Excerpt from chasech5’s journal regarding London attack:
Through all the stuff I’ve seen about the London bombings, from early this morning on the way to work up to now, I’ve been thinking the same set of things. Chris hit what I was thinking on the head in his entry, so I’m going to put it here:
The most depressing thing to me about the coverage today, all over the news networks, is that it just proves the point that only injuries to Westerners and Whites done by colored Others counts as legitimate visual material. Since the U.S., Great Britain, and other initiated the War on Iraq, there have been ample opportunities and legitimate need to show us equally gruesome footage of Iraqi civilian casualties–but the first time most Americans got widespread media exposure to those pictures was Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11.” And that’s unfortunate. By having Americans’ only exposure by Moore and al-Jazeera, it really does say that U.S. mainstream media really aren’t even trying for a semblance of fairness or balance or truth in their coverage. And it encourages al-Qaeda in seeing Western media outlets as just parrots for their governments and their ideologies.
Unfortunately, in this particular instance, they are dead right.
Where has all this outrage and horror been? I mean, OMGOMG, bombs went off, and it was in white territory, where we thought we were safe! Meanwhile, this is just a slightly busier than usual day in Iraq, which typically experiences two or three successful bomb attacts every day.
Last time I heard the statistics, two people died in the attacks, along with a whole lot of injury and infrastructure damage. Yes, I feel for them, yes, I think it’s a terrible thing that should never have happened, but a bomb went off in iraq this month that killed twenty people. What the fuck, people? What. The. Fuck.
Edit: FYI Two people are confirmed by hospitals, but eyewitness reports have the estimate more along the lines of 40 deceased.
Any death by violence is a tragedy, whether the world notices it or not.
However, I do think that this event is a Big Deal. Last I heard, while the death toll was around 33, the wounded numbered in the thousands.
Hm. I haven’t heard thousands being bandied about yet, but I did hear hundreds. Either way, as you said, it’s tragic whether it is reported or not. I don’t want to imply that it isn’t a big deal, just that we as a country (the United States, I mean) don’t seem to care much when people are being slaughtered by the thousands in genocide or when a hundred people die in a month due to bombings… until “our kind of people” are involved.
I wouldn’t expect us to cover tragic circumstances in other countries as well as we do our own – it’s the nature of nationalism, and we’re more nationalistic and xenophobic than most countries. This isn’t our country. However, even from the beginning, when the situation was unknown and the death/destruction toll was still small, we seem to be emotionally reacting in a way that… well, I don’t know, it makes me feel uncomfortable.
I think it’s the implication that we think we’re more important than other people. Makes me want to shower.
I think you’re misreading it.
I agree that what you diagnose is part of it, don’t get me wrong, and the lack of coverage for the genocide and slaughter going on in non-white countries makes me sick.
But I think the reason we’re emotionally reacting so strongly is that this is *England.* They pretty much gave us our culture, they speak our language, we share a great deal of history, we learn their literature as much or more than our own — more than any other people in the world, they *are* us.
We are shocked when it happens to ‘us’, despite having had it proved to us long ago that we are just as vulnerable as anyone else, and perhaps moreso due to large borders and permissive individual freedoms. Britain being similarly coiffed. They’ve been stained by IRA attacks for 30 years (although it has been about 9 since the last major IRA bombing, I believe), they are well-used to terrorism on their soil.
It is certainly possible that I am reading far too much into our reactions to this attack. What I’m proposing is an ugly, ugly thought that only the cruelest people would consciously hold, but it -is- possible that in our national subconscious we think that people who aren’t like us -deserve- such things, or that it is their lot in life, that it is, somehow, -okay- or at least comprehendable when it happens to “them”.
Logically, this is insane, but we think of ourselves as the ‘best country in the world’, so is it going to far to presume that inside we think of ourselves as the best people in the world? And that -that- is why we are so shocked?
I don’t mean this to push any buttons, I have a knack for asking ugly questions.
Actually, now that I think about it, I obviously -do- want to push buttons, just productively, not manipulatively.
I think it’s perfectly natural, even if it is illogical, to be shocked when something bad happens to you. I was shocked when I got in a car accident. My cousin was shocked when she had a miscarriage.
I’m not sure why it wouldn’t be the same at a national level.
So, again, I think you’re reading too much into it. Some of what you’re talking about may be there, but primarily, I think it has to do with the fact that we’re more shocked when bad things happen to us than when they happen to other people. And essentially, England is “us,” by which I mean America.
You’ll note that the emotional reaction to similar attacks in Spain was nowhere near what it is for England. That’s because England, on a national level, is sort of like a relative, whereas other countries aren’t. So of course we’re going to react more to it happening to them.
well, I think this definitely is a big deal, and should get the world to stand up and take notice. Not because it’s white people being killed, but because it has taken place in an area that is not currently a theater of war. Yes, the constant bombings and death in Iraq are awful, and should stop, but then there’s a current, active insurrection going on, with people in fatigues with tanks and assault rifles and everything. The fact that this attack happened in a Major World City that is not currently under a Military Occupation seems to me to be indicative of the possibility of this escalating to World War status, and scares the shit out of me.
