9/11 Meeting Erupts in Chaos; "News" Networks Cut Away (Except CSPAN3)

opus_dei

Ecce Panis Angelorum
Feb 25, 2004
438
17
45
✟15,653.00
Faith
Catholic
talk about an exercise in poor behavior. this whole thing has been one giant showboat farce from partisans on both sides of the commission.

the families were horribly out of line. sorry, they just were. i feel for them but that does not mean that all the rules of decorum do not apply.

are you surprised about the radios not working? i'm not, unless i've missed my shipment of "works anytime miracle radio."

as for the bunker....i'm assuming that it was in reference to the nyc emergency command facility run by the city version of FEMA. er, it was in one of the towers. kinda hard to have it work all the time there.

9/11 would have happened whether it had been bush or gore and nothing would have changed it. no magic silver bullett, no crystal ball, nothing.
 
Upvote 0

burrow_owl

Senior Contributor
Aug 17, 2003
8,561
381
47
Visit site
✟25,726.00
Faith
Non-Denom
Marital Status
Married
Politics
US-Democrat
I concur with Opus that civility has been notoriously absent; if the headline of the NY Post is any indication, intellectual honesty is lacking as well (I don't know why I was shocked; it was the Post, after all). The screaming headline was something to the effect that the panel had insulted the first responders, which is a downright lie: the panel was criticizing the command structure.
Opus_Dei said:
as for the bunker....i'm assuming that it was in reference to the nyc emergency command facility run by the city version of FEMA. er, it was in one of the towers. kinda hard to have it work all the time there.
Placing the emergency command in the tower was poor planning itself - that's the criticism. The towers had been struck before, after all, so it was nothing short of negligent to locate the emergency command control office inside a building that was among the most likely targets.
 
Upvote 0

Existential1

Well-Known Member
Jan 2, 2004
1,591
74
Caputh, Perthshire
✟2,128.00
Faith
opus_dei said:
the families were horribly out of line. sorry, they just were. i feel for them but that does not mean that all the rules of decorum do not apply.
This does not compute for me.

9/11 involved a level of human horror: where loss becomes immeasurable.
If we feel for those who have lost, who are in loss, who may never emerge from loss: then we do not ration their grief; we submit to their expression of that.
What have I lost, what given up, if in allowing and accomodating this grief and its expression: the decorum structure of my expectation is ripped right out of a shared setting; and I am left with a raw event, that cannot ever begin to approximate to the rawness of their loss, and their unclosed memories and speculation as to how that lost one may have died.
 
Upvote 0

opus_dei

Ecce Panis Angelorum
Feb 25, 2004
438
17
45
✟15,653.00
Faith
Catholic
Existential1 said:
This does not compute for me.
oops, i made the assumption that everyone had seen the hearings. my bad. it basically involved one or two folks sitting there in the middle of testimony by guiliani yelling. they weren't actually saying anything constructive...think jack nicholson in a few good men. just yelling.

as for the pain and suffering, i know. however, regardless of the silly partisan overtones, the commission is supposed to be figuring out what went wrong. the families have been invited as a courtsey to the memories of their loved ones. i fail to see how this gives them the right to interrupt the proceedings because of their status. we were all hurt on that day, some more than others i suppose.

at any rate, it was simply a few folks that, i'm sure, were attempting to make the evening news.
 
Upvote 0

burrow_owl

Senior Contributor
Aug 17, 2003
8,561
381
47
Visit site
✟25,726.00
Faith
Non-Denom
Marital Status
Married
Politics
US-Democrat
the decorum structure of my expectation is ripped right out of a shared setting
I don't think it's that they spontaneously went loco; rather, these families have been systemically trying to assert what amounts to a kind of property right over the events and their fallout. This is intensely annoying.

