Rant or WHERE IS YOUR EMPATHY?

What is with all of the anti-September 11th memorial stuff lately?? There have been two articles in the Herald in the past two days about how the memorials are ridiculous and more or less self-indulgent, and how the US has killed as many people as were killed in the WTC, how can we say its so sad
. You know what, I bet that is true. But that isnt the POINT of the memorials. I am going to a memorial tonight, not because I think the government is so great and we've been oh-so-wronged. Im going because there are over 3,000 families in the US who have SUDDENLY and VIOLENTLY lost someone that they loved, and they had to sit there and watch the buildings collapse on TV that they knew their loved ones were trapped in. Now, that should make you stop and think about how unbelievably sad that is and how you should think about your own life.
It's not like youre going to be like "Oh, we killed your people, you killed ours, I guess we're even and we deserved it." Deserve it? Are YOU willing to lose YOUR life for a bad decision that your government made? Do you DESERVE it? Maybe America the government deserved it but the American people in that building did not. No. Matter of fact, if you've got that view, than you're part of the problem that is exacerbating this entire thing. We dont see it the same way as Muslim extremists, they dont see it the same way as us, so we kill each other. Whats the problem, they did it to us they deserve it, right? We did it to them, we deserve it right? Eye for an eye. Except that its REAL PEOPLE that are getting used as bargaining chips, that are paying for what we "deserve". Im pretty sure no one agreed to that. The people that jumped out of that building weren't the ones that said "well gosh, how about we kill poeple in other countries to get good gas prices" No. They went to work every day and did their job, and were thinking about how they had to pick up milk on the way home when a plane crashed into their building and they had to jump from the 110th floor because they had no hope of getting out.
And you know what, its true, we killed people in Afghanistan, and we are wrong, wrong, wrong for it, I totally agree with that. But I tell you what, I bet they are memorializing their people too. I hope they are, because that means that they are understanding the human aspect of the whole thing. Because anyone who is looking at the big picture of "We kill, we get killed back, we deserve it" is missing the same point as the terrorists and the american government are which is, THOSE ARE PEOPLE. There is no
"fairness" or "were even" or "eye for an eye" - its HUMAN LIFE.
Now I know that people are going to say things like Americans are spoiled, we bitch about, for instance low gas prices, and so our government does what it has to get the low gas prices to get re-elected. You know though, do you really think that people are aware of whats going on so that they can have gas 2 cents cheaper? Because I am with Anne Frank, I think that people are basically good at heart, and they dont know whats going on. So yes, as Americans we are rather uninformed. Thats not good. But does it warrant dying in a collapsing building? No. You know who IS responsible for that? The person that MADE the decision to kill people for low gas prices, and the complete lack of morals. I try to stay well informed, i read papers, take classes on current events, try to understand whats going on, but Ive got to tell you, I work 20 hours a week, take 15 credit hours semester, take photography classes, eat, sleep, have meaningful relationships with friends, and I have to do my laundry in there somewhere, and I may have, somewhere along the way, bought a can of tuna that wasnt dolphin-safe, but really, I dont think that I deserve to die for that.
NO ONE can be aware of EVERYTHING thats going on, NO ONE can be 100% sure that every company they buy from is upstanding and moral, that every American policy thats passed isnt harming other people, thats why we elect people to make it their JOB to know.
WHY cant we rely on the people we elect to make the best decisions?? There's the real problem.
What all of this comes down to is that those people were innocent and deserve memorials. In addition to that, dont you think that its good for people to take time out for a reality check and say, 'hey, wow, this kind of thing can happen, and I should think about my own life, and I should kiss my wife when I leave in the morning, cause I might never see her again." Go to a memorial and think about all of the people out there who are exactly like you, who loved things and wanted to go places and had families and think about the unbelievably tragedy that they lost that.
My favorite quote from one of those anti-memorial articles was "am I supposed to cry for these people that I didnt even know?" (sorry, thats not a direct quote, but you get the idea). Yeah. That kind of attitude is the same kind of attitude that the writer said he hated in Americans, the "I dont care as long as it isnt me". Not only that, but its unbelievably sad and inhuman. And thats exactly what terrorists were thinking when they slammed into those buildings, as Americans as a large chunk of people to hate, not as individuals with families and lives like their own
In conclusion, even if you think that the government was wrong and we had it coming, that isnt what the memorials are about, you should be able to empathize as a human with the tremendous loss of life and the unbelievable pain that the families of those people are dealing with. Maybe if everyone can think of each other as humans and give up the hatred and retribution bullshit this wont happen again..