I can see your point, but if someone lives in a city near an industrial plant and something like that happens somewhere nearby, the effect would probably be just about the same. I'm not talking about people living 2,000 miles away, but in the vicinity. What surprises me about the 9-11 thing is that people in centers nowhere near an "epicenter" have been sucked into the paranoia regardless of how remote the possibility is that they would ever be in danger. I suspect, once again, that this comes back to media coverage and a continuous sensitization due to various alerts, etc... In reality, there are quite a number of much more likely terror targets located outside of the U.S. -- and the people living and working around them know very, very well how much danger they are constantly in because of that proximity, but they just have to try to ignore the risk and carry on regardless.
As for PTSD, it's not a particularly "rational" response dependent on whether someone feels stalked or singled out. Some people develop it from being in a car crash, or an earthquake. A friend who grew up in El Salvador feels indescribable terror at the sound of a gunshot, even though he now lives here "safe" in Canada and the only gunshots he hears are those of deer hunter's rifles. If we're going to try to allocate rational entitlement to PTSD, then what about all of the Iraqis who aren't engaged in acts of insurgency, but who have been living as "bystanders" enduring bombardment with missiles and shells, bombs going off, choppers patrolling their neighbourhoods at all hours of the day and night, etc.. for several months now. Let's not beat around the bush..this whole generation will be screwed up for the rest of their lives. People who have seen blown apart bodies won't get over that either. For those people, there is little difference between the sound and fury of a friendly bomb and that of a terrorist's bomb -- just as my friend can't tell the difference between the sound of a goon squad's handgun and a deer hunter's rifle. Basically, the quality of life is damaged irreparably forever. |
