7 ms·

I sometimes forget how surreal that day was. Was in high school at the time and sort of at “that age” where the world was still pretty small and revolved around

I sometimes forget how surreal that day was. Was in high school at the time and sort of at “that age” where the world was still pretty small and revolved around me. Mom waking me up to say “you need to watch this,” with the TV on and both towers are on fire. The morning variety newscasters breaking their household familiarity speaking in a frightening shock that was so out of character. Still went to school that day and there was a big assembly and then we sort of carried on as normal through motions. I remember every week on Tuesday we had to turn in an analysis of a world event for one of our classes and mine suddenly felt so insignificant compared to the attacks (kinda wish I remember what I had written). I think the pandemic has far more historical significance but nothing for me will feel more visceral than 9/11. I appreciate this is likely a very American -centric perspective but it’s how I feel.

dharmab 5y ago
There are very few days in history where so much changes in a single day. There's a very clear "before and after". In my opinion, the 1990s began on Nov 9 1989 and ended on Sep 11 2001.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  Yes. I remember very well President Bush saying these attacks will not change America. I wish I could find a quote. One of the things it changed dramatically was air travel. Remember meeting family/friends at their arrival gate as they walked off the plane? Remember getting through "security" in a few minutes because the lines moved so fast? In the 1980s and early 1990s, my father routinely disassembled pistols and put them in his checked luggage so he could target shoot at his destinations. Imagine doing that today.
  - jakebasile 5y ago
    You can still check firearms for air travel. It's actually a great way to ensure your bag doesn't get lost. You have to go to the ticket agent, and say I need to check a firearm. There's a little red ticket form you fill out and place on your bag. Then you take it to a special drop off. It has to be in a locked hard case that only you can open. See also: https://www.tsa.gov/travel/transporting-firearms-and-ammunition https://www.tsa.gov/travel/transporting-firearms-and-ammunit...
- kjellsbells 5y ago
  The historian Eric Hobsbawm once wrote that the 19th century didn't end until the cataclysm of 1914, and that the 20th finished early with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. I think 1990-2001 was an innocent decade and the 21st century started on 9/11.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Similarly "the long 19th century" is 1789 -- 1914 (Ilya Ehrenberg and Hobsbawm). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_nineteenth_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_nineteenth_century
pbourke 5y ago
> I think the pandemic has far more historical significance I’m not sure about that. Without 9/11, there would be no wars, perhaps no Obama, etc. It altered the arc of history in a profound way. The recent Frontline episode “America after 9/11”[0] draws a through-line from 9/11 to the events of Jan 6 at the U.S. Capitol. [0] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/america-after-9-11/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/america-after-9-11/
- fit2rule 5y ago
  America was fighting its heinous illegal wars prior to 9/11.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  It's a little disingenuous to use 20 years of history to say it's a more significant event and then using the follow on results. In another 18.5 years, people could be talking about how the pandemic triggered the second US Civil War, or led to a complete reimagination of US race relations, or ushered in a communist takeover or something.
  - mannanj 5y ago
    How are you supposed to figure out if an event is significant or not without looking at its historical significance on the years to come?
    - Sebb767 5y ago
      I think this was exactly the point, you can't say one event was large due to the aftershock if the second event isn't even over (and therefore has its history yet to be written).
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      If you want to compare the relative historical significance of two events, you should probably limit yourself to the same timeframe. Look at how little had changed in the first 1.7 years after 9/11 and compare it to how much has changed in the pandemic.
rebuilder 5y ago
I’m not sure at all the pandemic is going to be more significant historically. The 9/11 attacks did what Al-Qaeda intended them to - got the USA mired in an expensive, unwinnable war, which ultimately broke the US will to fight and seems to have resulted in a major reconfiguration of US foreign policy.
- teawrecks 5y ago
  I believe a lot of the phenomena we see today, rampant conspiracies, misinformation, distrust in govt, political divisiveness, willingness to support a demagogue, rise in nationalism and domestic terrorism, can all be linked back to 9/11. The goal of the attack was to strike fear into the hearts of Americans on a level that we simply couldn't comprehend, a lasting fear that fundamentally changes our society, a fear that individuals in the war-torn middle east had already lived with for decades up to that point. And I think it's clear that they accomplished their goal. Unfortunately, I also think it's clear we haven't seen the end of it.
  - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    All those things you write in the 1st paragraph, I wonder if it's 9/11 or the continued spread of Internet access. Previously if you thought the earth was flat, your friends in school or work would laugh at you. Nowadays you can google anything and find a community totally into that idea, and they are indeed communities because they'll quickly indoctrinate that the rest of society/big government/the secret elite cabal are prosecuting them for their beliefs, so they'd have to support each other..
    - teawrecks 5y ago
      Oh yes, definitely the internet plays a huge roll in the world we have today, probably a bigger roll than 9/11. Humanity has seen and adapted to large scale tragedies before, but this is the first time we've had the internet. But of all the variables, 9/11 is a big one in the US. It also showed the media and advertisers how much more money there was to be made from these events. Ever since 9/11 the news media has been hard at work developing new ways to milk sensationalism junkies the same way that mobile companies milk gaming addiction whales.
SilasX 5y ago
> I think the pandemic has far more historical significance but nothing for me will feel more visceral than 9/11 It’s an interesting comparison, and one I make a lot. 9/11 was in your face, and a bunch of pre planned events were canceled. But that lasted about a week or a month (depending on the kind of event), and people could still gather in public and support each other. The pandemic was a much slower burn, but also denied us even the ability to gather and required much bigger changes to daily life.
- listenallyall 5y ago
  The pandemic hasn't denied "us" anything... governments have mandated it, in many cases without scientific evidence, or in many others, in direct contradiction to it. Things cancelled in the wake of 9/11 were done organically, by the organizers, mostly out of respect, not because the government twisted their arm.
  - generj 5y ago
    A great deal of events have also been canceled voluntarily by organizers in this pandemic. Plenty of event organizers believe they have a responsibility to their attendees and the surrounding community and have not planned events even when local governments would have allowed them. Others knew they wouldn’t sell enough tickets without large changes to the events and canceled them due to their understanding of their customers. I also imagine that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 large events would have had a hard time getting necessary approvals if they had decided to go forward. The commercial reality was that people didn’t have a desire to attend large celebratory events immediately after 9/11. Disrespectful organizers did not have much of a choice if they lacked respect for the loss of life - their customers had already decided.
FartyMcFarter 5y ago
> I think the pandemic has far more historical significance but nothing for me will feel more visceral than 9/11. I appreciate this is likely a very American -centric perspective but it’s how I feel. It's not as American-centric as you might think; I'm not from the US but after 9/11 and for several years, I had recurring nightmares about trying to escape from a building that got hit by a plane. I can't imagine what it was like for people closer to it.
burgerzzz 5y ago
I remember I was a freshman in high school at a new school having just moved from Texas to Montana and was shocked at the cavalier comments regarding it all from my classmates. Very oddly in the afternoon we heard an extremely loud/large airplane flying extremely low over our school which really freaked a lot of us out.

