For anyone in or near NYC, I can recommend a trip to the 9/11 museum. I expected it to be some flag wavey exercise in "patriotism" but there's a section inside where the events of the day progress as you walk through. Even as someone who knows all about the events it was absolutely chilling to walk through.
9/11 in Realtime
131–140 of 160 posts
Re: 9/11 in Realtime
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was 25 then, but it seemed like mindless vengeful insanity all the same. The entire national character seemed to change, almost overnight, in a bleak and awful way; I felt like I was standing in the surf while a powerful wave receded, water and sand and gravel all rushing away around me, while I remained in place. I have felt like a foreigner here ever since, still a citizen but no longer an American.
Yeah. But would you say that your view was the prevailing one among people your age? Or, as I think you're implying, that you were more the odd one out, including amongst your peers? Because unless I'm assuming wrong, I think your experience is in line with what I said. My experience was different than yours though. It wasn't until I started mixing with more "grown ups" during college that I realized that actually th…
Sure, I'm not trying to disagree, but to share the sympathetic experience I had on the other side of that generational divide.
My view certainly was not the prevailing one, as polls showed and Bush's re-election proved; but my peers at the time were a bunch of musicians, artists, activists, nerds, and weirdos, living in a big coastal city, so I was not alone in opposing the wars. Part of the horror of that experience was the dawning realization that we lived in a tiny, fragile bubble, and nothing we could do had any influence whatever on the mess being made outside it.
Re: 9/11 in Realtime
#133The US was so complacent in their idea that nobody would ever attack them that even commentators live on air speculated that some sort of navigation error might have caused it. Even after the second plane hit.
> The US was so complacent in their idea that nobody would ever attack them I don't think that's true. There was an attempt to bring down the WTC in 1993 after all! Authorities were taken by surprise by the method of attack. Hardly surprising since it hadn't been done before. Up until that point a hijacked flight almost always meant a ransom attempt, so you didn't shoot the plane down, you got them to land and began…
None of that is even what I'm talking about. The people watching it, in real time, commenting on it, didn't even speculate that it could be an attack. Even after the second plane. That's complacency.
Re: 9/11 in Realtime
#134@rsync's story from 9/11 is an excellent illustration of the event and absolutely worth the read: https://web.archive.org/web/20041208005336/http://www.cultde...
That was indeed a really good read.
Re: 9/11 in Realtime
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember talking about PNAC at a debate session of all things in high school. Our debate club was pretty big and well known in our school The teachers that ran it shut me down, saying I was peddling conspiracy theories about PNAC influence and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this was 2008/2009. I'm still, based on research I've done since, convinced that PNAC had a huge influence on George W. Bush and Dick Cheney…
You were absolutely correct; it was as close as possible to publishing a manifesto saying "here's how we're going to launch a war in the middle east" and then doing it as you'll ever see. The same clearly identifiable people were involved all over the place.
In retrospect, what I think was happening was teachers were afraid of other parents (many, many of which would be classified as conservative republicans) getting upset at them. The debate club was a big deal in my school and parents were actively involved with many aspects.
I think they saw headache and shut me down the easiest way possible.
Its really unfortunate, however I do think this was the main driver
Re: 9/11 in Realtime
#136No idea how to use this site. It is showing some random footage.
I think it does not work the way it was intended.
Re: 9/11 in Realtime
#137There was a piece of footage shown on British TV. Street scene, camera tilted slightly upwards, and something flashes across the screen from top-left to bottom-right. Fast, just a few frames. Never saw it again (admittedly I didn't look very hard).
Don't suppose anyone knows what I'm talking about, do they? Would be nice to know it's not a false memory.
Re: 9/11 in Realtime
#138There's something so emotional and compelling about the spectacle of shared tragedy (even smaller ones like oceangate). However there's always a reminder in the back of my mind that what makes our heart leap is very poorly correlated with what things ought to scare us. I don't know if it's possible to "Reprogram" one's heart to worry less about very high-visibility low risk things (like air travel, or terrorism in th…
Traffic deaths
Re: 9/11 in Realtime
#139No idea how to use this site. It is showing some random footage.
You might be a bit early in the timeline. You'll have to wait/fast-forward a bit.
Re: 9/11 in Realtime
#140I was four when this happened, and what I remember is being in my grandparents house watching it unfold on the news while being on the other side of the world, not sure if it is a real memory or a figment of my imagination, but my parents did tell me the attack did profoundly disturb me.
It truly does feel weird that people a few years younger than me didn't watch it happen live and even I was one of those people who was too young to truly comprehend what the hell was going on, except for developing a massive feeling of anger against the perpetrators.