boi toi asked me to repost this writeup in this node. Thanks for caring. I wrote this awhile ago. I still feel basically the same thing. I feel I've actually become a more caring person since I wrote this and still, this is my take on the issue. A lot of people died one year ago, but a lot of people die in a lot of places for a lot of reasons in a lot of countries, some of which aren't nearly as callous and brutal as the country I am a citizen of, the USA.
If you're over 30 you probably have the wrong idea about the impact of the events in Afghanistan on people under 20.
3,000 people die in New York. It may as well have been a television show to a lot of us. Sorry, that's just the way it is. George W. Bush comes out in the rubble to "unite America". What else is on?
See, too many teenagers know what "America" is. Draft me. I dare you. The youth of today is not the youth of the vietnam era. We shoot cops. We shoot each other in the very institutions you think are there to teach us.
"This will be the defining moment for our children."
"This is the Vietnam of our generation."
"This will change the lives of everyone in America."
Shut the fuck up. You don't know what you're talking about.
An apathy has been bred in the youth of the United States. Not an ignorant apathy, an apathy of survival. A cynicism that can exist in the most idealistic of minds. We can want the world to change and know that we have one chance in a billion of making a difference. Kids are throwing their lives away in drive-by's, in schools, in random senseless events imitating television shows, so does it surprise you that some are throwing their lives away trying to change the world when the odds are stacked against them?
The Pentagon and the World Trade Centers in New York.
If I *had* to pick 3,000 people to die spontaneously in the United States I couldn't think of a better place to start.
Speaking as a youth in the United States, those places are a fairyland. You can tell me over and over how those places have a huge impact on my life and it's just not going to get through to me. Not because I'm ignorant, I *understand*, I *just don't care*. See, a lot of kids today just are like that. We gave up on your world long ago. Tell the kids sleeping in the park that an attack on the pentagon affects them. Tell the kids slinging rock that the economy affects them, in fact, tell *any* drug dealer that there will be a shortage of clientele at any time, ever. The laugh you'd hear coming from them would set off a harmonic resonating on the exact frequency of the rest of the so-called "disenfranchised".
The USA gave up on so many of us, what did you expect? And now I have to listen to adults tell me that this is the defining moment of my generation? That this matters. I have these childhood memories of the US obliterating some place called Iraq. That's my concept of "war". It's a fireworks show and don't try to tell me it's anything more.
You can no longer vilify people in the eyes of the youth of the USA. We just don't believe the US media anymore. Sorry.
George W. Bush is just as ignorant and dogmatic as Osama bin Laden. Wait. Stop. Actually think about that one. We've thought about it.
No one in my family died in the September 11th attacks. No one I know died that day. Don't hold that against me when I say that because of that fact it's hard to relate to all the pain and suffering that should be happening to me now.
September 11th? Afghanistan? Osama bin Laden? No big deal. What else is on.....