dharmab 5y ago

There are very few days in history where so much changes in a single day. There's a very clear "before and after". In my opinion, the 1990s began on Nov 9 1989 and ended on Sep 11 2001.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
Yes. I remember very well President Bush saying these attacks will not change America. I wish I could find a quote. One of the things it changed dramatically was air travel. Remember meeting family/friends at their arrival gate as they walked off the plane? Remember getting through "security" in a few minutes because the lines moved so fast? In the 1980s and early 1990s, my father routinely disassembled pistols and put them in his checked luggage so he could target shoot at his destinations. Imagine doing that today.
- jakebasile 5y ago
  You can still check firearms for air travel. It's actually a great way to ensure your bag doesn't get lost. You have to go to the ticket agent, and say I need to check a firearm. There's a little red ticket form you fill out and place on your bag. Then you take it to a special drop off. It has to be in a locked hard case that only you can open. See also: https://www.tsa.gov/travel/transporting-firearms-and-ammunition https://www.tsa.gov/travel/transporting-firearms-and-ammunit...
kjellsbells 5y ago
The historian Eric Hobsbawm once wrote that the 19th century didn't end until the cataclysm of 1914, and that the 20th finished early with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. I think 1990-2001 was an innocent decade and the 21st century started on 9/11.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Similarly "the long 19th century" is 1789 -- 1914 (Ilya Ehrenberg and Hobsbawm). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_nineteenth_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_nineteenth_century

pbourke 5y ago

> I think the pandemic has far more historical significance I’m not sure about that. Without 9/11, there would be no wars, perhaps no Obama, etc. It altered the arc of history in a profound way. The recent Frontline episode “America after 9/11”[0] draws a through-line from 9/11 to the events of Jan 6 at the U.S. Capitol. [0] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/america-after-9-11/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/america-after-9-11/

