Trivial Point

[danalwyn]

It seems crude to post 9-11 comments on 9-11, so I postponed a day, but here's a thought. According to the US Census's International Data Base, about 18% of the world's population is too young to remember September 11th. That means that within a few months one in five people on Earth will have been born after 9-11. For one-fifth of the people alive now, 9-11 will always have the kind of hazy distance to it that Vietnam had to my generation, and that World War II had for the Cold War generation.

The rest of the world is moving on. They've had larger tragedies, greater problems, and challenges that cut much closer to home. Many of them have put it behind them, and now an increasingly large number will never have had it in front of them. They are moving on. Hopefully, having marked off the ten year anniversary, the US can now do the same.

Comments

[silverjackal]

I wonder how much is really the failure of the U.S. to move on, and how much is an illusion creating by media vulturing? Because we had an orgy of 9/11 stories here, and the cause was even more evidently transparent, given that the tragedy didn't strike our soil or our citizenry. Many barrels were scraped to produce stories with an ostensible local slant. It seems like the general media has developed and almost OCD focus, where the story du jour is a hobby horse to be ridden until it breaks, long after the subject matter has currency or relevance while ignoring other news which is internationally important, but which can not be turned into a domestic cause célèbre.

[danalwyn]

I wonder how much the media has to say in this. All sorts of countries find it useful to revel in their past tragedies. It seems to soothe the conscience, to remind us that we are the aggrieved parties, the victims, and that it is our sorrows that are somehow sharper and more poignant then those of unknown others. The media seems to be the transmitter for this behavior, but I think its origin is psychological and deep within ourselves. Secretly we are all the victims in our own delusional tragedies.

[silverjackal]

It's not just tragedies, though. This type of obsessive focus is about a variety of things, like the recent royal visit we had here. The media went on and on and on and *on*. Before they came. While they were here. After they left. It was like nothing else was happening in the world. And then there's a little more diversity, and a bit of a broader range of stories, until the next "big thing" hits, and again it's worn to tatters before the media finally lets it go.