Saturday, 22 September 2001

From the Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages: Whooping It Up.  Note that I don’t condone any of the actions described, and I certainly don’t condone terrorist activity.  The piece itself may well be totally biased and not representative of the general world.  It is still an important piece to read—not to inflame yourself to greater heights of patriotism and paranoia, but to think hard about why the people described in that piece feel the way they do.  It didn’t happen overnight, or for no reason.  You will probably be angered by what you read, but ask yourself this: what are all the roots of my anger?  What about the anger of the people in the story; what are its roots? Does it have any legitimacy at all, even in part?

As I said to a colleague recently, “I’m afraid that [an attack] will happen again, and even worse, I’m afraid it will happen because we missed the moment, in our pain and grief, to really listen to the world around us.”  While he agreed with me, I think this is probably the worst possible time to ask (most of) my countrymen to think, let alone listen to anything except “God Bless America” for the ninetieth time.

Anyway, if this posting offends you, I feel very sorry for that, but again I urge you to ask this question of yourself, so long as you resolve to honestly answer yourself:  for what reason(s) do I feel offended?

• Saturday, 22 September 2001 was published on Saturday, September 22nd, 2001.
• It was assigned to the Politics category.
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