As our president and others have repeatedly pointed out and used to their own ends, there is no ‘country’ to terrorism. There is no one land to attack and ever hope of defeating it, a completely different method must be used. As has been pointed out, we had a ‘theater of war’ when attacking the taliban, and we had a theater when attacking saddam, but we’ve declared a war on terror and terrorism, and should expect that just as we will attack them anywhere, in any country, they will do the same.
As I said to Phaedra, I do not mean to imply that this is not a big deal, or even that this particular act equates precisely to the problems in iraq. I simply mean that even when very little was known about this attack, even when the estimation of human destruction was much smaller than it is currently, we were already paying more attention than we do elsewhere.
It’s not just that it’s a world city, it’s that it is a first-world city that draws our attention, unlike dozens of others in the world that make one sentence on the evening news.
I can be appalled without being shocked. I can be scared without being surprised. It is the world we live in, and we all knew that 9/11 would not be the end of terrorism in “our world.”
actually I’m more shocked and appalled that it’s London than I would be at many other first-world cities. In the aftermath, it will no doubt be pointed out that the casualties included christians, muslims, hindus, atheists (actually no, atheists won’t get a mention), jews, etc. Anglo-Saxons, Indians, Saudis, Pakistanis, North Africans, South Africans, Jamaicans, Iranians, Uzbekistanians will all be counted amongst the dead.
Anyway. I don’t know if I have a point or not. Turning off TV now. Going away from internet now.
Probably a good idea. Creeeepy.
My two cents.
Who sets the bombs that go off and kill people in Iraq? Isn’t it Al-Qaeda supported insurgents? So, if the media covered it wouldn’t it be doing the same thing you say it is with the London attacks. The “bombings” in Iraq aren’t done by the military. I’m not saying that there aren’t deaths at the hands of U.S. military personnel, but do they set bombs to go off and kill civilians intentionally? I don’t believe they do.
And another thing, I might be alone in my selfishness, but, The “closer to home” an event is the more I care about it. If a family member is killed I think it is MUCH more important to me than a stranger being killed on another continent or in a place I’ve never been. Yes, I’m selfish. I know people from/in London. I know people who left Baghdad years ago, escaped might be a better word. While I DO think senseless violence is despicable, some “hits closer to home”.
I think that phrase says a lot about many people reactions to world events. I may be incorrect. Who ever said American media outlets are unbiased? Even PBS ans NPR are being accused of having political leanings. I think I’m getting high blood pressure from taking everything I hear with a grain of salt.
Who sets the bombs that go off and kill people in Iraq? Isn’t it Al-Qaeda supported insurgents? So, if the media covered it wouldn’t it be doing the same thing you say it is with the London attacks. The “bombings” in Iraq aren’t done by the military. I’m not saying that there aren’t deaths at the hands of U.S. military personnel, but do they set bombs to go off and kill civilians intentionally? I don’t believe they do.
I wasn’t trying to say anything either positive or negative about military personnel, nor about deaths caused by them. I am only talking about our attention span here at home, our reactions and our interest.
And another thing, I might be alone in my selfishness, but, The “closer to home” an event is the more I care about it. If a family member is killed I think it is MUCH more important to me than a stranger being killed on another continent or in a place I’ve never been. Yes, I’m selfish. I know people from/in London. I know people who left Baghdad years ago, escaped might be a better word. While I DO think senseless violence is despicable, some “hits closer to home”.
I do understand this. I would be lying if I didn’t say that I felt the exact same, but then when I’m questioning our country’s subconscious motivations, I can -not- exclude myself. My question is whether these feelings that it is closer to home have more to do with class than culture. They aren’t something one can extricate for some sort of empirical comparison (and it’d be a pretty brutal thing to analyze).
Who ever said American media outlets are unbiased?
Not me, certainly, not in this instance, or otherwise. Nor am I blaming “the media”, because each individual media maker is a part of the same culture they are creating, and if there’s a national subconscious, they’re a part of it, like it or not.
As I said to Phaedra, it’s a grim, ugly thought. I don’t like it, and I don’t want to believe it is true. However, it is, to me, a valid question nonetheless, and I prefer to ask ugly questions than to leave them unasked.
On the whole i am on the same page as Phae on why it effects us so much. But you have also consider that how we here about the attacks in London. If you notice we can link up directly with the BBC. There is no need for translators and no need to have the sound muted while your local anchorman hems and haws about what s/he sees on the screen. We can hear the anguish cries and understand the EMT screaming that he ha found someone in the rubble. I believe the reason we relate to this attack is because we actually do speak the same language.
Tell you what, as someone who relies heavily on public transit, today’s bombings scared the hell out of me. And I don’t scare easily.