100% agree Elmer. I was just having a similar conversation with some work colleagues yesterday.

We are turning into a culture or nation of hate. People seem to look for reasons to be outraged. Extremists on all sides seem to be driving the narrative, and calm rational discussions are going the way of the Dodo bird.

It's a very bad sign.

As a native New Yorker, this is a hard day. I would like to say we're moving in the right direction and learned from 9/11....but I don't believe either of those things are true statements.

Agreed.

In my college days people from other countries seemed to open up to me about the reasons why they were sent to where the schools were. Many told me of the various factions and how our government would play one against the other to help keep their countries destabilized. When you add religion it only becomes worse.

One received a guarantee of safety from our government that was not worth the letter he received.

Absolutely, Elmer.

I agree, Elmer. This underlying climate of fear and hate that seems to be pervasive in almost everything one does or wherever we even venture out these days needs to stop now.

The day (and many days) after 9/11 /01 was probably one of the most unifying and rallying times this country has seen in a long time.

You are so very right Elmer

Well said.

Yes, I agree.

I think about countries that have no 9/11 because the date of any particular slaughter doesnt stand out enough for anyone to remember it specifically and we helped. We use surrogates for our attacks. We as a nation are unaware of the slaughter we rain down on other countries. That is why the attack on us came as such a shock. That has not been our normal. Are we responsible for things we dont even know about? The constant attrition that adds up to multiple 9/11's? Humans have done this sort of thing to each other for forever but I do wish we didnt do it too. This is no way excuses those who did it to us because no one came back from the dead because of it. Too depressing.

We are turning into a nation of hate...on both sides. It's been festering since 2000 and I fear it will never end. We are as divided as we were before the Civil War.

What would you like to see changed?

We should stop labelling our politically motivated wars as "help" for foreign countries and citizens. There have been very few moments of "help" that were justified. We intervene in civil wars. We have overthrown legitimately elected governments because we thought they were "communist" or unfriendly. The Iraq war was a lie -- and how is it that so many citizens, informed citizens, knew it but the administration took that road? Diplomats and allies have been ignored. That's where we are now.

ETA -- our citizens/schoolchildren need to be educated about the big picture, not just names and dates in history.

"There have been very few moments of "help" that were justified."

Since World War 2, I can't think of many.

Individual, CIA or Special Forces type actions - fine. Like getting Bin Laden and capturing other Al Qaeda leaders. Air and drone attacks to strike at the bad guys causing trouble, if carefully monitored, I'm fine with those too. But few of the others involving full-on military forces on the ground were necessary.

We're fools on the world stage politically and militarily, doing more harm than good and have been for decades and decades. Everyone in other countries (including our allies) sees that. We don't

I take a little issue with your use of the word, "we". I would not like to be included in any such group that advocates war, and the death and destruction that goes with it.

I remember talking to a rw friend when the U.S. invaded Iraq. I stated my opinion and told her how sick I was about it, and her response was, "We'll see..." Why do so few come back to discussions, either with a single person or a group, and say, "Boy, how wrong I was!" This was not my need to say I told you so, but rather an acknowledgement on the part of the rw of buying into a warmongering set of values. I never want to be included in that group.

I do wonder whether the world would look significantly different if women leaders were in the majority, and think that it probably would.

I think it’s a tragic flaw in human nature. The most self-serving, power hungry people have a drive to control.

The others really just want to live and enjoy their lives in peace.

The ones who want to have power and control manage to mess everything up.

I don't think it's human nature.

As we've all seen and experienced recently, ignorance and self-centered conduct are all too present in our country and are a risk to our freedoms when the wrong people are in elected offices. Externally, the myth, misconceptions and falsehood of what some call "American Exceptionalism" have led us time and again to actions and decisions that the rest of the democratic world looks at in often near-unanimity as being stupid, ill-conceived, and just generally boneheaded. Americans who have lived abroad (in other than military or US governmental circumstances) can look at their homeland from a different perspective and often come to see this more clearly and in a similar way as people living in other countries do.

Both political parties are to blame. I don't expect our naive and ill-informed conduct on the world stage to change anytime soon.

My parents immigrated from Brittany in France. They left in 1951. Came through Canada, but settled here in NYC. They were able to go back to visit each summer by the time I was around 8 or 9. (I remember one visit when I was 4)

I know what you mean about how we are viewed. I was a very quiet kid. I remember sitting and listening to many conversations (debates?) after meals. They used to love talking politics and religion. My father especially.

I'm a long time Penzey's customer. Bill always wrote about his experiences searching out spices all over the world. On 9/11/2001, he was in some small 3rd-world country (wish I could remember exactly where). As soon as flights resumed, he took a taxi back to the airport to fly home. The taxi driver -- a poor man who had little worldly goods to spare -- refused payment, as a gesture of support for the USA in our hour of sorrow. Part of the whole 9/11 tragedy, is that at least for a brief moment, the world was in sympathy with us ... and we went to war, causing pain and suffering to so many civilians, and lost it.

If you have Crave, there is a documentary on there called Come from Away, which is now a broadway play. It’s about the town of Gander NFLD there the planes landed and what the town did for the passengers.

"Part of the whole 9/11 tragedy, is that at least for a brief moment, the
world was in sympathy with us ... and we went to war, causing pain and
suffering to so many civilians, and lost it."

The goodwill of other countries that we have is limited, conditional, and often misused by us and so often withdrawn. We've seen that in the last 3.5 years with a president who's not respected abroad and viewed by our allies as an idiot, for good reason. It's true that we regained some goodwill after the tragic attack but lost it afterwards as we usually do.

My experience is that other countries in the world that matter look at us as buffoons. Rarely assessing situations correctly, rarely choosing the right course of action, rarely able to consider consequences of our conduct on ourselves and on other countries. And this is nothing new. To borrow a phrase used to refer to another country in a completely different circumstance, I think it's fair to say we never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

I saw Come From Away on Broadway. Neat story. I'd like to think any small town would have done the same. Maybe I'm delusional though.

Many Americans have had it so good for so long that we've adopted an attitude of "Let George Do It". We don't vote. We don't support grassroots candidates. We don't attend town hall meetings or get involved. We tell one another that there's no point because 'government is corrupt'. The disaster we have in Washington now is a result of our failure to be responsible citizens. No garden grows for long untended.