911 comes of age :(

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 24, 2011
Messages
23,083
Reaction score
10,780
Location
Where faults collide
Website
doggedlywriting.blogspot.com
There's another 911 thread, but something really hit me on this 18th anniversary of the tragedy. I teach at a community college, so most of my students just turned 18 within the past year or two. This means most of my students were babies when 911 happened (and some few not even born yet, as I have a handful in my classes who aren't yet 18), and we've firmly moved into the era with an increasing number of adults who will have no memory at all of the attacks and their immediate aftermath.

Aside from feeling really old, this got me to wondering how much of our current political situation in the US (in particular, though plenty of other countries have had terrible attacks too over the past couple decades) stems from 911, at least in part?

Would Trump be POTUS if 911 had never happened? Would birthism have gotten any traction, or would another racist smear attack, one that was less Islamophobic perhaps, have rocketed him into the limelight?

Of course, racism is nothing new, and the social conservative backlash was well underway before 911. The US has always had people who are xenophobic and who hate immigrants, but did this event help to make a particular kind of bigotry and jingoism more appealing and socially acceptable in the 21st century? Did it change our relationship with government and change what we expected from it?
 

Diana Hignutt

Very Tired
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 13, 2005
Messages
13,314
Reaction score
7,098
Location
Albany, NY
Such a sad day that's echoes are with us still, and will be for the foreseeable future.
 

Brightdreamer

Just Another Lazy Perfectionist
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 22, 2012
Messages
12,977
Reaction score
4,512
Location
USA
Website
brightdreamersbookreviews.blogspot.com
I believe there are some very direct links between 9/11 and where we are today. It helped legitimize a president under whom a similar (if not yet quite as extreme) Agenda was being pushed by the right; suddenly you couldn't ask questions about the ongoing/accelerating mingling of evangelical Christian faith and government and other erosions and norm-shifting, because Evil Muslims Anti-America War Rah Rah America Why Do You Hate Freedom?...
 

Introversion

Pie aren't squared, pie are round!
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 17, 2013
Messages
10,643
Reaction score
14,867
Location
Massachusetts
If anyone doesn't read Jim Wright on StoneKettle Station, here's a repost of a powerful piece he wrote about 9/11 a few years ago. (Warning: NSFW language. Jim doesn't mince words.)

FWIW, I share his distaste for this annual ritual posting of the flag-draped Twin Towers images. Hate it. We've not moved beyond what happened 18 years ago, preferring (it seems) to wallow in it forever.

Scabs

Jim Wright said:
You're expecting some kind of obligatory 9-11 post, aren't you?

Here it is, but you're not gonna like it.

15 years ago today 19 shitheads attacked America.

They killed 3000 of us.

And then ... America got its revenge for 9-11.

Yes we did. Many times over. We killed them. We killed them all. We killed their families. We killed their wives and their kids and all their neighbors. We killed whole nations that weren't even involved just to make goddamned sure. We bombed their cities into rubble. We burned down their countries.

They killed 3000 of us, we killed 300,000 of them or more.

8000 of us came home in body bags, but we got our revenge. Yes we did.

We're still here. They aren't.

We win. USA! USA! USA!

Right?

You goddamned right. We. Win.

Except...
 

Brightdreamer

Just Another Lazy Perfectionist
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 22, 2012
Messages
12,977
Reaction score
4,512
Location
USA
Website
brightdreamersbookreviews.blogspot.com
FWIW, I share his distaste for this annual ritual posting of the flag-draped Twin Towers images. Hate it. We've not moved beyond what happened 18 years ago, preferring (it seems) to wallow in it forever.

Why should we move beyond it, when it's such a powerful and galvanizing image to promote (insert latest anti-Muslim, anti-rest-of-the-world, pro-military thing that needs promotion, and/or distract from something that might make one question America's inherent Virtue and Goodness and Rightness)?
 

