I was living in Silicon Valley working for a startup...4 years out of college. A college friend of mine on the East Coast woke me up at like 730a Pacific time and told me to turn the TV on to any channel and hung up.
Took my brain a couple minutes to wake up and realize this was for-real real.
I was also four years out of college and working for a startup, but living in Oakland with a bunch of punks and weirdos. I remember one roommate running through the house freaking out and we just thought she was being wacky as usual, until we saw the TV
I was in Sunnyvale but the cost there ended up pushing me down south to Gilroy the next year. Gilroy was very much like the town I grew up in Ohio so I really clicked with it, garlic smell and all. Lol
I was in my Marine Corps barracks, 25% of my enlistment done, my dreams of being a high speed badass having subsided to a newfound feeling of lazy independence. I had just worked overnight when this happened.
It was like a bolt of lightning, we were going to war. It wasn't really fear though, I felt pretty righteous. We were American and somebody had just fucked up.
I really miss that feeling of righteousness. Not sure I ever deserved it, but fuck, it did feel good and the case was a lot more believable at the time.
I couldn’t say it better tbh. USA gets a lot of hate for a lot of things, but no one really wants to learn why we’re #1. Fuck with our country and we will eradicate your whole ass area for 20 continuous years.
Any country that hasn't committed a genocide of it's indigenous population, hasn't used a nuclear bomb, or doesn't currently use concentration camps and slave labor, maybe? Every state actor has done bad things, but the US has more on its conscience than most (especially if we don't hold nations responsible for the actions of previous governments that no longer exist).
No one should feel righteous lashing out the way we did. There's a reason so many people were against the war even in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.
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u/CaydeTheCat 15h ago
I was living in Silicon Valley working for a startup...4 years out of college. A college friend of mine on the East Coast woke me up at like 730a Pacific time and told me to turn the TV on to any channel and hung up.
Took my brain a couple minutes to wake up and realize this was for-real real.