made our own rules and we governed ourselves and we grew to become the most powerful country in the world. So yes, we're proud of ourselves. I love my country deeply in a way others can't feel. After we started invading Iraq and Afghanistan, other people talked about moving to France, and I found myself asking, How? To love this country, just as any other, you have to acknowledge its faults and mistakes.

Perhaps the world reads it as 'standoffisness' and 'elitism', but we like to do things on our own. Hell, before Bush invaded Iraq, we'd never instigated a war. It took Pearl Harbor to get us into WWII and it took September 11 to get us into Afghanistan – the only way Bush got us into Iraq was by using September 11 as a 'legitimate' attack, although Iraq had nothing to do about it. We have our own businesses and brilliant people and quaint customs and small towns and dazzling cities, and I love it, all of it. We have our homeless and our criminals and our mistakes and I love those as well.

But I can vote in an election without having to worry about getting shot. Our politicians (usually) don't beat each other up and order hits on one another. Our education is free. The country's biggest problem is having too much. Excluding Bush and all his bullshit, we're a pretty independent country and we like it that way.

I'm tired of seeing other people bash our country. Bash our government and I'll understand. Bash certain people and I'll understand and agree. But to ridicule an entire population? To attack a country for being proud of itself? I want to ask the rest of the world, "What is your problem?" Most of us will never even realize what an influence we have on the rest of the world. We don't seem that big back here at home. In our minds, we don't seem like the Popular Kids who get all the stuff, we don't seem like the Bullies who push everybody around until we get our way. We seem like the kids who came from nothing and built our way up to a great job, with a lot of friends and lots of children, and we're proud of it. I wish the world would stop thinking that's an evil thing.

I apologize for the scattered, schizophrenic nature of this response. I'm a little unwieldy right now.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

It's cool. Like my own responses aren't schizoid. :)
*nods* We understand.

Uh... my comment was too long, so I've posted it as an entry. Damn character limit...

[nys.livejournal.com]

hear hear... i couldn't agree with you more.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

I felt it needed to be said. ;)

[fineliner.livejournal.com]

Hmmz, I think it's good to distinguish between "I hate America's politics and think Sep 11 was the logical consequence of its foreign interventionism" and "Americans therefore deserved what happened to them on Sep 11."

Terrorism -and- interventionism both arise out of the disempowerment of people in developing nations. Making a small monthly contribution to an aid agency like Plan (www.plan.org.au) is a good way to provide food, health, and education -- the basic building blocks for the more complex freedoms that will ultimately reduce America's influence.

Exactly.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

*smiles* I was giving to Oxfam, before I had 6 months of non-work. (I actually gave for a few months after that and consequentially got into debt.)

I really wish that the US's War Against Terror was just one big aid campaign. That's a war I could support.