welp.the reason it’s almost impossible for people who grew up during 9/11 to take it seriously is that for many of us the patriotic protonationalistic fervor was the first hint that The Adults were Not Okay and that there was some kind of sick corruptive force deep inside american society
Magoo of Awoo@hasya23 for some people like myself it was the first real instance on disenchantment with America. We were taught for so long that we'd do the right thing because we Are The Good Guys and it justified a lot of terrible shit that was not what we were taught our country was. Lies, tortures, human rights violations, twisting of the constitution, all under the banner of patriotism. They stole my faith in my country and destroyed hope that it could ever be better.
doctorflappy@Red @hasya23 for me who was in my early 20s it was my disenchantment with fellow Americans. I remember the lynchings and just completely toxic Islamophobia.
I mean I was always a skeptic of the system, but 9-11 tought me to be more distrustful of general people. That's why I believe to this day W and all the people who were advising him should be hung. They whipped it all up purposely to get their forever wars and cost countless lives.
showerpickles@hasya23 i was 18. there is only so many times a horror can be used to justify abuse, torture, war, etc before you have to just make a mockery of what that symbol has become. they made it a joke by treating it like a circus
spineberg (resplendent)@hasya23 in for a real treat when all the grownups had that New Church Vibe only for nationalism
skeleton witch zoey@hasya23 God, so incredibly true. I was in fifth grade.
Adults kept responding in this weirdly... villainous way. Like, everyone was all "this country is unquestionably perfect," after it happened, yeah. But they were also so fucking obsessed with killing people in retribution. "You poked the bear, son!!"
We were fucking gleeful to have an enemy.
Teshy (more occult)I'm old and I've read a lot of science fiction. Not the something-punk we see a lot of these days, but older stuff from back before it was accepted that we would always be living in a dystopia.
As soon as 9-11 happened, I was pissed. I knew that whatever allowed it to happen, (which we have found to be negligence on the part of the CIA and FBI), it would be used by the government to convince the public to give away our rights.
The USA-PATRIOT act was quickly passed. We still don't have some of the rights we gave away.
It was the only thing that allowed Dubya to come close to winning that second term. He _really_ needed some sort of publicly supported armed conflict because prior to that he was well-hated.
Look at when The Handmaid's Tale, Fahrenheit 451, or 1984 were written. The seeds of the corruption we're seeing are old enough that they could be foreseen decades ago... if they're not as old as humanity itself.
Dominique Cyprès@hasya23 I wrote, like, an essay about this recently. It was definitely the moment when I noticed (at age 10) that something was extremely wrong with American culture
patience, doing up live 🎧🎚📻@hasya23 at 28 & just weeks from the end of my own human rights case in a supreme court, i felt caught, as i often have, between zealous post-WWII yt boomers & kids who lacked perspective just yet
that perspective — the U.S. were baddies — started for me in ’79 w/ Iran; ’80 w/ Reagan; ’86 w/ Libya; ’88 w/ Iran flight 655; ’90 & ’91 w/ bellicose threats over oil; ’91 w/ Paul Broussard; ’92 w/ LAPD acquittals; ’93 w/ Brandon Teena; & ’98 w/ James Byrd Jr.
when 9/11 went down, i was unsurprised
moopet@patience @hasya23 from outside (I watched it on TV with the rest of my office in London) every reaction from the US seemed strange, though we felt a lot of solidarity. As the years went on it got more, I don't know, uncomfortably strange? There was a sense of shock at first, then cynicism and the inevitably of things being twisted for political gain.
@moopet @hasya23 for about four days, peaking around the third day in the U.S. city where i lived, literally everyone treated each other stunningly gentle & kind. literal strangers sat down & gently listened to other strangers in public spaces
it obviously didn’t last. by day 4 or 5, early online memes, like the "WTC rebuild proposal" of four replacement towers in the original style, looking like they were giving the finger, started appearing, and terrorist attacks on local mosques began
The Doctor@hasya23 What did it for me was driving home from work that morning (they'd closed the office and told all of us to go home), and on the way home I heard on the radio that a bunch of screwheads had set fire to an Indian restaurant downtown "to get back for 9/11."
That was probably my first lesson in "No, everything really is fucked up, and stupid people can be very dangerous."
9/11 also pretty much helped kill the company I was working for at the time - first blow in a three-punch combo, as it were.