Should I be sad today, or enraged? I can't decide

[Philosoraptor]

Am I supposed to sit around all day and be morose by some book of rules of mourning?

Why am I more outraged and pissed off today than sad? Is there something wrong with me, or is there something wrong with the nation?

How exactly am I supposed to feel today? Am I supposed to watch the president lay wreaths and suck dollars out of all the horror and grief in sulky silence?

I think perhaps I have been driven just a wee bit mad over the last 6 years.

[izzie]

1. Wait to you get my age. I am having a lot of those days turn up

They seem to stay in my mind as things that happen. Dec. 7, mother's death right up to today. It is the baggage of life that one learn to live with.

[acmejack]

12. At your age? You are but a spring chicken!

I happen to know you are a lively, vivacious republiclown terrorizer! Wear your age proudly!

[izzie]

13. very funny just wait to you get my age and recall the whole mess

Just think what it would have been to grew up in Hitler's Germany. Been years to for get not just days.

[acmejack]

14. I can't be that far behind you.

Don't get bent out of shape, I'm an old man myself.

[izzie]

16. Well cheer up I have not got Gray hair and have all my teeth. Ha Ha

I naturally have not got gray hair. I am the joke of the family. My kids have gray hair so I tell them. Well I never worried about anything.

[REP]

2. Don't Watch

Usually by this time my TV is on the news. Today it's on some stupid robot cartoon, and I've got a DVR full of more cartoons.

Why cartoons? I like cartoons. They cheer me up. I can't bear to even think too much about what happened five years ago today, and I don't know anyone who was killed or hurt. I sure as hell don't want to see the anniversary used in the disgusting ways it will be. I don't want to see it, and I don't want to watch people die over and over and over. Again.

So I'll watch cartoons.

[Philosoraptor]

3. oh I won't.

I've got work to do.

[Saturday]

4. I hear you.

Last night as all the movies were run on TV I passed them by. I did catch a glimpse of the wreath laying and it made me sick. I want to grieve for those lost on 9/11 but my President has made that impossible for me.

[rodeodance]

5. I am going to participate in a pese walk --people of all makes/religions

colors. No banners, just reflections to self and connecting with people.

[Nimrod2005]

6. I am feeling angry, two reasons:

1) We were attacked, and nothing was done about it, many more little Osamas running around the world, attacks in Bali, London, Madrid, Germany, Jordan...etc. and there is no real homeland security!

2) Simple minded Americans, lead by the MSM, have been falling for the WH propaganda, designed to capitalize on people's fear, to introduce fascist policies...For five years.

[LaurenG]

7. You are supposed to feel what YOU feel

I only "hear" what bush says through an interpreter and only the "cliff notes" version.

His eyes betray him when he talks and I'm sick of hearing lies so I just don't involve myself with a thing he says.

[Demeter]

8. I Think Rage Is An Entirely Appropriate Response

I heard Cokie Roberts on NPR say that if one has no security, it doesn't matter if there's no health care or education (or jobs, or good government, or prosperity, or anything else, I expect).

Since it's been remarkably peaceful here (unlike Lebanon, for example) and since sick people and ignorant people are neither free nor secure, I wanted to scream and assault the car radio. In pursuit of "security" which we demonstrably have on a daily basis (aside from that little LIHOP/MIHOP event of 5 years ago, and Oklahoma, another LIHOP/MIHOP by the same bunch of swell Americans) we are giving up all the tools of liberty, freedom, democracy, and life.

This isn't government, it's mental illness.

[mmonk]

9. Both

It seems to be a morbid celebration of nationalism with a seal on the truth so noone will really look at it.

[WePurrsevere]

11. I feel both & find that many I have talked with find it too painful to

think about and watch again. It's like constantly reopening a big gapping wound and rubbing salt in it.

(btw - your sig line quote is wonderful and so very true. B-))

[mmonk]

15. Thanks

[lapfog_1]

10. It's interesting to compare the reaction of WW2's vets to Dec 7...

My parents were young adults on Dec 7th, 1942. That day which "sparked" a real world war (not a
phony war on a strategy)... a war that would cause real grief and real suffering, not only by the
men and women in the armed forces and their families, but by every single individual in the United
States (and, indeed, most of the world). Yet as a kid growing up, Dec 7th was hardly remarked upon,
noted only in the newscasts with a replay of the "day that will live in infamy" speech. I'm sure
that there may have been wreath laying at the Arizona memorial and the like, but it wasn't this
national day of mourning. Can we say somewhat forced... as if we are mourning as a nation because we
believe that we HAVE to, not because of any real national grief... as most of us haven't been
affected by the "war on terror" at all, other than to see daily reports of Osama or Iraq, and we tsk
tsk about the cost ($200 billion, $300 billion, just numbers to the average person, no real sense of
what a billion is, much less .3 trillion)... and we go on about our lives, not really caring about
what is done in our name, seemingly unconcerned that 5 years have passed and the so-called
"mastermind" of one of the greatest crimes in human history remains at large and the people we
think should be doing something about that do many other things (most of which the majority of
us don't like) but nothing.

Dec 7th... now there was a day worth the grieving and memorializing... but we didn't and we don't.
9/11 (a term I HATE, lets call it September 11!) is not really worth it. The 2700 or so American
soldiers did NOT die in a war started on Sept 11, they died in a war that some imperial war mongers
that happen to now run our government wanted... and used the terror attacks as an excuse.

The world didn't change on Sept 11th. Sept 11 didn't change anything... the only people saying that
it did are the people who hate American freedoms and values, and who want to control our population.

My parents generation did things better.

At least I think they did.

September the 11th should pass quietly, much as Dec 7th does every year. If anything, we should
mourn the passing of the democracy experiment (but before we do that, let's keep fighting if there
is even the slightest chance of getting our own freedom back... and we can start by not letting the
meme "911 changed everything" creep into our history and our thoughts).