As someone also born after the event, it’s also hard for me to understand the reaction people have. I think it’s a combination of a few things. First is the fact that we were taught about 9/11 basically every year in school, being shown the videos of the towers in school and a bunch of documentaries and stuff. Second is (in large part due to social media), increased constant awareness of horrific losses of life both in the US and out of it, including US atrocities in the Middle East as a revengeful response to 9/11. And third, just the general acceleration of the US into fascism and the helpless, nihilistic emotional response that comes from it. So many fucking things keep fucking happening, so each individual event is less shocking, I have never felt like the US is invincible or infallible.
If a plane/planes crashed into a building in a similar scale to 9/11 next month, or some equivalent attack, I’d be of course extremely devastated for the loss of life and terrified for what tf is going to come from this, just like people say they were during 9/11. But I don’t think I’d be shocked. I wouldn’t think “how could this happen?!?” I’d mostly just be like “of fucking course”.
It’s hard for me to even picture what the pre 9/11 world was like. The mindset is so foreign to me
You shouldn’t be shocked that your attitude was prevalent then, also.
I am not claiming mental or philosophical superiority here. I was freaked out too, mad at the terrorists. But, my friend’s reaction to learning of it, “So, the chickens have come home to roost?” really got me thinking.
Did some people anticipate one day there’d be a terrorist attack on the continental US? Of course
But the first one was a huge shift. We have adjusted our lives around the reality, which is what younger people have grown up with - they’ve grown up in a nation that has been attacked and has taken the precautions
That’s a different mindset than “maybe one day”
It’s like school shootings. While there had been school shootings before, Columbine had the most fatalities by a large margin. Someone might bring a gun to school and kill someone they had an argument with? Okay. Someone might bring guns to school and just start shooting everyone? What the fuck.
That’s when security measures were put in place. And most shootings have been in smaller scale.
Sandy hook elementary was another one. Okay, we know that high schoolers might have access to guns and try to kill their classmates. We also know that (still) a coworker might bring a gun in an shoot a colleague they hate or something.
But for someone to just roll up and start shooting little kids?
These are watershed moments, and you really cannot say “oh yeah, many people had the same feeling before” because, if they did, it wouldn’t actually be a watershed moment
I would argue that a country what went to war against multiple countries that had nothing to do with this act of terror, build a globe spanning surveillance apparatus, did not push back against the atrocities while they had been carried out, failed to hold the people responsible accountable, never even apologize, runs a Gulag a quarter of a century later, still has troops in a country they initially attacked, was always rife with Nationalism, Militarism and Fascism.
And this is only the stuff the US did to the rest to the world, not herself.
we’ve been shaped by it ever since our civil war. Lincoln was a great man, but the more you look at how he centralized power the more you realize even one of our better presidents was prone to it.
The reformation after the civil war made it so that the post confederate states ended up with more power than the northern in so many ways, and in that power they once again consolidated the worst aspects as part of law.
WW1 and WW2 proved that america had the ability to manufacture war-goods on a scale never before seen in history. We proved we could be the roman empire army, and then for the next 100 years have slowly let all of the lessons from rome slip past us.
That doesnt even begin to talk about the legitimate fascists in our history. Ford is praised for industry, but very directly helped hitler into power and yet is one of the “good guys” in our history books. McCarthy’s trials are once again burgeoning in our courtrooms, and once again they’re targeting the helpless. Teachers should never be punished for citing facts, or for simply clapping at a public function. But here we are.
I give the many young'uns a pass here who were kids in 2001, but the adults back then who were in total disbelief that anything like this could happen were just people who never watched the news or knew anything about the world around them (remember, the internet wasn't as pervasive back then). This wasn't even the first time the World Trade Center itself was bombed and terrorism was actually much more common pre 9/11 than after it. The OKC bombing was only a few years prior, for example. The world didn't change that day at all, it's just that a lot of very asleep people FINALLY woke the fuck up and realized other countries existed and the US had spent the last few decades ensuring that the US was loathed and hated by half of them.
It wasn't shocking terrorist.grouos existed and wanted to kill people, it was more that people were shocked they were successful with only box knives and 2 passenger planes.
The world didn't change that day at all, it's just that a lot of very asleep people FINALLY woke the fuck up and realized other countries existed and the US had spent the last few decades ensuring that the US was loathed and hated by half of them.
As a non-American I'm glad there's at least some rational comments on this post.
I can't say much about what the world was like before it, as a fifth grader at the time I don't think I would really know.
I can say that it was jarring on an instinctual level to learn as a fifth grader that there are people who hate you for no reason. Who hate you so much they want you dead. And you learn it live, in full color, as you see people jumping from heights even a fifth grader knows are way too high to survive. Then you see the whole building collapse and realize those people never had a chance anyway.
Seeing a building collapse is nothing, seeing it collapse as you can see there are people inside is completely different.
I can say that it was jarring on an instinctual level to learn as a fifth grader that there are people who hate you for no reason.
Crazy that you went through 9/11, the war on terror, and everything since then and you still haven't learnt why so many people's hatred of America is valid.
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u/whystudywhensleep 13h ago
As someone also born after the event, it’s also hard for me to understand the reaction people have. I think it’s a combination of a few things. First is the fact that we were taught about 9/11 basically every year in school, being shown the videos of the towers in school and a bunch of documentaries and stuff. Second is (in large part due to social media), increased constant awareness of horrific losses of life both in the US and out of it, including US atrocities in the Middle East as a revengeful response to 9/11. And third, just the general acceleration of the US into fascism and the helpless, nihilistic emotional response that comes from it. So many fucking things keep fucking happening, so each individual event is less shocking, I have never felt like the US is invincible or infallible.
If a plane/planes crashed into a building in a similar scale to 9/11 next month, or some equivalent attack, I’d be of course extremely devastated for the loss of life and terrified for what tf is going to come from this, just like people say they were during 9/11. But I don’t think I’d be shocked. I wouldn’t think “how could this happen?!?” I’d mostly just be like “of fucking course”.
It’s hard for me to even picture what the pre 9/11 world was like. The mindset is so foreign to me