Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (254094)	10/7/2005 1:18:23 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574683

An article similar to Gore's. A nation buffeted by loss seeks to find its voice By Nina Evers Special to The Times My 10-year-old son had trouble falling asleep the other night. He has his quirks like every kid, but sleep problems have never been among them. But on that night, his mind kept racing — from terrorists to snipers to hurricanes — keeping him awake and prompting an interesting conversation with me. What he said spoke eloquently to my belief that, in some ways, he shares the same problem as his country — the problem of coping with loss. He started our conversation by telling me he was grateful because he has had such a full life. He described our family's history, citing his pride in his great-grandfather's and grandfather's involvement in World War I and World War II. He thought our family's history was "cool." And then the narrative turned. Tears began to form as he said he felt like he'd already lived too much for a 10-year-old kid. He cited our years living in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C., with the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon in 2001 and the stress of living in the infamous Beltway Snipers zone in 2002. He described his anger, grief and the belief that no one understood the depth of what he was feeling. He pointed out that, in his mind, life shouldn't be that hard. I knew where he was coming from. It is natural to avoid loss. Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross would probably call it denial. But I think my son's resistance to accept his loss of innocence mirrors that of our country and speaks to our greater historical struggle — our tendency of "forgetting" the painful parts of ourselves as a people, those parts that require the most work to change. In recent times, our losses started to mount exponentially with the 2000 presidential election. We lost something many of us took for granted: the right to vote and the belief that each vote counted. It was a complex story — one that involved race, socioeconomic status and the usual abundance of human mistakes. Instead of us "staying the course" of dialogue and repairing our mistakes, we raced to the Supreme Court to declare a "winner." The 2000 election alone was a cataclysmic earthquake to the landscape of our country, one that warranted years of analysis and discussion: about the poor and disenfranchised, about our voting processes, about the Electoral College, about the role of the Supreme Court. And then, before we could pick up the pieces of the election, Sept. 11, 2001, occurred and rocketed us into another hemisphere. Suddenly, we found something we could all agree on: righteous loss. Our loss was so great that, again in denial, we granted our president permission to bypass another opportunity for conversation about who we are as a people and instead followed him along in the fantasy that violence cures violence. Our recent losses have been compounded further by our deep, cultural hypocrisy. We have spent billions working our righteousness out on other countries, "staying the course" whenever this administration asks, yet have refused to look inward to examine our own moral failings: declaring war in the name of God in order to fight religious fanaticism; showing apathy toward corporate greed, fraud and theft, while obsessing over visual images of the displaced poor in New Orleans looting out of desperation; fanatically arguing the rights of tomorrow's children but not providing for our poor children today; claiming ourselves human-rights champions to the world yet unable to reconcile our conflicting policies toward immigrants (not surprising, given our history of avoidance with Native Americans and the ancestors of slaves). This hypocrisy is neither Democrat nor Republican — it is American. It is a result of our self-created history and as such requires our collective efforts to address. While I bristle every time a conservative brings up his or her take on morals and values, I have to agree on some level that this is the point. We are more than a country of red and blue states. We are a country losing ourselves, torn apart by our unwillingness to put aside personal beliefs and engage in open-minded, honest dialogue about race, poverty, individual rights vs. the collective good, the role of God in government, and the inherent contradiction between capitalism and democracy. These issues are the common threads that keep getting snagged in the fabric of our elections, in our response to natural disasters, in our response to terrorist attacks, or in my son's public school. These are the real threats to our homeland security. These are the losses we can do something about. The conversation that night with my son was difficult, and as such will continue. He was hungering for a deeper understanding of the history he was living and looking for answers on how to cope with his losses. I think America is hungry, too — for the conversations we aren't having. I know I'm ready to talk. Nina Evers is a writer and mother living in Seattle. seattletimes.nwsource.com

To: Road Walker who wrote (254094)	10/7/2005 1:42:10 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574683

Yesterday, there was this discussion on race that I watched while at the gym. It covered the gamut. For an example, one person complained that saying the n-word in lieu of nigger was ridiculous, that if you wanted to say the word, nigger, then say it rather than trying to be PC and say 'the n-word'in its place; that it makes us sound like we are children......and I have to agree. I hate when grown adults say the n-word. And then this white, 20 something woman stood up and said that she was from Arkansas. She went on to say that growing up, she heard the word, nigger, used all the time by white people and it wasn't until she was an adult, did she realize it was a bad word. Then this 20 something black woman from Chicago stood up and said she would never hire a black man to redo her locks for fear that he would come back and rape her; that she would prefer a white man to do the job. And on and on it went. After a while, I had to wonder........have we really made any progress with race relations? After listening to that show, it doesn't seem like it. ted