Unfortunately, this kind of assertion is all-too-common, and not at all limited to these families. It seems to derive from the 'cult of experience' that our culture is in the grips of. For example, an axiom of identity politics is that the 'lived experience' is granted epistemic priority. It would make sense if the target of racism, for example, would have access to some relevant info about the intensity of the indignity; the claim of epistemic priority, though, goes beyond this. The target somehow is considered to know more about the roots of racism, or its conceptual structure. Bizarre. [/rant]
 
Upvote 0

DaveSZ

Well-Known Member
Jan 17, 2004
818
39
✟1,173.00
Faith
Deist
burrow_owl said:
I concur with Opus that civility has been notoriously absent; if the headline of the NY Post is any indication, intellectual honesty is lacking as well (I don't know why I was shocked; it was the Post, after all). The screaming headline was something to the effect that the panel had insulted the first responders, which is a downright lie: the panel was criticizing the command structure.
Placing the emergency command in the tower was poor planning itself - that's the criticism. The towers had been struck before, after all, so it was nothing short of negligent to locate the emergency command control office inside a building that was among the most likely targets.


The NY Post, like all of Murdoch's papers, is little more than a gossip column.
 
Upvote 0

Existential1

Well-Known Member
Jan 2, 2004
1,591
74
Caputh, Perthshire
✟2,128.00
Faith
I would want to come back on that one opus_dei and burrow_owl, you followers of the order of _.

There is an element of what could become hypocrisy in the stand I take on this: but, I think, for me at least, it is the wise and fullest stance; where if I abandon this stance, I weaken my potential cleaving to God.

Burrow_owl speaks my kind of speak when he talks of cult of experience, epistemic priority. We could add owner of ethical franchise, and victim centredness, whatever.

We live in a time of ethical and sensory fragmentation, crucially driven and sustained by media prodcution. I too am deeply suspicious of victim centred perspective, and victim driven justice.

But, the former takes priority, for me. We are challenged in retaining human experience, and taking human measure: where in each moment we might strive for this, we stand in danger of being sucked back into the mechanics of the present. This parallels to struggle to take stand with God and with Jesus, while embedded in a worldly nexus: a necessary nexus, if we are to retain humanity, as we aspire to God.

The death of innocents, and however much we might qualify the innocence of those who died on 9/11/01, has a centrality which transcends all. Most cultures make massive accomodation of and for this: but, in our society, and despite what other formal steps of accomodation are taken; this grieving for the innocent is massively qualified by the media busy nature of our occurrence mileau. Grief is dessicated by whatever else goes on in our civil dispensation.

I believe this gives those who grieve for innocents lost, certain overriding rights: certain "terrorist" rights, in relation to the decorum and protocol, that sees us just going on getting on. Those who grieve can stop the world, as far as I am concerned: it is their right, their duty; it is what they bring to us, in forcing us to more fully share their grief.

There is a poster on this forum, who bravely advocates for Israel: tooth and nail, breath in breath out. Intellectually, and in terms of evryhting I believe to be true about the manner and necessity of reconciliation: every cell of my body screams out that I rise up and crush the intolerance of the posts; yet I must never, ever do that. In these posts is grief for loss, grief for loss yet to come: there is righteous anger at innocence murdered; there is a calling down of G_d to protect his people. What do I know of that loss, what can I learn of that loss: unless I am humbled to a listening silence, by the grief expression; what right have I to do otherwise.
If there is something for reconciliation, that might pass through me as agent: then only if I am so silenced, that I let God's voice speak and move me; can that be so.

We never stopped to wait for God over 9/11. The media noise filled our ears, and we went to war.
We never supported, not unto God's truth, those who lost and came to grieve.
If some few of those who so lost, feel now compelled, perhaps in the the confusion of that loss, to disrupt our proceedings: then, I believe, we owe them, at the least, that God hearing silence of reception, that we denied them in origonal events.
 
Upvote 0

burrow_owl

Senior Contributor
Aug 17, 2003
8,561
381
47
Visit site
✟25,726.00
Faith
Non-Denom
Marital Status
Married
Politics
US-Democrat
Existential1 said:
We live in a time of ethical and sensory fragmentation, crucially driven and sustained by media prodcution. I too am deeply suspicious of victim centred perspective, and victim driven justice.

But, the former takes priority, for me....

