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.
I remember well. It was the ultimate gut punch and marked the turn from a more optimistic and innocent time to the cynical reality we’re still living in. The 90’s were by far not perfect, but for many it was a dream compared to life since 2001.
After Covid killed more people daily than 9/11 every day for a year and no one cared, I’m just done caring a single event that happened decades ago when a larger tragedy more recent was ignored.
That’s what makes terrorism terrorism. It not only inflicts casualties, it causes terror. A terror that impacts individual and collective thoughts. It impacts policy and government action.
Traumatized an awful amount of people. Empathy should be the watch word of the day, though I’m not holding my breath.
Honestly after seeing how people reacted to a 9/11 worth of people dying per day during COVID, I’m having trouble finding empathy. I’m in my 40s and I remember the day clearly, I’m just too damn jaded now, it’s just another senseless death of people like mass shootings and other instances.
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?
Well since someone needs things spelled out to them because they don’t understand context, I’ll do it just for you.
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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
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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.
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
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.
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I’m your age, I get the angle you’re coming from. But I think you’re confusing desensitization with lack of empathy.
People don’t process tragedies like this the same. It’s a fucked up fact of human psychology. Seeing a horrific, scary, very rare event like planes crashing into the towers has way more impact on the typical person than reading about numbers without the scary event visuals. It sucks, but that’s how the human brain works.
I knew two people who died on board Pan Am 103. The younger brother of one of them died in a freak accident when he was only 7 or 8 years old.
My brother knew people who were at the airport in Rome on the day of the 1985 terrorist attacks.
Years ago my brother and I figured we knew folks that were impacted by half a dozen or so different terrorist attacks prior to 9/11. So yeah, I’m a bit jaded as well.
We did know somebody who almost flew out of Boston on that hijacked flight. She had a ticket on the same flight the next day, and her boss had pushed her to fly out a day earlier. Luckily she didn’t…
Compassion is a better word than empathy.
Most people don’t know what empathy means because they confuse it with sympathy. We’re only saying it now because of the snowball effect of our vernacular.
Before 9/11, most terrorists used explosives.
9/11 changed our view of how big they can really go. Scary stuff.
You know, it’s weird, I remember more details of where I was when the Challenger blew up more than I do when 9/11 happened. I remember so clearly learning that the Challenger blew up when we were at lunch in school (it was a private school and our asshole teacher wouldn’t let us watch). I remember the gasps, the chatter afterwards, I remember one of the girls crying. I remember the asshole teacher just walking back into the classroom to eat his lunch. I remember feeling so devastated because it was a teacher that died.
9/11? I was in my office and someone, I think maybe my dad, called me and told me a plane had hit the first tower. I do remember that I thought it was a Cessna or something, so I didn’t think much of it until someone told me about the plane hitting the second tower. I know I took the rest of the day off to watch things live, but I don’t remember what I saw on that day and what I saw replayed later.
I was also in high school at a private boarding school. I had free time before lunch and went to my room to relax. A friend came in and told me to turn on the radio. We listened to the news for about 15 minutes utes before heading to the cafeteria for lunch.
One of the cafeteria workers saw me when I came in and asked me if I was ok. I said that the space shuttle had blown up, and her reaction was along the lines of “Yeah, right”. I snapped and practically yelled at her to go turn on a radio if they had one then left.
I went back in about 15 minutes later and they had a radio on at that point. The same cafeteria worker saw me and apologized for her initial reaction.
I learned about 9/11 while in my car driving to work. Needless to say no work got done that day when I did finally get there.
I was in high school. We were starting 2nd peroid class. One kid said that a plane hit the first tower. We half believed him. Continued on with class. By 3rd peroid, we were just watching live news. I remember also that day 2 kids in my class got into a fist fight. i dont know what about.
I was in second grade when 9/11 happened, ancient teacher turned on the tv and we watched live while they did crosswords or something. A room full of second graders watched people die live on tv until the school went into lockdown and parents were called to come get kids. I had to wait longer than most since my dad was a prison guard and couldn’t get me due to the prison also going into lockdown of course
