Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats

blotsfan

blotsfan

I love that story. The girl said she hasn't decided how she's going to vote, but it sounds like she's leaning towards voting against the tax.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Hey guys, it's the most important day in America! Don't forget about it; it's like the 4th of July, except instead of being proud of what our country's accomplished in the past, the government gets to use our victim status from 14 years ago to do whatever it wants to the world and us, and we'll defend them for it. Remember when you're tweeting today hashtag NeverForget, hashtag NeverForget9-11, hashtag RedWhiteBlue, hashtag GoNSAweluvu, hashtag 9-11Forever.

In related news: I should not have started my day by visiting Facebook.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

Zero Esc said:
Hey guys, it's the most important day in Belgium!
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I dunno, it's just our former queen's birthday...


But we can also remember the 12,000 civilians who died in an RAF bombardment of Darmstadt, I guess, and try to remember and avoid unnecessary casualties of war; the horrors it can cause, and hope/pray for a better world where such death doesn't happen all that often, perhaps work together towards a peaceful future.

Or

use our victim status from 14 years ago to do whatever we want to the world
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that, that works too, I guess :p



*No disrespect intended towards anyone who suffered or was affected by WTC attacks. The suffering of the people involved was real and trauma and pain can and do linger decades afterwards. I'm not minimizing their suffering or the size of the attack. I'm only mocking America's we're-the-one-huzzah-oh-my-god-someone-attacked-us-this-can't-be-rhetoric connected to this one attack on American soil. More presumed innocent civilians have died each month over the last years to terrorist attacks in Iraq than have been killed in the WTC.
 
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SpecialKO

SpecialKO

Bubble181 said:
No disrespect intended towards anyone who suffered or was affected by WTC attacks. The suffering of the people involved was real and trauma and pain can and do linger decades afterwards. I'm not minimizing their suffering or the size of the attack. I'm only mocking America's we're-the-one-huzzah-oh-my-god-someone-attacked-us-this-can't-be-rhetoric connected to this one attack on American soil. More presumed innocent civilians have died each month over the last years to terrorist attacks in Iraq than have been killed in the WTC.
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I am fortunate to have not lost anyone directly (though it was fucking close, my friend stayed home from work that day because she felt sick, JFC), but from my perspective as a NYCer then and almost everyone I have talked to since, none taken whatsoever. Most of us were pretty fucking pissed that our tragedy got used as as tool to push us into a completely unrelated war while also making it somehow acceptable to replace our national character with pants-shitting terror thinly veiled by a veneer of bellicose militant grandstanding.
 
jwhouk

jwhouk

Is it bad form to admit that things did in fact change on that day?

Maybe a bit more significantly than on other days, of course, but still.
 
Denbrought

Denbrought

In the let's-commemorate-bloodshed-and-terrorism vein, it's also Catalonia's national day. The somber acts were this morning, and now (nearing 17:14h local time) a huge demonstration (in keeping with the yearly acts) is about to start.

If you don't mind it being narrated in foreign gibberish, here's a live feed to the funtimes: http://www.ccma.cat/tv3/directe/324/

And here's a shoddily written (in the sense that it assumes a level of knowledge and nuance that's a notch beyond what a general non-regional audience has) article about what's been happening lately (best English write-up I could find in short notice): https://news.vice.com/article/there...-immediate-collision-course-over-independence
 
Tress

Tress

I will spend a good chunk of my day teaching 9/11 to my students, none of whom were alive before 2001. It's tricky, because many of them come in with a simple "terrorists are evil, we fight wars to stop evil" mindset. I have to find the right balance of teaching that this is the anniversary of a great tragedy, terrorists ARE evil, but that things are not so black and white when it comes to war, motivations, and international relations. It's hard. I'm trying to teach without preach, and I definitely want them to make up their own minds... But sometimes they have dumb ideas that need to be squashed.
 
Denbrought

Denbrought

Tress said:
I will spend a good chunk of my day teaching 9/11 to my students, none of whom were alive before 2001. It's tricky, because many of them come in with a simple "terrorists are evil, we fight wars to stop evil" mindset. I have to find the right balance of teaching that this is the anniversary of a great tragedy, terrorists ARE evil, but that things are not so black and white when it comes to war, motivations, and international relations. It's hard. I'm trying to teach without preach, and I definitely want them to make up their own minds... But sometimes they have dumb ideas that need to be squashed.
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The perspective I'm largely fond of is the one Garth Ennis put in The Boys (the whole series, really, but quoting #35 and #36 here).




(Alternate History where an arguably more competent POTUS heeds the intelligence community's warnings and has most of the 9/11 hijacked planes shot down, except for one, which hits the Brooklyn Bridge)
 
DarkAudit

DarkAudit

Tress said:
I will spend a good chunk of my day teaching 9/11 to my students, none of whom were alive before 2001. It's tricky, because many of them come in with a simple "terrorists are evil, we fight wars to stop evil" mindset. I have to find the right balance of teaching that this is the anniversary of a great tragedy, terrorists ARE evil, but that things are not so black and white when it comes to war, motivations, and international relations. It's hard. I'm trying to teach without preach, and I definitely want them to make up their own minds... But sometimes they have dumb ideas that need to be squashed.
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The very fact that the iPhone (among scores of other things) exists is proof that in spite of all the rhetoric, we are very much NOT at war. Where is the sacrifice? Where is the reallocation of resources and manpower to prosecute said nonexistent war? We still make consumer goods out the wazoo and encourage the public to "go shopping" in the same breath that tells us we are "at war."

That's not war, that's a political circle jerk.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

SpecialKO said:
I am fortunate to have not lost anyone directly (though it was fucking close, my friend stayed home from work that day because she felt sick, JFC), but from my perspective as a NYCer then and almost everyone I have talked to since, none taken whatsoever. Most of us were pretty fucking pissed that our tragedy got used as as tool to push us into a completely unrelated war while also making it somehow acceptable to replace our national character with pants-shitting terror thinly veiled by a veneer of bellicose militant grandstanding.
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This this this this fucking this.
 
blotsfan

blotsfan

Tress said:
I will spend a good chunk of my day teaching 9/11 to my students, none of whom were alive before 2001. It's tricky, because many of them come in with a simple "terrorists are evil, we fight wars to stop evil" mindset. I have to find the right balance of teaching that this is the anniversary of a great tragedy, terrorists ARE evil, but that things are not so black and white when it comes to war, motivations, and international relations. It's hard. I'm trying to teach without preach, and I definitely want them to make up their own minds... But sometimes they have dumb ideas that need to be squashed.
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I still can't comprehend that functioning people were born after 9/11. I was only 9 when it happened, but its still something I will never forget. The concept of it being something you just hear about in history is bizzare. I suppose thats probably what people think about the fall of the berlin wall, the jfk assasination, pearl harbor, etc.
 
Krisken

Krisken

That's how I felt about the wall falling. Just comprehending people who had no idea what it was like during the cold war blows my mind. The 911 thing just seems like another weird, awful event to me.
 
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