Kara, many of us who experienced it in the immediacy--I was not in NYC at the time but all my family was affected directly and many, many friends and acquaintances--did, I think, have a rather different response than those, perhaps as you say "from Missouri (where I now live)" for whom "9/11" has become a mantra of hate and division. How…
Kara, many of us who experienced it in the immediacy--I was not in NYC at the time but all my family was affected directly and many, many friends and acquaintances--did, I think, have a rather different response than those, perhaps as you say "from Missouri (where I now live)" for whom "9/11" has become a mantra of hate and division. However, I would suggest that Giuliani, for all the immediacy of his experience, has been one of the leaders of the conversion of "9/11" into such a mantra. Each person takes away something different. I would also suggest that location is not necessarily the primary reason for a particular response. After all, many of those who experienced the horrors of the OK City bombing were among the most jingoistic of supporters of anti-Muslim propaganda and war against the "other." I have been to that memorial, which is beautiful and sad and poignant. The thought that people who erected that monument to the fallen would then encourage the slaughter of thousands in "retribution" for "9/11" is bewildering to me. But then, I live in a reality-based world.
Kara, many of us who experienced it in the immediacy--I was not in NYC at the time but all my family was affected directly and many, many friends and acquaintances--did, I think, have a rather different response than those, perhaps as you say "from Missouri (where I now live)" for whom "9/11" has become a mantra of hate and division. However, I would suggest that Giuliani, for all the immediacy of his experience, has been one of the leaders of the conversion of "9/11" into such a mantra. Each person takes away something different. I would also suggest that location is not necessarily the primary reason for a particular response. After all, many of those who experienced the horrors of the OK City bombing were among the most jingoistic of supporters of anti-Muslim propaganda and war against the "other." I have been to that memorial, which is beautiful and sad and poignant. The thought that people who erected that monument to the fallen would then encourage the slaughter of thousands in "retribution" for "9/11" is bewildering to me. But then, I live in a reality-based world.