Katrina was a much bigger tragedy.

Sadly, this tragedy was expected and preventable. Katrina caused a US diaspora of a magnitude not seen since the dust bowl.

New Orleans lost thousands of structures, and a large percentage of its population. For NYC it appeared to be business as usual a few days later, but NO will never be the same. Katrina also served as another highlight for the screwed up social and racial problems this country faces.

News flash - People with a different color of skin and less money than you are still people, and many of them face challenges their wealthier and lighter skinned countrymen can't even comprehend.

Who said I was a Houston native. I'm orginally from Baton Rouge.

In the end after all the BS, my point is Hurrican Katrina is realitively mild in terms of overall tragedy in history, but that people's impression of the place and what happened is skewed by things they saw on TV or a general attitude that was baised because of the belief that all people in New Orelans are poor/black or ingorant coonass rednecks.

Ultimately any preventable loss of life is a tragedy and it really doesn't matter which one ranks as the "best" or "worst".

Agree. America has from the time of its infancy had a sense of exceptionalism about it. "God's country," the Mormon ideas about America having a religious destiny, etc. We are basically a very isolated country, with only two neighbors, only one of whom we pay any attention to at all. And even that's mostly recent. All our wars have been fought elsewhere. It has never been necessary to know another language but English to get along. Even in this time of easy and instant communication, culturally we are very culturally isolated, and, unlike the news of many other countries, our news has very little coverage of world events. We have certainly been, and to a large extent still are, afloat in a world of our own.

Let me ask you a question. When you came pulling in here, did you see a sign out in front of my country that said Dead [censored] Storage?

"George Bush doesn't care about black people"

Paranoid false dilemma? Who said I was talking about either one of you? Although *this* post that I am responding to now is not one of your finer works


That's because the one sentence response to this entire thread *is* bleeding obvious. Threads like these get confusing because people use the topic at hand as an excuse to soapbox about their anecdotally biased and petty views. Before you know it there are like 20 different conversations going on. Like now for example.

This is how message boards and most conversations are in general. People aren't listening they're just waiting for their turn to talk.

You are either insane or insanely ignorant.

Here's a newsflash for you, downie, many if not most of the people who died in NYC that day were minorities and/or not rich.

Only rich, white people work in office buildings, and the retail and restaraunts inside? The dozens of busboys and dishwashers at Windows on the World? Are you really this much of a troll?

Well, since you responded to my post and quoted it, it's more than a little likely you were responding to either me or to Dids, who I was responding to. Hey, it wasn't very clear, though, so I said so. So sue me! See, if you're not that clear yourself, it just makes things even messier.

I am aware that vague statements are sometimes unclear. And I stand by my earlier vague statement: There are a lot of horrible posts in this thread.

What?!

French-Indian, Spanish-American, 1812, Revolutionary, Civil...

Additionally, I was going to let my inner nit rest, but your definition of "tragedy" earlier in this thread only applies to the literary, Sophocles sense. "Tragedy" as it is used in this thread, when it's not referring to a play, means "lamentable, mournful, fatal".

I also disagree with some other points you made, but each of them is a separate conversation. I mean, we only pay attention to one of our neighbors? Which one, the largest source of our immigrant population or the single biggest trading partner we have?

Surprised this is such a big thread. The answer is simple: the press decided on the name "9/11" right after the attacks. So the date 9/11 is ingrained in our consciousness in a way that 5/7, 6/6, 8/6, 11/11, and 12/7 aren't. (Bonus points for those who can recognize the significance of each date.)

And they called it 9/11 because of the 911 emergency phone number. If the attacks had happened on 9/10 or 9/12, they would have called it the "WTC attacks" and no one would remember the date.

I just meant the ones within living memory.

I don't know why you're pointing out my definition of tragedy doesn't fit the one Dids used as if I didn't understand it when I myself was explicitly making the same point you reiterate as if it were something new. Usually nitting is at least about something.

I think you can figure out the rest and already have, but since you're not really commenting on it, there's no room for a response.

You're coming out 0-3 here.

Blarg - I'd largely disagree with you on this... but I've always lived in large, multicultural US cities, so my sense could be skewed. Also always had international clients / business partners during my careeer.

I feel what you wrote is more fair say 10 years ago...

-Al

Even though the World is getting Flatter (or at least so says the Mustache of Understanding), I'm not really sure that it can be argued that we are both geographically and culturally isolated from the rest of the developed world (aside from Canada, which I'm not sure counts in world geopolitical terms).

