Dear Fellow Americans:

[xiphias]

Can we please take a lesson from the English, and deal with terrorism with the kind of unremarkable defiant indifference that they're all showing?

Comments

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

Well, this was the culture that brought us the "stiff upper lip" and all. America has long been known for being more, um, effusive than that.

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

It's because we don't drink enough tea!

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

We could, but it would mean giving up our lattes.

And I, for one, just can't face that. Much as I like tea.

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's the same issue I'm having. I have an espresso machine; I have to have at least one tan mocha a day, even on weekends. Yes, I am addicted.

Plus I swear tea stains my teeth more than coffee and cigarettes combined.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Okay.

This may well have a casual effect.

Tea does have enough caffiene to increase alertness, but it's more generally calming.

Lattes, and esspresso, however, make people jittery.

No WONDER we freak out so much: we're on a higher dosage of uppers!

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

Have you seen this (http://www.livejournal.com/community/metaquotes/3468626.html?thread=39519826#t39519826) yet?

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

And this (http://www.livejournal.com/users/jekesta/157838.html?thread=2375054#t2375054)!

[navrins]

To what do you refer?

I'm not questioning your assertion that the English are dealing with terrorisim with greater "unremarkable defiant indifference" than Americans do; I'm just looking for some specifics.

Also: Can't someone somewhere do a better job of translating whatever the Arabic name of the organization is into actual English than "The Group of al Qaeda of Jihad Organization in Europe," which sounds like something that all our base might be belong to? (For example, "European Al-Qaeda Jihad Organization" sounds like it might be plausible, and at least sounds like it was translated by someone who speaks English.)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

It's just. . . the news reports. London got blown up, and Londoners' reactions were basically, "Well, at least it's not a transit strike."

Rudy Guliani is running around like a chicken with his head cut of. Ken Livingstone is saying, "Well, we all knew this would happen eventually, and everything we put into place to deal with it worked pretty well."

Leaving aside the ways Americans react...

[(Anonymous)]

I sent condolences to a number of friends who live in Great Britain. While universally appreciative of my concern, they were quite unfazed. The partial quotation that follows is representative. It's from a friend who grew up in the UK.

"I'm sure you will appreciate that the UK has been living with the threat of terrorism for more than 30 years. Although a few years have passed since the IRA were last active, Londoners are quite used to the disruption, threat and consequences of terrorism. All of the people we contacted were unworried by the impact on their lives though obviously those more directly involved will feel the mental scars."

Maybe it's just a matter of practice? If so, I'll stay harried, thank you very much! - Felis Sidus

[lietya.livejournal.com]

I wish. It'd be great.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

I think autographedcat is on to something in this post.

Honestly, anyone who knows anything about Londoners culture should have known the operation was doomed to failure, anyway. The whole point of terror bombing is to send a message, and everyone knows you don't strike up conversations with strangers on the Tube. It's just not done.

This is why New Yorkers (like Giuliani) are so upset. We schmooze everywhere: on the street, in the supermarket, on the subway (for the record, I do it on the London Underground as well).

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

Keep in mind that this is not exactly the first time London's been attacked. Once you've survived a full-on attack by the Luftwaffe, subway bombs aren't going to scare you as much.

[cheshyre]

Keep in mind the British equivalent to America's July 4th Independence Day as a national holiday is Guy Fawkes Day.

That said, given your admiration for the UK, wanna move there? :D Or at least get passports so we can travel there on vacation?

[I'm now wondering what rhymes with July. Defy, defy, the fifth of July: buses, trains bombed in a plot?]

[yehoshua.livejournal.com]

We did deal with it, with about as much indifference as 3000 deaths over four states in a single blow could allow. But initially, there was remarkably little psychotic claptrap. Even Rudy Giulianni, whom you unfairly characterize as running around like a chicken with his head cut off, showed a great deal of restraint, calling for calm and doing the only sensible things he could: ask people who weren't already part of the emergency response to stay home and wait for what was left of the city's first responders to sort things out. What else was he supposed to do, and how did that qualify as some sort of panic?

Then the Only President We Got showed up and told us all to go shopping. I know who I blame for the jingoistic psychosis the nation experienced in reaction to 9/11, and it isn't Giulianni. Likewise, I know that Mr. Blair's Home Secretary, Mr. Clarke, has taken 7/7 as an opportunity to admit that his national ID scheme wouldn't have done anything to prevent yesterday's bombings, but nonetheless, this is why the UK needs national ID cards and a curtailing of civil liberties in general.

Sure sounds like someone over there is overreacting to me. He's just doing it while using words of more than two syllables.

[darkrosetiger.livejournal.com]

We did deal with it, with about as much indifference as 3000 deaths over four states in a single blow could allow. But initially, there was remarkably little psychotic claptrap.

Most of the New Yorkers I know were upset, but coping. However, in parts of the country least likely to be a target, people were panicking in inverse proportion to their actual risk. At the moment, Americans in general seem to be far more upset by this than the British--who, after all, are more used to bombs on trains than we are.

Re: Dear Fellow Americans

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

yeah, i think of histrionics as part of the american national character, and it's not a part that i am fond of. it's too ... bipolar for my taste. :)

that said, IIRC, new yorkers handled their tragedy amazingly well, and i wouldn't have characterised rudy guiliani as running around like a chicken with his head cut off at all. in fact, it was the first (and only) time i was ever impressed by his behaviour and actions.

it was the rest of the country that went ga-ga, and then the bush regime started milking it for all it was worth and then some, and continues to do so to this day.

but not new york. new york did great.

Re: Dear Fellow Americans

[redbird]

New York coped, because we had to.

People who were only watching it on television panicked.

Re: Dear Fellow Americans

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Yet another reason to avoid television...

Re: Dear Fellow Americans

[griffen.livejournal.com]

I haven't watched television for something like four years, except for the occasional Law & Order or West Wing marathon, and a few movies now and then.

Now, when I catch a glimpse of the utter CRAP Danny's father absorbs on a regular basis, it makes me ill. It makes me wonder how people can watch this shit and get taken in by it.

[linenoise.livejournal.com]

In addition to reasons already cited in comments, I think that we should also consider that Londoners never had the invincibility complex that most of America had. I think that a good part of the reason that people in America are all "OMG SPAZ!" about the whole thing is that we've been brainwashed for so long to believe that A) shit like this doesn't happen, and B) even if it *does* happen, it can't possibly happen to *us*.

London, on the other hand, has been rather intimately involved, for a very long time, with people that make Al-Qaeda look like amateurs.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

The brits are keeping a stiff upper lip and all, but at the same time, in a back office somewhere, british military planners are working on how to send the guys who worked on the IRA problem into the middle east. The ones with the black unmarked uniforms, sharp knives and silenced guns. The US sends in armies, the UK takes a smaller, more personal approach. They've been blown up before, they already have their response worked out.

[noddpot.livejournal.com]

*raises a fist*

British born!

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

I just saw one of Jon Kovalic's latest "Dork Tower"s, and had to add a comment to this thread. Read it and you'll see why.