Well said, Frank.
So glad that list members seem to be accounted for. Our thoughts go out
to the families and friends of those injured or killed.
Paul
frank theriault wrote:
On 7/7/05, P. J. Alling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Sadly, this is a tragedy that's all about politics. It's a bit too late.
No, it's not about politics at all. Neither is it about religion.
I'm trying to figure out what it's about. For a while I was thinking
it's about Power, but now I'm not so sure. Bin Laden has no
illusions, I don't think, that he'll survive what he's doing to lead
any peoples, so if it's about power, it's delusions of a nation's (in
the broader sense) power.
It's about fanaticism and barbarism, misguided principles. Mostly
it's about hate.
The vast majority of people in this world never experience that kind
of hate within themselves. Sadly, it only takes but a few (Hitler,
Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, etc.) to wreak unthinkable horror on large
segments of populations. I keep telling myself that such people are
aberrations, some sort of genetic or environmental freaks, maybe kids
whose mothers did drugs while they were pregnant or something. But
whenever events occur as they did this morning my hope for the
goodness of the human race flags a bit.
Anyway, thanks to Cotty for quelling the political discussion, and
thanks to those who were involved for heading his request.
Someone mentioned that this wasn't of the scale of 911, and so it
wasn't. 911 didn't affect me personally as it did many on this list,
but I have to say, when I was in NYC last weekend, and the PATH Subway
train pulled into the WTC station, travelling as it does around the
excavation of the former foundation of one of the towers, now open to
the sky, the feeling was eerie and quite palpable.
What happened today is that several hundred individuals died. For the
families, friends and colleagues of the dead, it matters not how many
others died with them. That individual is gone forever, leaving
behind (possibly) a widow or widower, children who will never see that
parent again, parents who will live the rest of their life with a
child that predeceased them.
Sorry to go on like this, but such tragedies make many of us (me
included, I guess) think about Big Pictures and the like. It just
makes no sense to me. It's completely absurd.
I guess we all (including, sadly, the families of the victims) have to
reconcile ourselves to the fact that there are simply some things that
we can't understand, some conundrums that we'll never get our heads
around. This is one of them.
I think I'll go have a beer tonight.
cheers,
frank
