Not just the one plane crash now, or the one long week of goodbye, or contemporeity, or Western Civilization. No, I mean the whole shebang. Six words, eight syllables, encapsulating human history. Telling who we are and what we do. We say our prayer and move along.
Life is short, and all else about it besides the brevity is only adornment, elaboration, detail.
Say your prayer and move along. Americans might be the only people on earth who'd hear that as an insult, a putdown, fightin' words almost. It's one of our better qualities that we are. This is a European notion. It has no currency, no validity here.