I think you & Nathan are over-reacting.
The chatter about secondary things is no different than what goes on in actual conversation. It seems callous because it is disproportionate to what has happened, but it doesn't mean to be so.
The nutty conspiracy stuff reflects weak capacity to analyze history and politics, not malice.
Most important, the insistence of citing a justifiable rage on the part of those wronged by the U.S. may be goofy politics and reflect moral confusion, BUT as a practical matter it cannot be denied that any U.S. retaliation that goes beyond well-identified guilty parties breeds more of this sort of thing. I don't know how you fix that, and I don't think you do either. That in my view is the grain of substance in the posts that offends you the most. It is the confirmation of the lack of an answer, and it breeds frustration. Kill them faster than they kill us?
I'm still trying to find out if my friend is o.k. He is a systems analyst for IBM. I like to think of him as the Puerto Rican Groucho Marx. One of the toughest M-F's I know, and as radical as anyone on this list. (More knowledgeable too)
max
I have alternating feelings of incredible depression and barely controllable rage when I read some of the post-WTC e-mails to this list. Are folks so removed from simple sentiments of human compassion, much less feelings of human solidarity, that in the face of thousands of innocent human lives destroyed, they can do nothing more than spin justifications for such mass murder, and even join in celebrations of it. How sad that you are so detached from your humanity. How fucked that you think mass murder has anything to do with human liberation and human freedom; you are prisoners of an ideology that has lost all real touch with its purported ends. How pathetic that all you can do is quarrel over how many thousands are dead, as if the escape of intended victims makes this murder less of a crime. I feel no kinship whatsoever with those of you who have posted these notes; you are the spin masters of mass murder.
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
-- Frederick Douglass --