fit2rule 5y ago
America was fighting its heinous illegal wars prior to 9/11.
HWR_14 5y ago
It's a little disingenuous to use 20 years of history to say it's a more significant event and then using the follow on results. In another 18.5 years, people could be talking about how the pandemic triggered the second US Civil War, or led to a complete reimagination of US race relations, or ushered in a communist takeover or something.
- mannanj 5y ago
  How are you supposed to figure out if an event is significant or not without looking at its historical significance on the years to come?
  - Sebb767 5y ago
    I think this was exactly the point, you can't say one event was large due to the aftershock if the second event isn't even over (and therefore has its history yet to be written).
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    If you want to compare the relative historical significance of two events, you should probably limit yourself to the same timeframe. Look at how little had changed in the first 1.7 years after 9/11 and compare it to how much has changed in the pandemic.

rebuilder 5y ago

I’m not sure at all the pandemic is going to be more significant historically. The 9/11 attacks did what Al-Qaeda intended them to - got the USA mired in an expensive, unwinnable war, which ultimately broke the US will to fight and seems to have resulted in a major reconfiguration of US foreign policy.

teawrecks 5y ago
I believe a lot of the phenomena we see today, rampant conspiracies, misinformation, distrust in govt, political divisiveness, willingness to support a demagogue, rise in nationalism and domestic terrorism, can all be linked back to 9/11. The goal of the attack was to strike fear into the hearts of Americans on a level that we simply couldn't comprehend, a lasting fear that fundamentally changes our society, a fear that individuals in the war-torn middle east had already lived with for decades up to that point. And I think it's clear that they accomplished their goal. Unfortunately, I also think it's clear we haven't seen the end of it.
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  All those things you write in the 1st paragraph, I wonder if it's 9/11 or the continued spread of Internet access. Previously if you thought the earth was flat, your friends in school or work would laugh at you. Nowadays you can google anything and find a community totally into that idea, and they are indeed communities because they'll quickly indoctrinate that the rest of society/big government/the secret elite cabal are prosecuting them for their beliefs, so they'd have to support each other..
  - teawrecks 5y ago
    Oh yes, definitely the internet plays a huge roll in the world we have today, probably a bigger roll than 9/11. Humanity has seen and adapted to large scale tragedies before, but this is the first time we've had the internet. But of all the variables, 9/11 is a big one in the US. It also showed the media and advertisers how much more money there was to be made from these events. Ever since 9/11 the news media has been hard at work developing new ways to milk sensationalism junkies the same way that mobile companies milk gaming addiction whales.

SilasX 5y ago

> I think the pandemic has far more historical significance but nothing for me will feel more visceral than 9/11 It’s an interesting comparison, and one I make a lot. 9/11 was in your face, and a bunch of pre planned events were canceled. But that lasted about a week or a month (depending on the kind of event), and people could still gather in public and support each other. The pandemic was a much slower burn, but also denied us even the ability to gather and required much bigger changes to daily life.

listenallyall 5y ago
The pandemic hasn't denied "us" anything... governments have mandated it, in many cases without scientific evidence, or in many others, in direct contradiction to it. Things cancelled in the wake of 9/11 were done organically, by the organizers, mostly out of respect, not because the government twisted their arm.
- generj 5y ago
  A great deal of events have also been canceled voluntarily by organizers in this pandemic. Plenty of event organizers believe they have a responsibility to their attendees and the surrounding community and have not planned events even when local governments would have allowed them. Others knew they wouldn’t sell enough tickets without large changes to the events and canceled them due to their understanding of their customers. I also imagine that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 large events would have had a hard time getting necessary approvals if they had decided to go forward. The commercial reality was that people didn’t have a desire to attend large celebratory events immediately after 9/11. Disrespectful organizers did not have much of a choice if they lacked respect for the loss of life - their customers had already decided.

FartyMcFarter 5y ago

> I think the pandemic has far more historical significance but nothing for me will feel more visceral than 9/11. I appreciate this is likely a very American -centric perspective but it’s how I feel. It's not as American-centric as you might think; I'm not from the US but after 9/11 and for several years, I had recurring nightmares about trying to escape from a building that got hit by a plane. I can't imagine what it was like for people closer to it.

burgerzzz 5y ago

I remember I was a freshman in high school at a new school having just moved from Texas to Montana and was shocked at the cavalier comments regarding it all from my classmates. Very oddly in the afternoon we heard an extremely loud/large airplane flying extremely low over our school which really freaked a lot of us out.