I spent all morning watching the TV coverage and reloading every news website I could find for updates. "Surreal" gets thrown around a lot, but honestly I don't think the word communicates the experience. I don't think it could unless you were old enough to know what life was really like in the 90s and to realize that you were in the aftermath on a random-ass Tuesday morning.
I went to the restaurant where I worked for some lunch and to pick up my check. Even just to get out of the house, take a break from the panic. I remember, and I will never forget this, an acquaintance of mine sitting in the lounge, inconsolably weeping in sheer panic, ranting that terrorists were going to hijack all the planes and crash them into every building. They were going to crash them into the mall, into the restaurant, into the community center, they were, in our town of 50,000 people. I've never seen someone in that level of sheer, unreasoning panic. Ever.
She was wrong in the literal sense, of course, but I think part of the reason I remember that so vividly was because she was right in a metaphorical one. The terrorists won. Their attack terrified America so much that we gave away our hegemony and superpower status to chase after vicarious revenge and imagined enemies. For one moment the world was united behind us and we threw it away for empire building and tyranny.
9/11 was the birth pangs of the 21st Century... and who are ever more terrified than new parents?
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u/Zomburai 14h ago
I spent all morning watching the TV coverage and reloading every news website I could find for updates. "Surreal" gets thrown around a lot, but honestly I don't think the word communicates the experience. I don't think it could unless you were old enough to know what life was really like in the 90s and to realize that you were in the aftermath on a random-ass Tuesday morning.
I went to the restaurant where I worked for some lunch and to pick up my check. Even just to get out of the house, take a break from the panic. I remember, and I will never forget this, an acquaintance of mine sitting in the lounge, inconsolably weeping in sheer panic, ranting that terrorists were going to hijack all the planes and crash them into every building. They were going to crash them into the mall, into the restaurant, into the community center, they were, in our town of 50,000 people. I've never seen someone in that level of sheer, unreasoning panic. Ever.
She was wrong in the literal sense, of course, but I think part of the reason I remember that so vividly was because she was right in a metaphorical one. The terrorists won. Their attack terrified America so much that we gave away our hegemony and superpower status to chase after vicarious revenge and imagined enemies. For one moment the world was united behind us and we threw it away for empire building and tyranny.
9/11 was the birth pangs of the 21st Century... and who are ever more terrified than new parents?