i'm interested to know, if you were to die today, looking back on the historical and political events that took place during the span of your life, whether they affected you directly or indirectly, which story stands out as the defining one in your life? the struggle for civil rights and assasinations of the kennedy brothers, MLK and Malcolm X? Watergate? Iran-Contra? the fall of the Soviet Union? the Internet and the information age? September 11th? clash of civilizations - the struggle against violent islamic extremism? Oil Wars - Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom? the slow death of the middle class? the Bush administration (whatever your opinion may be)?
If you are an American and born after the 70's I don't see how it cannot be 9/11. Another would be the first attempted assasination of Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi. That was sad. I wonder how history will portray the Bush administration and this war?
Mine would be the Invasion of Kuwait and missile (scuds) attacks in Saudi Arabia by Iraq which spurred the Gulf War I. I was in first grade at the time...... I lived in Dhahran, Saudi for about 4 months into the war. It was pretty scary, I had like 8 teachers that year in school because they were all leaving. I have 3 pairs of "souvenir" gas masks that I wore through out my "war time". We had Iraqi scuds hitting less than 5 minutes (walking) from my house. There was a big scare of him using gases etc. We came back to the USA evacuated, only my older sister and I came back. They wouldn't let my mother fly because she was too close to giving birth to my little sister. So my dad stayed with her not wanting to leave her there alone. It was one of the scariest/sadest moments of my life. I still remember seeing the Bus door close in front of my crying mother and waving father. Man, that wasn't a very nice sight. Anyways, all was well. They got out of there safely and I was introduced to my little sister in Houston. We, and many other expats returned to Saudi a number of months later thinking that the war was over. Only to be surprised by more scud attacks when we were back on Saudi soil. We stayed there for a little longer and then returned to Houston again (I think....). Well, not sure why I just typed my 1990-91 life story. I meant to just type the name of the war and not my feelings behind it. But all the duck and cover drills and having to be split from my parents at that young age, really got me to emotionally hate Sadam....oh and the Bombing raid sirens! I guess other things that have kind of shaped my life and are a scary part of this centuries history were terror attacks. I had a friend who was shot 6 times in the legs during the Oasis compound attack in 2004. Okay enough of this. I'm depressing myself.
Deckard - be my guest, what are the stories of your life? i recall in a previous thread you began an account of your experiences during the civil rights era cerca the RFK assasination, but held back so as not to derail...
"In 1966, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank prison. All they found of him was a muddy set of prison clothes, a bar of soap, and an old rock hammer, damn near worn down to the nub. I used to think it would take six-hundred years to tunnel under the wall with it. Old Andy did it in less than twenty. Oh, Andy loved Geology, I guess it appealed to his meticulous nature. An ice age here, million years of mountain building there. Geology is the study of pressure and time. That's all it takes really, pressure, and time. That, and a big god-damned poster. Like I said, in prison a man will do anything to keep his mind occupied. It turns out Andy's favourite hobby was totin' his wall through the exercise yard, a handful at a time. I guess after Tommy was killed, he decided he had been here just about long enough. Andy did like he was told, buffed those shoes to a high mirror shine. The guard simply didn't notice, neither did I... I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a mans shoes? Andy crawled to freedom through five-hundred yards of sh-t smelling foulness I can't even imagine, or maybe I just don't want too. Five-Hundred yards... that's the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile."
I may decide later to add something else, and I don't want to write something now at great length (I'm no MacBeth! Just two fingers, and they're slow), but I think the events of the '60's had the greatest impact on my life. You listed the assasinations of the Kennedy brothers... they had an enormous impact on me and, I believe, on the very course this country took afterwards, and affects us still. I know there are people here who aren't big fans of JFK. I respect that. I know I'm influenced by having seen him speak at Rice Stadium. Looking back, that was truly a defining moment in my life. It's difficult to describe the charisma the man had in person. He gave you chills, and the applause truly was thunderous, as overused as that may be. It's popular now, in some circles, to blame him for Vietnam, but I really believe that he would have taken a different and better path than LBJ. Who knows what our world would be like today had he lived, but it's my belief that it would be a better one. As for Robert, I was more involved with him, being a fervent Democratic supporter of his campaign. There is no question, in my mind, that he would have won the nomination and the election, that he was a bit less eloquent than his brother, but a more intelligent man, who would have set the nation on a road better than the one we've traveled. I was watching the live California returns very late, and saw him shot. You knew he was going to die, with the blood pooling on the floor under his head. You knew he was going to die, and it was like seeing the future slip away, being helpless to do anything. I didn't sleep that night. That's all I have right now, thacabbage. It depresses me to write about it. Keep D&D Civil.
Sorry, but if 9/11 was to become the most defining moment in my life....then, sadly, I let the a-holes who attacked us win. Extremely tragic day, but no way it defines me in any way shape or form.
9/11 showed to me that while we can suffer, we can become stronger, and better focused. Personally it helped me to value things that truly matter...
The two stories of my lifetime that will have the biggest impact are the Internet and the mapping of the Human Genome. The internet has profoundly changed almost every aspect of our society and now that the human genome is mapped there is possibility of changing humans. For me personally would be the Tsunami. I don't know if this can be considered good fortune but I've had the privelage of witnessing the aftermath of 9/11, the Tsunami and Katrina up close and shortly after the disasters. I was in New York three weeks after 9/11 and since I went out to Ground Zero at 2 AM I got to get about as close to the pile as they were letting civillians then. I was in Thailand about 5 weeks after the tsunami and got to see first hand the devestation. I was in New Orleans less than a month OK. 9/11 was no doubt hellish but New York wasn't derelict like New Orleans and much of the Gulf is. True it was unbelievably terrible but it was only about 1 square mile of devestation. Along the gulf you can drive for hours and see nothing but devestation. The same thing in Thailand but then you have to multiply that by countries all across the Indian Ocean. Yes the threat of terrorism is terrible and has to be dealt with but nothing compared to what nature can do. Yes 9/11 showed us the fragileness of human life. Katrina shows us the fragileness of our cities and the Tsunami the fragileness of human civilization.
9/11... which happened right before I was moving into a new home for college and right after the family found out that my father needed a lot of surgery for his just diagnosed colon cancer.
The question isn't the most defining story of your life, it is the biggest. The most important, etc. For me, it's 9/11 without question.
9/11 and the fall of the Berlin Wall are undoubtedly the 2 biggest news stories in my lifetime. They also represent the low and high points for America in my lifetime, 9/11 showing our vulnerability (though that is a bit overblown, Canada could do us more harm than that), and the fall of the Berlin Wall representing our triumph over the Evil Empire.
IMHO, the biggest story in my lifetime, even after 9/11, was Apollo 11 landing on the moon. To me, it was the greatest single thing this country has done in my lifetime, and it was the proudest I've ever been of my country. Yeah, I tend to focus on the positive rather than the negative.... I smell some poo coming my way.....
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