Why Your Species Sucks: Groupthink

From the manners, etiquette or whatever-the-fuck-it-is column in Slate, a reader types:

Q. Husband Doesn't Feel Sad About 9/11: I have been married for 2-plus years to a man who is wonderful in many ways. However, with all the 9/11 hoopla lately, it's been on my mind a lot and I asked him yesterday if he was thinking about it.* He told me that he doesn't allow himself to feel bad about what happened because that doesn't help anything and it would be disrespectful to those who lost their lives that day and in the war since. I don't get his logic and am left wondering if this is normal, or should I be concerned? It bothers me that he doesn't feel what most everyone else feels when they think/talk about 9/11. [The second bold is ours.]

You mindless, droning sheep. We can only suppose that it would have bothered you if, in Nazi Germany, hubby didn't "feel what most everyone else" felt about Jews, gypsies, or commies. Or didn't "feel what most everyone else" did about the coloreds in the Confederacy, or about women in just about every society ever. And so on.

This is precisely why Americans can't have nice things, anything resembling democracy or any discourse beyond knee-jerk reaction.

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*Note to the ladies: Unless your insignificant other is a university-certified philosopher, do not ask what said other is "thinking." If you had to ask, it's something you probably can't handle. (The first thought is usually "I wish to hell I were anywhere but w/ a ninny who is constantly demanding a response to inane questions.")