Introversion

Pie aren't squared, pie are round!
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 17, 2013
Messages
10,643
Reaction score
14,867
Location
Massachusetts
Why should we move beyond it, when it's such a powerful and galvanizing image to promote (insert latest anti-Muslim, anti-rest-of-the-world, pro-military thing that needs promotion, and/or distract from something that might make one question America's inherent Virtue and Goodness and Rightness)?

Therein lies why this meme will never die, sigh. Truly, we are f*cked.
 

frimble3

Heckuva good sport
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 7, 2006
Messages
11,574
Reaction score
6,396
Location
west coast, canada
If nothing else, your students will never have known a time when the only tricky parts of flying was packing and getting a window seat.
And I do think it made it easier to hate 'the other', especially for those people who had only a fuzzy sense of who 'the others' were, let alone the geography or history of the Middle East.
 

neandermagnon

Nolite timere, consilium callidum habeo!
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 25, 2014
Messages
7,271
Reaction score
9,337
Location
Dorset, UK
It's ironic that 9/11 has led to an increase in racism. This article by the BBC argues that if the CIA had been more diverse (in terms of ethnicity, gender and social class... i.e. if they recruited people other than white men from wealthy backgrounds) they wouldn't have missed vital clues regarding how dangerous Bin Laden and the Taliban were. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49582852

The article also looks at reasons why diversity in people's backgrounds is important in many areas, e.g. business, not just the CIA.
 

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 24, 2011
Messages
23,083
Reaction score
10,780
Location
Where faults collide
Website
doggedlywriting.blogspot.com
Like it or not, 911 is firmly history now, with the number of adults having only fuzzy memories of it, or none at all.

We shouldn't forget the victims or the lessons we've learned, but it would be nice if we could get past using it for the justification of knee-jerk, hollow patriotism (or with the equation of jingoism with patriotism). We also shouldn't forget that it wasn't just Americans who died on that day, and among the Americans who died, some were Muslims. Some of those Muslims were rescue workers and died trying to save lives.

IMO. we also should shift our attention to taking a long, hard look at what we have allowed the attack to do to our democracy and culture. If we descend into authoritarianism, into becoming the kind of nation Trump and his supporters evidently want us to be, the terrorists have indeed won.

One thing I can't get my head around is that Trump's Muslim ban excludes the country most of the terrorists actually came from.
 
Last edited:

Xelebes

Delerium ex Ennui
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 8, 2009
Messages
14,205
Reaction score
884
Location
Edmonton, Canada
In another anniversary of a sorts, it is the 100th anniversary of the Red Summer. The History Guy did an episode and one of the commentors noted that the Spanish Influenza epidemic played a role in driving the xenophobia that led to the events. Which got me thinking. This xenmophobia thing has been going on for a while. And there hasn't been an epidemic. Well of course other than the over-prescription of opioids since the late 90s. In the United States, this has hit the rural communities but in Canada it centered around the urban communities until relatively recent.

That is to say, grief that cannot be stemmed leads to people trying to protect themselves in ways that increase grief for others.
 
Last edited:

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 24, 2011
Messages
23,083
Reaction score
10,780
Location
Where faults collide
Website
doggedlywriting.blogspot.com
That is to say, grief that cannot be stemmed leads to people trying to protect themselves in ways that increase grief for others.

I can only imagine what will happen if climate change drives malaria to US shores. The climate deniers will need a scapegoat to deflect attention away from the real cause--their refusal to act when it could have limited the damage.
 

Paul Lamb

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 12, 2019
Messages
550
Reaction score
417
Location
American Midwest
Website
www.paullamb.wordpress.com
A friend says 9/11 was a missed opportunity. He said that if President Bush at the time had said we will not answer violence with violence, that we will turn the other cheek, that we would have had even more support throughout the world and we would have set a new standard for global behavior for all nations.

I suspect that's a bit naive, but I also think it's what Jesus would do.