Double Flee A

snapshots

Remember "where were you", my post two days ago about how the question itself has taken on a life of its own?

Check out this document: http://www.scribd.com/doc/282415/Awesome-Military-photos-of-the-Twin-Towers

I quote the last page of it for those who have gotten burned when clicking links from here:

Yep, some people just want to forget. I think it's "high time" these memories were re awakened. How about you? Ron Burch, August 8, 2007

These amazingly familiar images of destruction have little to offer my imagination. I'm far more interested in this slideshow as an example of what actually affects my life, which is the mindset of those millions of true believers who dependably react to shock in predictable ways. Like the guy who wrote this and hasn't spent enough time doing fancy book-learnin' to construct any kind of coherent argument, or even to use the language (I will give you, yes, you, ten bucks if it's not the only one he speaks) correctly.

What interests and terrifies me is what this man's mind looks like. How can he think anyone's goal is to forget something? Take me for example, a person who complains about the repetitious parading of the same images, an endless exhibition that never becomes a discussion about what it means and what ought to be done about it? No, I'm not trying to forget anything, I'm just frightened by the monolith of resistance to do anything but worship every decision the military makes to go git 'em, regardless of who they are. So where has he been getting his information from?

Ok, now for a little us and them from my side of the street. People like me are sick of people like him sticking his flagpole in a national disaster like it's something to be proud of. He thinks somebody's winning something, or maybe losing it, if they don't pay heed when HE SAYS SO. How can one explain the appalling subhuman leap that equates this man's satisfaction with rubbing "their" face in 9/11?

My only theory: the world of a paranoiac is full of "thems." In the case of nine eleven, the first "them" was the people who had done this awful thing. The second wave of "them" was the unpatriotic ones whose reactions didn't match up with their own. So is the country full of paranoid people who are suffering from an inability to conceptualize what other people might be thinking? It can't all be that simple, but it's still a decent guess.

Aside from this theory, my astonishment and incomprehension is complete.

I can't abide being wheedled by someone who has nothing to say. Ron Burch can't read and write and yet he's preaching at me, just like a bumper sticker arrests the attention of anyone literate and unfortunate enough to look at it. This kind of oversimple tagging and branding serves to shred mental fabric, to stunt potential growth, and to therefore subdue and prevent mature, thoughtful discussions about anything. Ron Burch is what makes stupid happen. Way to go, dickhead.

Now I'm going to go think about something other than September eleventh. If it's all right with Ron Burch, intellectual midget.

posted by dale @ 6:53 PM