Allow me to clarify

[thebratqueen]

The issue of New Yorkers vs. everybody else re: how they feel about 9-11 has come up. I thought I'd chat about it since I did my rant about the "enough" people and I wanted to make sure my position on this was clear. Maybe my position is still going to offend people, but at least then I'm offending them for stuff I'm actually doing ;)

For starters, I think it's reprehensible for anybody from New York to tell other people they're not allowed to feel sad/scared/connected/whatever. On behalf of the New Yorkers who realize that 9-11 is not about them personally, let me say we're so sorry. We had no idea dipwads like that were electing themselves our spokespeople.

9-11 was a human horror, as I've said elsewhere. Nobody's got a monopoly on the ability to feel bad about it. Likewise nobody's got a right to tell other people how to feel. Whatever you feel about it - no matter where in the world you are - you're right. Because those are your feelings and nobody else can tell you that they're wrong. You reacted how you reacted.

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Where I think some of the confusion comes in is with the fact that people who are closer to the action are going to feel differently. Someone who lost a loved one in the Towers (I'm doing WTC specifically here b/c we're talking about the New York reaction, not because I'm discounting the Pentagon and 93) isn't going to have the same reaction as someone who had a near-miss on dying themselves. And those people won't have the same reaction as someone who had a near-miss on a loved one, or who had loved ones working the fire, or who live in the area and saw the Towers go down, or who live in the city and had to deal with the smoke and the planes overhead, or who have ties to the city or - etc.

My point is that emotionally speaking there's basically rings which start at Ground Zero and circle their way out, and various people fall into different rings based on their circumstances. Nobody's saying that one ring is more important than another, or more valid necessarily (On some issues I will argue that those closest to Ground Zero have more rights. Case in point I might have felt some of the activities on Wednesday were overkill, but the families of those who died liked it and therefore they get the final vote in my book). It's just different.

Something I've found that's common to the people who at the very least share the common thread of "native New Yorker" is that they have a reaction that non-natives don't. And putting it into "the Civil War was caused by slavery" simplistic terms, that's because it was their city that got attacked. Yes it was the World Trade Center, yes it was an attack meant to reasonate throughout the globe, but when push comes to shove there was one group of people breathing in dead bodies and that was not the people living in Montana.

I'm not saying the folks in Montana can't grieve, and I'll bitch slap anybody who suggests they don't have a right to. I'm just saying they had one kind of experience (watching it on TV) while New Yorkers had another (living it). And because the NY experience was more immediate, it hurts in different ways.

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That being said, this now ties back into why many New Yorkers have a knee-jerk reaction of "you don't get it", as I did with the "enough" people (and, again, Bush with his "Patriot Day" idea). And that's because it's often easy to tell when somebody experienced this via TV and their connection as a human being, and when somebody experienced it because they experienced it.

Unfortunately, just as we've got jerks on the NY side telling people to show credentials before they dare to feel, there are jerks on the other side telling NYers to "get over it", "it's been a year already" and the ironic flipside of "it's not JUST about you so stop acting so hurt".

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What can I say? I earned my nickname for a reason. My opinions are strong and my urge to defend people is stronger, so when I see people telling others how to feel I commense with a smackdown. But for the record, I personally would do that for both sides. I'm not saying NYers have a monopoly on feeling bad and everyone else must bow down to them. I'm just saying that they went through something different and both sides have to remember that.

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Finally - I know the "enough" people weren't telling NYers to get over it. I do agree with the movement in theory. I just felt that 9-11-02 was too soon to push for something like that. But that was my opinion, which is why I ranted in my journal and did not respond to the person who did the "enough" post originally. Again - they can feel how they want to. They felt they needed "enough". I felt I needed people to get that it's just been a year. We both got our say. Win/win if you ask me.