I mean the fact that I unthinkingly used "we" is somewhat illustrative of the extremely US-centric worldview that we (there I go again) have.

Sigh.

You said "all our wars". You can't qualify that after the fact with, "I meant in living memory," especially since your argument includes attitudes of people at the birth of our nation. So I'm at least 1 for 3.


I believe that to argue that "we don't care about Canada" or "we don't care about Mexico" in a national sense is completely offbase. If you truly disagree, I'm curious as to why.

And I just wanted to point out your attempt at being erudite was completely irrelevant. Dids' usage of "tragedy" to refer to events that were mournful and fatal is reasonably acceptable.

Seth - haha actually I thought Friedman's book was really weak.

I hear you - but I think it's rapidly changing and only because it's being forced on Americans to adopt a more global view, not out of a proactive nature.

-Al

A career like that is not the norm, though. Sure, there are always exceptions to everything.

A good comparison is Europe. Drive 100 miles and you might pass through 3 countries, and it's not uncommon for people to know not just two but even three languages, and use them. In America, Spanish is becoming much more useful, but you can still do business easily in every state knowing just English. And not even knowing that all that well.

dates referred to numerically are becoming more common. see my VT massacre and "4-16" post above as well as nbc and the beijing olympics with "8-8-08."

maybe 9/11 is what started it and now media outlets realize how easy it is to use the numbers to refer to things, but you cant just claim other dates would have caused the events of september 11th to be referred to differently.

things worth noting: your 9-1-1 9/11 logic is flawed because a) they arent spoken the same b) the attacks are just as often referred to as september 11th which despite how it would be abbreviated numerically is not like dialing the phone in case of an emergency.

also, i understand 8-8-08 is catchy, and that probably factored into the choice to use it, but factor that in with the VT numerical label and you have a trend.

this seems more like a personal attack but its more just my observations of the present state of media

I think it's pretty clearly both. Many Americans and firms are proactive.

Bennett - oh... I was speaking more from a cultural / citizenry standpoint. The idea that American companies need to proactively extend their markets is not lost on me.

-Al

Don't be a dip. Do you honestly think I don't know America had a civil war? This is what I mean by nitting having to at least be actually about something.

Again, I don't think that every definition is of equal value. I think some words can be used better, and can get watered down and degraded over time. I didn't ask you to either agree or feel the distinction is valuable before, and I'm not asking it now. I just don't care whether you do or not. That's between you and your god.

As to why I don't think we pay much attention to or care much about other foreign countries, it comes from conversation with people and from looking at the same media as everyone else. Coverage of foreign affairs is slight and shallow in most of American media, with the exception of whoever we're at war with. And even that is often highly controlled. The greatest majority of Americans, I have read, reads zero books a year. We're not a curious people. And it shows vividly in ordinary conversation.

Compare that with friends I've had who are either Israeli or who have lived there. They tell me that buses have radios with the news on them, and the general culture is such that everybody is pretty informed on American politics and global news too. I don't even bump into many Americans who are informed on American politics, or even basic geography, and as to global politics, they're largely a complete mystery. Many Americans can't name their vice-president, or mayor, or senators or congressmen. Do you think on average they know much, or by extension care much, about Mexico or Canada when they don't even pay attention to what's going on in their own back yards? I think it's pretty fair to say they don't. Certainly the vast majority that I have spoken to all my life.

I think people sometimes forget how exceptionally educated the demographic at 2+2 is, for what it's worth, and that plays into discussions like this. I think since it's such a young demographic, they also don't realize how little pressure there is to keep alert about the world once you're out of school. When that happens, your responsibilities are mainly to your job and family. Nobody cares if you learn anything outside of that, and you're not really judged by it. A lot of people who are whip smart now will likely descend into dullness and either newly inhabit or extend whatever provincialism they've got going now, once the pressure is off. So it seems pretty easy to overestimate the intellectual curiosity and commitment, or concern toward anything outside their immediate comforts and concerns of the average person if you're standing in certain demographics yourself.

who remembers what day the oklahoma city bombings were? this is so far from a race issue.

ok we established 12/7=pearl harbor (ps-it is)
11/11=veterans day/my sisters bday/something else?
6/6=invasion of normandy (needed google)
8/6=atomic bomb dropped on hiroshima (needed google)
5/7=no idea (lusitania sinks?) what were u thinking?

V-E Day (The day Germany surrendered after WW2).