We will never forget or the post-9/11 wangst rant.

[Cynic]

You know, i live in NJ and I saw the crazy environmental impact it had from as far away as jersey. I've lost people in the fire and I go to trauma meetings that are mostly filled with 9/11 survivors/rescuers and military vets. None of the above is used to be a logos-based rhetoric, it just needs to be stated that everyone can be a little angsty/wanksterish about bad shit. But when said bad shit makes you seem like 14-year-old wangsteen forevaah, that's when it's stupid

I understand that having someone blow up a large part of a city is fucking annoying and horrible to say the least.

But, I hate the "it's 9/11 and x-years later and we will never forget."

If it was just the aspect of we will remember and maybe try to go forward from there, I would be totally cool.

Even if it was, shit, we got hit in a terrorist attack and now we will retaliate but now that we have retaliated, we can just remember without having to be asshats over this thing.

The way I perceive the "never forget" idea is the whole -- hey, we's gonna be hypervigilant and if you hit us, we'll bring the smackdown upon you -- type of idea. And that is what I fucking hate.

If I had to look it up, I'd probably find that almost 80-90% of the world has attacks against them that could be labeled as terrorist attacks.

But, no, the first/second time it happens to America, we become horribly idiotic fools who bitch and moan and threaten in some vaguely passive-aggressive manner.

So, when I woke up and realized it was 9/11, my thought process was no longer -- I'll do some productive stuff to somehow offset the sadness --. Instead, it was trepidation/annoyance at all the stupid passive-aggressive shit that says, "hey, look here, we don't forget, so you best not do something against or the hand of god will come down upon you. "

So all of you wangsters on this board or anywhere in America, STFU and just grieve. or even, don't STFU but outright state that you just want to pick a fight with anyone if they cut you in the wrong way.

/rant

edit: had to fix the title."

[Zinegata]

In the aftermath of the First World War - after ten million men were lost in pointless battles in the trenches - the West coined the term "Lest We Forget" to help commemorate the fallen. It, and its variations, appear in virtually every English language memorial all over the world.

And people were also complaining about the "wangst" in the 1920s too.

But most people stuck to it. The Brits especially, for the past 90 years. So when the time came that there was no one left who knew first-hand what the trenches were like, when the First World War passed from living memory to the pages of the history books, people knew exactly what to say.

"We will remember them, lest we forget."

Someday, sooner than we think, the time will come when there will be no one who was there on 9/11. No one left who knows first-hand what it was like - in all of its terror and heroism. We are young today, but we will be old in the future. We live today, but we will be gone in the future.

Would you want the next generation to simply shrug at our memory and say "Let's not wangst"?

[Josh_Kablack]

Call me a commie, but it would be nice if would could either forget this one, or remember the rest of them:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Massacre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_ ... _to_battle

http://www.smplanet.com/imperialism/remember.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Lusitania

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor

[Zinegata]

Pfft. You need to kill at least a thousand Americans before it turns into a "Lest We Forget" moment

That being said, Pearl Harbor (where over 2,000 Americans died) is commemorated pretty much every time an American or foreign ship enters or leaves Pearl Harbor - wherein the whole crew stands at attention to face the USS Arizona. Every Emperor of Japan goes to the Arizona memorial to pay his respects.

Also, about ten years ago, the Arizona was joined by the USS Missouri in Pearl Harbor. So today, you can literally see the start and the end of the The Pacific War in one afternoon. Legends state that the Arizona continues to leak black oil, because she's crying for the sailors who died aboard her. Meanwhile, the Missouri is there to stand watch over the Arizona, as though telling the fallen sailors: "Rest easy, we won".

So yeah, go ahead and dismiss commemorations like this to be "wangsty". 'Cause like the First World War commemorations, I suspect these memorials will be around much longer than the ones whining about them.

[Cynic]

See, it's not about the remembering. It's about the thinly-veiled threat of retaliation. That is the wangsty bullshit

Yes, at Pearl Harbor, ships all stand to face the USS Arizona. But that's just tradition. I mean, it's not as though on Pearl Harbor day, we look at all Japanese people with squint eyes.

[Zinegata]

People who complained about the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior back in the 1920s also complained about how it was about "vengeance" and "imperialist triumph" too.

So again, I'm not seeing any of this complaining as anything new, original, or even useful. People have complained about wangst in memorials since before any of us were fucking born.

And the Western world - as a whole - have generally responded to the wangsters by saying "We don't fucking care."