(no subject)

[rivka]

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery or a borrowing of misery, as though we are not miserable enough of ourselves but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors. - John Donne, Meditation XVII

I have tried to say what needs saying half a dozen times, and haven't been able to continue. I don't want to link to the source material, partly out of respect for the person in whose journal it was posted, and partly out of a desire to protect other people from exposure to that kind of callous blindness.

But.

(1) Secondary PTSD is a well-recognized psychiatric phenomenon, and was so well before the onslaught of the Republican war machine.

(2) There is a substantial difference between empathy and credulity. Someone who is quicker to feel others' pain than you are is not necessarily being manipulated into it.

(3) If you conduct a large part of your social life over the Internet, how can you possibly not understand how other people could be strongly affected by an event that wasn't geographically close to them?

(4) This one is directed at a specific person who I don't even know, and who has only a vanishingly small chance of reading my journal. Nevertheless, if I don't say it, the unspoken words are going to be eating me up all night. So: if you haven't been there? Spare us your pseudo-sophisticated superior lefty cynical detachment and SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Comments

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

I remember arguments I had with people after Columbia blew up who said that if you weren't a family member of one of the seven astronauts, you really were simply being a drama queen by feeling grief-stricken. Not the same case it seems as what you describe, but arising from the same "pseudo-sophisticated superior lefty cynical detachment" (lovely turn of phrase, that) as yours.

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

Oh, but, see, I frequently feel that, about the drama.

My dad used to take us on walks to watch them building the WTC, and I left the subway just in time to watch the last one fall. I still can't watch the tower of light display on the anniversary (although you can see it from my front yard).

I read about, say, Lileks abreacting at Target, and I'm supposed to assign some form of emotional authenticity to his bloodthirstiness because he was Genuinely Freaked.

As a good person, I should understand his emotional damage. As a New Yorker, I'm all Blow me, you self-indulgent bloodthirsty fucking hayseed.

Which is not to say I don't think it's entirely possible that people who dealt with that day at a distance can't cope and need help.

It seems to me, though, that it's their Sensitive and Heartfelt and Rootsy and Decent red state neighbors who are denying it to them.

[pnh.livejournal.com]

I'm with jmhm. I'm fine with the idea that "other people could be strongly affected by an event that wasn't geographically close to them." I sure was affected by both shuttle disasters (for instance).

However, as someone who watched the ashes of his neighbors rain down on his house, I'm completely sick and tired of listening to people in Ohio and Colorado lecture me about how I "don't get it". Tell me what it is I don't get, you whiny, cowardly, self-dramatizing little pieces of provincial shit.

If this makes me superior, lefty, and cynical, well get out the cuffs, Officer. I won't go quietly, but I'll go.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

No, no, I'm completely with you there.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Also: yes, Patrick, you are superior, lefty, and cynical. But those are some of the things I like best about you.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

No no. You're 100% right. But for every one of you, there are some multiple of middle Americans who have been voting Republican just because they got scared.

I said more in another comment in this thread.

B

[ckd]

Did 9/11 affect me? Of course it did. Did it affect me directly, in the sense that I was in New York or at the Pentagon or had someone I knew killed? No. (The closest I come is one degree of separation, since I have friends who knew folks on the flights from Boston, or who live in NYC.)

I'm pretty sure Lileks doesn't have a brother on active duty, either.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

This is why it's a tought issue. There are real people who were psychologically affected by the event on a very personal level, and some of them turned into reactionary Republicans. Lileks is a case in point. This makes the politics of this issue hard for any partisan to talk about, because there's a side of the issue that just doesn't make sense.

"How dare you say your suffering from PTSD when you still vogte Democratic!" "How dare you usurp these deeply personal feelings for political gain!" And then all intelligent conversation stops.

B

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

I'm terribly curious about your use of Lileks as an example. Has Lileks actually written publically about suffering from secondary PTSD, or is that just something you've surmised? I don't read his blog and never have, so I didn't follow what you seem to be labelling as a descent into reactionary Republicanism.

-J

Lileks

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

His politics took a severe radical turn rightward after 9/11. I doubt he's suffering from PTSD, but he's certainly suffering from something.

B

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

Oh, he can't go into A Certain Aisle at Target any more without being overwhelmed by his feelings because he went racing in there on 9/11 to price camping equipment in case the terrorists struck Minnesota and he had to flee with his family into the safety of the woods.

I am not, sadly, making that up.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Actually, equally sadly, that *does* sound like secondary PTSD to me. I hope he realizes that it's fixable, and gets help, rather than just writing about it.

-J

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

I don't get the impression that he would be open to that. Too much of his current political view (which he is fiercely defensive of, to the point of pre-emptive eliminationist rhetoric against anyone who disagrees with him) is built on the premise that he's protecting his family from 9/11 ever happening again by lockstep support of George W Bush.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Again, pretty textbook.

And sad.

-J

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

It was both the trauma of 9-11 and the fact that he had a tiny child (whose age that day is not something I am going to figure out, but it should be easy to do from his web site). The baby was only a few months old when he traded his red sports car for a gigantic hulking SUV, so it wasn't just the terrorist attacks.

I know that it was a gigantic hulking SUV (bought to protect his new offspring, he said) because I saw it in the parking lot of the grocery store. It is bright blue. And he lives a few blocks from us.

K.

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

See, I actually do believe that these people are genuinely traumatized on some level. It just seems to me from the way they're responding that their trauma is for the illusion of being untouchable by the world that they've lost rather than for the people who died.

There's also something about the idea people have to die so I can feel better that strikes me as a bit sociopathic.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"See, I actually do believe that these people are genuinely traumatized on some level. It just seems to me from the way they're responding that their trauma is for the illusion of being untouchable by the world that they've lost rather than for the people who died."

Agreed. And, unfortunately, the Republicans stoked and manipulated this trauma in their efforts to hold on to power.

This makes the issue complicated. And very political.

B

just for the record, y'know

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Lileks lives in Minnesota, a state that gave nine of its ten electoral votes to John Kerry and had one "renegade" elector cast a vote for John Edwards. Minnesota is not a red state.

K.

Re: just for the record, y'know

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know. My point is that the movement to deny the existence of PTSD is strictly a right-wing invention.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

We may be talking about different cases here. I think in my case it upset me because we're a career NASA family. My husband has friends who are astronats, and my first question that morning was "was anyone you know on board?" There was also a sense of it happening to "our own," and the lives that were going to be shattered beyond the seven on Columbia. The people I was arguing with stated that it was -- aside from the tremendous financial cost -- essentially a private tragedy, which because of the small number of people involved, was of limited scope.

I do think there is a tendency to wallow in public drama, in a lot of arenas, which is really creepy. Out here, on a much smaller scale, we saw it with the Scott Peterson case: people who had couldn't find Modesto on a map were suddenly outside the courthouse talking about how it was such a loss that Laci and Connor were killed. In something as large as 9/11, that gets magnified.

Which still does not mean that Rivka's original point doesn't hold, that there are people who, for whatever reason, were tremendously affected by what happened who were not there.

Columbia

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

That's just insane. I know many people who were deeply affected by that disaster. Lots of us grew up with the space program; it was deeply central to our being. The Columbia disaster reminded us that we were not invincible. It was a huge deal.

B

Re: Columbia

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

In my family, it was a really huge deal: my husband is career NASA, and has friends who are astronauts -- one of whom had flown on the previous mission, actually.