I believe this gives those who grieve for innocents lost, certain overriding rights....Those who grieve can stop the world, as far as I am concerned: it is their right, their duty; it is what they bring to us, in forcing us to more fully share their grief.
I totally agree that the grieving ought to be given a kind of ethical control; you're right that we ought to defer to them within the realm of the ethical*. However, that's not what they're asking for; they're asking for semantic control. They want to control the meaning of the event itself - while understandable, it seems hubristic to me. At a minimum, it's a project reminiscent of Tantalus - since meaning is always-already decentered and fractured, there is no semantic center from which the grieving may control the semiotic effects of the event. If I throw a rock in a pond, the rock vanishes and the ripples move outward - their project is equivalent to diving in, grabbing the rock, and then demanding! that the ripples obey their command.

*Your conception of the ethical really, really reminds one of Emmanuel Levinas. You two sound like peas in a pod.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ACougar
Upvote 0
This site stays free and accessible to all because of donations from people like you.
Consider making a one-time or monthly donation. We appreciate your support!
- Dan Doughty and Team Christian Forums

Existential1

Well-Known Member
Jan 2, 2004
1,591
74
Caputh, Perthshire
✟2,128.00
Faith
ACougar said:
I think it's because the media is more interested in influencing how we think than addressing and asking the questions we want answered.

Agreed. And also political process is poulated with people intent on suppressing all perspectives bar their own.

We have become unrepresentative, and unrepresenting.

There are too many without effective voice: who feel fundamentally excluded.

Terrorism, from disruptive protocol deviations, to suicide bombings: all speak of the same thing; voices that do not experience themselves as heard and heeded.

We require to overhaul the architecture of our collective processes.

Heads up for Jesus: here comes the clerk of works; love your neighbour as your self, and in God manifestation.
 
Upvote 0

Existential1

Well-Known Member
Jan 2, 2004
1,591
74
Caputh, Perthshire
✟2,128.00
Faith
burrow_owl said:
I totally agree that the grieving ought to be given a kind of ethical control; you're right that we ought to defer to them within the realm of the ethical*. However, that's not what they're asking for; they're asking for semantic control. They want to control the meaning of the event itself - while understandable, it seems hubristic to me. At a minimum, it's a project reminiscent of Tantalus - since meaning is always-already decentered and fractured, there is no semantic center from which the grieving may control the semiotic effects of the event. If I throw a rock in a pond, the rock vanishes and the ripples move outward - their project is equivalent to diving in, grabbing the rock, and then demanding! that the ripples obey their command.

*Your conception of the ethical really, really reminds one of Emmanuel Levinas. You two sound like peas in a pod.
[/size][/color][/font]

Point me to Levinas, please.

I think that control, the choice of sought control, is always likely to be post traumatic. I wonder if what these loss survivors wish to do is not control per se, though that remains possible for some: but rather, to prevent the world from simply moving on, with insufficient remembrance, with insufficient contrition for culpability; where the personal corrolary of this for the loss survivor, is not yet having taken the event of loss to their God.
Here the media and opportunistic-politics domination of our social process, its essential unGodliness in not cleaving to absolute integrity: becomes superimposed on the grief process of the loss survivor; as they seek that assuagement of loss that can only occur in God, in return to the grounds of who you eternally are.
Going on getting on, just business as usual, in and as unGodly social process: by definition and experiential evidence, is not to be with God; the survivor can be forced, being unable to cleave to God alone, to forcibly disrupt the collective process, in a ferally driven approach to God.
Such terrorism is, or can be, and ferally, God seeking. These are the feral pragmatics of it: holding even in the absence of any God perspective. Closure in such absolutely incomprehensible loss, can only occur in returning to the whole from whence we and our experience and our meaning, come.

If we embrace those who do these things: if we are patient as they seek this God, this whole; then they cry.
All these people seek, in all probability, and despite any PTSD reactions to the contrary, are tears. Tears that start, and never stop: that become, in their persons and biographies; a stream of living water that heals, and gives eternal measure to their loss.

Our responsibilities, to those who have lost what we still have, are unlimited. Their loss begins as that of a loved one, and extends to a loss of one they might and should have loved, but may never have known.
We have a duty to return God to those who grieve, and those who grieve to God. We cannot deny them moments of grief-centrism.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ACougar
Upvote 0