MIKE HENDRIX has a heartfelt observation, which is part of a long and passionate post with some great pictures. So here’s the excerpt, but don’t let that stop you from reading the whole thing:

That’s why: politics ain’t people. People are bigger than that, more complex, more unpredictable, more difficult to categorize and comprehend. To try to gain an encompassing understanding of the human soul via the small window of politics is to pinch off your own vision, sort of like looking at one corner of the Grand Canyon through a pair of inverted binoculars and then walking away confident that you saw the whole thing.

The truth is, the free people of the world still do have more in common than our respective governments can sometimes imagine. Our brothers, sisters, and cousins in Europe and Canada are still just that, even though we may disagree on plenty of specific issues. It might be just maudlin naivete for me to say so, but I think that the sympathy expressed for us worldwide in the days following September 11 was genuine, and I think much of it is still there. So many of these people have felt the horror of global terror in their own cities, up close and personal; they’ve lost friends and loved ones to the evil acts of the Red Brigades, Action Directe, the IRA, the ELA, and of course the various Islamist groups too. So how could these people fail to sympathize with us after 9/11? Is it even possible that such heartfelt sentiment could be just an aberration, a shallow and fleeting moment that in the end will be forgotten and mean less than nothing?

I hope not.