This isn't exactly a politically correct sentiment, but it's how I feel. There should be a statute of limitations on mourning the 2,996 people who died in the 9/11 attack twenty years ago.
I say this because our country has a nasty habit of getting all emotional about the wrong things. Or to put it differently, not getting all emotional about the right things.
Yes, it was a tragedy that so many people died and suffered as a result of the 9/11 attack. But the current number of Covid deaths in the United States is 659,556 -- 220 times the number who died on 9/11. Repeat: 220 times.
Currently Covid is killing people in the United States at the rate of a 9/11 every two days.
Where is the outrage at this? Where is the determination to hunt down those responsible for this carnage and stop them from killing so many Americans? Where are the voices demanding we put aside political differences and fight the killers with a united front?
Yes, the Covid deaths are caused by a virus, not humans. And plenty of people -- epidemiologists, health care workers, so many others -- have been treating the pandemic as the dangerous enemy that it is.
However, too many Americans, notably those Republicans/conservatives who love to wrap themselves in the flag when it comes to 9/11, have been acting like traitors when it comes to combatting Covid. They side with the viral enemy when they scoff at public health measures: vaccination, wearing a mask, social distancing, testing.
The root cause of 9/11 was a malevolent religious ideology, radical Islam. The root cause of our nation's flawed response to the pandemic is a malevolent political ideology, Trumpism.
Let's not be fooled by the 9/11 attackers being people, and the Covid attackers being viruses. Most of the United States Covid deaths could have been prevented if Trump and his enablers hadn't failed to do what urgently needed to be done to save lives.
A Lancet Commission report says 40% of U.S. Covid deaths could have been prevented. Deborah Birx, Trump's White House Covid coordinator, says hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved. A Brookings Institution conference said it was possible to avoid 400,000 deaths.
So I'm unapologetic about caring more about the unnecessary loss of hundreds of thousands of American lives during the pandemic, a toll that continues to increase by many thousands each week, than by less than 3,000 Americans dying on 9/11 twenty years ago.
I once worked as a health policy analyst.
My experience with bioethics made me well aware of how the dramatic, like a young child needing a liver transplant, captures the public's attention while much greater human suffering results from medical conditions that don't make the front pages of newspapers.
Our nation's obsession with 9/11 strikes me as similar.
The images of the planes hitting the twin towers is fresh in our minds, while we pay much less attention to the 9/11 happening every couple of days in hospitals, homes, and health care settings across the nation. If we truly care about human life, we should be focused on saving lives now, not mourning those who died in 2001.
It's as if our never-ending grief over 9/11 gives us permission to not feel as deeply as we should about the largely preventable misery of the Covid pandemic. By placing a hand over our heart as the national anthem plays at a sporting event on 9/11, the heartlessness of our country's botched response to Covid fades into the background of our supposed compassion.
Today I ignored all the talk about 9/11 on the airwaves and social media. I refuse to feel more badly about a tragedy that's long gone, than a much worse tragedy still ongoing.
There has been nearly 656K thousand deaths from COVID in the US? Wow - that is truly tragic. What is the situation like over there now with COVID? UK is pretty much over it in the sense of a health service crises and general public fear, though we clearly live in the age of a new-normal (more people working from home or hybrid, still lots of people wearing masks although not mandated, etc).
Whilst Trump's attempt to manage the COVID crisis was jaw-droppingly, absurdly surreal bad, I think it is a bit unfair to blame him for all or most of those of those deaths. World leaders across the globe were caught off guard, and there has been deaths all over the world dependant on a whole variety of complex factors. It was clear at the beginning nobody really had a clue as to the seriousness or how to cope with it. I'm not even really sure if we know now. I think the situation kind of transcended personality politics. Though, again, sunlight and bleach cures were spectacularly bizarre suggestions to hear coming from the mouth of the leader of the free world and as was widely reported in European news, made the entire world (western at least) feel quite concerned at the lack of sane leadership, somebody to make everybody at least feel the illusion of security......
But yes, I am surprised at the general tone of your post, with which I generally agree - with the openness to admit that there are at least SOME things more important than religion to be concerned about.
I think vast swathes of the world, especially western, deeply empathised with the US and American citizens on 9/11, regardless of political or ideological sentiments. The sheer senseless horror and unimaginable suffering on the one hand, and then the disbelief that it had happened to Americans on American soil I think shocked most people.
But this is the point I have tried to make to Brian several times before, once we have a pet ideological hate, that against religion, theism and metaphysics for eg., it can blind us to an infinitely complex reality so that we only see what we want or are conditioned to see, and in so doing perpetuate ignorance, misunderstanding, distrust, hatred, war etc.
9/11 was NOT "caused" by Islamic fundamentalist any more than it was caused by American Airlines check in processes - 9/11 was the culmination of hundreds if not thousands of years and infinite causes.
THIS is precisely the danger - when somebody like prominent atheist Sam Harris states that all acts of "terrorism" (any semantics or semiotic experts want to unpack that little doozy of a word?) are caused almost exclusively due to Islamic doctrine and dismisses all attempts at deeper analysis of the cultural, historical, economic and political context, what he is actually doing is a) denying the reality of the millions of peace loving Muslims and societies that have existed, and far worse b) EXCUSING western governments of atrocious war crimes going back centuries and which continue to this very day (even under such great, US saving presidents like Biden), imperial and colonial meddling in the affairs of South American, African and Asian nations, and the primary motivator in almost all acts of Islamic terrorism (with, of course, infinite other lesser motivators).
It is mentioned that 3,000 people died on 9/11 - a truly horrific act and day. Only a damaged, sad human being would not feel anything but immense sorrow and compassion for all those affected by that sad day.
But what about the estimated 200,000 innocent civilians, men women and children, who were slaughtered in Iraq due to the illegal and unjust invasion which had - factually and obviously speaking - far more to do with the enriching individuals and corporations ad the natural resources of Iraq than Islamic terrorism?
Is is only Americans than are allowed to be scarred by such horrors, and strike back indiscriminately and without retaliation? Are we surprised that ISIS was a product of this unjust and barbaric invasion of Iraq? Are we surprised that many Islamic youth in these war torn countries where the west has come in, raped their resources, funded and fought wars, drone bombed, maimed, kill, dismembered etc already orphaned children, broken untold promises for decades upon decades without relent - are easily brainwashed by old, angry men and their dubious and flawed interpretations of the Koran and hadiths to fight their "jihad"?
If we are surprised, and can only find the cause for such "madness" on a book like the Koran, then I suggest that is due to living a life of extreme privilege and ignorance of reality, and an inability to empathise or identify with those in less fortunate circumstances.
Posted by: manjit | September 12, 2021 at 07:07 AM