When the Madrid bombing occured, it shook me as much as the incidences in New York and Pennsylvania. Madrid is a city I've been to, a city where I first figured out how to stand on my own two feet and feel good about doing it. What shook me more, though, was how the bombing in Madrid was completely ignored by US press. There's a million excuses for why it didn't hit the front pages as hard as Sept. 11th--fewer casualties, attribution to a local problematic source, etc. I'm more inclined to believe that it was because few (if, possibly, any) US citizens were involved, and because it was in a part of the world that no one really knows how to classify. Many people don't think of Spain as being in Europe (for a myriad of social and political reasons, centering on the 50 year Franco reign). Its citizens are not Latin American, but many white people view them as such because of the color of their skin and (ironically and incorrectly) because of their language.
So many people view international tragedies as a chance to show an outpouring of grief that just isn't rational. Here I specifically think of the Trade Towers reaction, and Princess Diana. How many of the people who were "just so torn up about it" had any real perspective into what had happened? Maybe someday, the American Psychological Association will have an explanation as to why some people feel the need to publicly grieve during events that only slightly impact them on a personal level, if it occurs at all.
My viewpoint on it is that grieving for something that you have no perspective on belittles the grief that people really are experiencing. There's a potential functionalist arguement in here--that people grieve with others to obtain a sense of community and solidarity. And I guess it can be seen that way.
Yesterday, when the "Office of Homeland Security" announced that there was a new threat to US cities, I didn't react the same way that I did last time. Last time this was announced, I was living in the middle of America, in a place that was highly unlikely to be a terrorist attack location. Now, however, I live in the third largest city in the US, and the possibility of something harming the city that I've very quickly come to love made me immensely angry. In extension, I thought about how people who don't live in a city that's been under attack, or who don't love a city the way that I do, can't really understand the immense grief that New Yorkers went through in September of 2001. I think we all know that New Yorkers are fanatical about their city, but it seems that most people who have devoted any of their time living, working, and loving in a major metropolitan city have a strong allegiance toward that city.
This is not to say that you have to actually live in the city that you love. I know many people who are from New York who will always have a little piece of their hearts, souls, or minds there. As for me, my mind is in Chicago, my soul is in Portland, and my heart is in Floyds Knobs, Indiana. These are the "cities" I love.
