Americans are looking back on the horror and legacy of 9/11, gathering Monday at memorials, firehouses, city halls and elsewhere to observe the 22nd anniversary of the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil.

Commemorations stretch from the attack sites — at New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania — to Alaska and beyond. President Joe Biden is due at a ceremony on a military base in Anchorage.

His visit, en route to Washington, D.C., from a trip to India and Vietnam, is a reminder that the impact of 9/11 was felt in every corner of the nation, however remote. The hijacked plane attacks claimed nearly 3,000 lives and reshaped American foreign policy and domestic fears.

  • @SaakoPaahtaa@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    1310 months ago

    I have trouble understanding any of this? You have problems finding empathy for victims of terrorist attacks because a disease killed more? What do they even have in common in this context? Why do mass shootings prevent you from feeling empathy? Or was that line just another contextless cool-story-bro addon? What does your age have to do with any of this? If I read this correct you have had problems with empathy all throughout the decades.

    Why even write a comment as bad as this?

    • @ramble81@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      1310 months ago

      Well since someone needs things spelled out to them because they don’t understand context, I’ll do it just for you.

      • Age was mentioned because most of the Internet trends younger so there were inevitably going to be comments about “well you probably weren’t old enough to remember”, no, I very much was

      • link between the pandemic, mass shootings and this was due to all of them were large death experiences, didn’t matter the cause, it’s the fact that we’ve become so accustomed to death through our (in)action leaves people jaded.

      I don’t even know where you get the “cool-story-bro” part unless you’re just trying to sound “cool” yourself.

      • @SaakoPaahtaa@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        610 months ago

        You do know terrorism is more than just a mass death -situation? You DO know that right? Please say you do. Also please say it isn’t normal for you to destruct complex issues into simple black and white matters for them to be examined out of context. You’re too old for that kinda stuff and I would expect better from someone with that many years under their belt, even though you seem to lack any hint of empathy towards anyone

        • Flying Squid
          link
          fedilink
          910 months ago

          The deaths from COVID are higher in number, but have had less of a societal shift (although it probably should have resulted in one). There were all the days afterward where we all expected to be attacked again at any time. People were absolutely terrified. That took a huge psychic toll on the nation. People were literally getting PTSD because they expected Bin Laden to attack again and maybe with a dirty bomb this time. The government pushed through the Patriot Act with almost unanimous consent. And suddenly, we were at war in Afghanistan and 200,000 people were killed in that war.

          9/11, as they say, changed everything. And that isn’t literally true, but things seriously changed in the U.S. and not for the better.