Jingoism and 911 ten years latter
Jingoism is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as extreme patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy. In practice, it is a country’s advocation of the use of threats or actual force against other countries in order to safeguard what it perceives as its national interests. Colloquially, it refers to excessive bias in judging one’s own country as superior to others – an extreme type of nationalism.
Yes that’s what the 911 anniversay memorials have become. The memorial celebrations I witnessed on the TV box today were more about saber rattling than remembering those who lost their lives. More about revenge than honoring those brave people who gave up their lives to save others.
I have sympathy for those who lost loved ones but I too have lost loved ones, two friends and a cousin who died because their insurance companies refused to authorize diagagnostic tests until it was too late, but at some point you have to move on. Yes, over 3,000 people lost their lives that day but many more than that lose their lives every year as the result of air pollution – drunk drivers, and the list goes on. Over 6,000 of America’s finest have lost their lives fighting unwinable wars that were spawned by 911 and by all indication that number will continue to grow for years.
12 Responses to “Jingoism and 911 ten years latter”
What is the “Mission Statement” of the United States? I don’t think anybody knows. One thing is for sure, it does NOT mean take care of your own.
Wow, funny how perception changes reality.
I listened to NPR’s coverage most of the day. I found this:
to be the complete opposite of what I heard. Only the Chairman of the Joint Chief’s statements at the Pentagon came close to “saber rattling”, and, well, it is the Pentagon, after all …
By odd coincidence, this is the week I decided to ignore both jingoism-and the near-Pavlovian impulse to apologize for loving one’s country (one of the less attractive academic affectations of our time.)
genefinneran,
I believe that I love my country just about as much as any American—have 20 years of service to prove such—but the love for my country impels me to speak up when I feel our government is doing something I believe is wrong, or when I feel my country is moving in the wrong direction—economically, socially, politically…
One would hope you would speak up !
By the same token, one would hope you would not cringe in self-abasement as some of our “notables” have done.
Here is a recent example:
On this occasion of 9/11, it has become even clearer to much of the world just who the evil is.
Where is the memorial for the countless innocent people we’ve slaughtered in the name of 9/11?
WE … MELTED babies ALIVE with white phosphorus in Iraq. Melted the skin right off them .. while they were still alive.
WE mass-murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Blew them into bits and blasted them with high-powered weapons. Children .. babies .. families.
Blasted them out of existence as if they were video game people .. and now we can video game them to death for real with drones.
We’re still mass-murdering innocent people .. boys collecting firewood .. little girls at a wedding .. and we do this evil all in the name of 9/11 .. an event so ridiculous you’d have to be a potato to believe that bullshit.
The most evil people on the planet with no conscience, no sense of humanity .. and obviously also one of the dumbest.
Welcome to America.
This was published on another site just yesterday -and all I could say was: “Gee ! Thanks for sharing that !”
genefinneran,
I know that within five minutes I can Google up dozens of much more odious statements from a few extreme left- and extreme right-wing web sites. But, what point would I be making? That there are a few web sites and a few people (relatively speaking compared to the vast majority of decent Americans)that can say some despicable things?
I believe we have always known that…
genefinneran,
Which of those statements is inaccurate?
Because as far as I can tell we have done all of those things and then some over the last 10 years.
Quelcrist: Thank you for proving my point !
ps: In case anyone is wondering where I’m soming from, this may help:
http://genefinneran.typepad.com/finneran_lane/2009/06/politics-and-clocks.html
Gene,
I did go to your site. Neat. I especially like the poetry, in particular the 9/11 one
Thanks
Your point, being?
I wish that more posts like this would have been written on the two-year anniversary of 9/11, when public support for the Iraq War was over 60%, the proportion of Americans who believed that Iraq was directly responsible for the September 11 attacks was 69%, and the mere suggestion that the Iraq War had not made America any safer was tantamount to political suicide.
I did not find this year’s commemoration of the September 11 attacks to be nearly as jingoistic as past commemorations (i.e. think back to September 2003 and September 2004). But I did find myself cringing at some of the things I’ve come across this last week: a news article in which a school teacher announced that she would teach about Iraq and Saddam Hussein as part of her lesson of the September 11 atacks despite the former having absolutely nothing to do with the latter, school teachers citing the September 11 attacks to their students as a reason why our troops need to continue fighting, and the repeated claims made in a knee-jerk fashion that our wars in the Middle East are somehow being fought for our “freedoms” despite there being absolutely no evidence that Americans have any more civil liberties, individual liberties, political liberties, or economic liberties now than we did prior to this last decade of fighting wars in the Middle East.
The commemoration and commiseration as well as using the anniversary as a time to search for solace and healing are all appropriate. I could do without all the hyper-nationalism, though.