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> so bent out of shape over mere terrorism 9/11 was an attack on the greatest symbols of American power on American soil. Suffice to say, Americans are not acc

> so bent out of shape over mere terrorism 9/11 was an attack on the greatest symbols of American power on American soil. Suffice to say, Americans are not accustomed to that and they went mad with rage and fear. Cue a generation of death, destruction, and the reshaping of the world as America worked through that trauma. It wasn’t just mere terrorism but also the psychological result of American strategic isolation.

jameskilton 3y ago
I like to put it slightly differently: 9/11 was the most successful terrorist attack in modern history. We are still running scared.
- nyokodo 3y ago
  > We are still running scared. Not as compared to 9/11 through ~2017. America has largely returned to the geopolitical indifference it had in the 1990s but with much greater exhaustion for direct foreign military intervention and cynicism about strategic alliances.
  - asdff 3y ago
    Foreign policy wise the ship never was off course at all from the doctrine its had for decades. In terms of the American people though, its obvious how the event has severely damaged us both in terms of how we think about our fellow people, and the sort of restrictions and surveillance we have imposed on ourselves in the name of safety since.
- pydry 3y ago
  It certainly fulfilled its objective of pulling the US into an unwinnable war in Afghanistan the "graveyard of empires".
bongodongobob 3y ago
I don't think most people considered the WTC as a symbol of anything other than tall buildings. Or at the worst, a symbol of unfettered capitalism. It seems to me it was made into that symbol after the fact to get everyone's feathers rustled. In 2000, if you were to ask someone what building represented the success of the US, I'd bet the majority would say Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, or Sears Tower. Maybe that answer would be different for New Yorkers though, idk. The psychology that should be noted was the government and media whipping the populace into a psychotic frenzy which made us willing to murder a quarter million people in a country that had nothing to do with the attack. The fact that this isn't brought up every time 9/11 is mentioned is a travesty.
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  I think you have the cause and the effect mixed up. The government didn't have to 'whip us up' we did that entirely on our own. The government was able to go places they never could because of that fervor, but they had at most a marginal role in creating it. You're wildly misremembering how much fear there was on day 0, before the government had a chance to do anything. We, as a civilization, are riding the razors edge of stability. The amount of energy required to destabilize the system, when applied in just the right way, is shockingly small.
  - nyokodo 3y ago
    > We, as a civilization, are riding the razors edge of stability. This is massively overstating the impact on the west, and America specifically. Obviously it massively disrupted life and civilization in the Middle East and elsewhere, and it lead to the death of 10s of 1000s of military personnel and degraded civil liberties in America and elsewhere. But it had no substantial impact on “civilization” in the west.
    - TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
      Apart from seeding a culture of paranoia and xenophobia, and converting the Anglosphere from a mid-trust culture into a low-trust culture. See also, airport security theatre.
- nyokodo 3y ago
  > I don't think most people considered the WTC as a symbol of anything other than tall buildings The WTC clearly represents American economic might, but the Pentagon was attacked also and that represents American military power. The White House narrowly avoided being hit. Additionally, people don’t have to consciously understand what things symbolize for that to be make an impact on them. Plus, it wasn’t just a message to Americans but to the world, especially the Muslim world, and the WTC had been unsuccessfully attacked 8 years previously so it was a symbol of failure for them. Not afterwards!
- wkat4242 3y ago
carlosjobim 3y ago
3000 civilians were killed in a single attack. It's not about the buildings or any symbolism, it's about the tragic loss of life in first hand. Everything else second. If you're looking for symbolism, you have the January 6 insurrection.
MisterBastahrd 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
nathancahill 3y ago
Fixed: Cue a generation of death, destruction, and the reshaping of the world as America co-opted the trauma to start a generation of unjustifiable wars and massively reduce civil liberties.
latentcall 3y ago
Yep. The world generally felt for us after 9/11, and then the wars started and that really affected public perception. We invaded a country that had nothing to do with it and destabilized an entire region and didn’t find the guy that orchestrated the whole thing for an entire decade. All that along with torturing prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib made us look even worse. Not to mention it really created an “us vs. them” environment in the American homeland which is still ever present if not getting worse. I think Bin Laden was counting on “death by a thousand cuts” aka creeping normality and I believe that was largely successful. Americans seem to have partly turned on each other over political differences. People now have an even larger distrust of the institutions in this country. Empathy seems to have taken a sideline. I’ve seen families broken up and almost experienced it myself. People now spend so much time online in their echo chambers and sometimes refuse to even converse with “the other side”. This goes both ways. With all of this happening I think of this part of Lincoln’s Lyceum Address: “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

jameskilton 3y ago

I like to put it slightly differently: 9/11 was the most successful terrorist attack in modern history. We are still running scared.

nyokodo 3y ago
> We are still running scared. Not as compared to 9/11 through ~2017. America has largely returned to the geopolitical indifference it had in the 1990s but with much greater exhaustion for direct foreign military intervention and cynicism about strategic alliances.
- asdff 3y ago
  Foreign policy wise the ship never was off course at all from the doctrine its had for decades. In terms of the American people though, its obvious how the event has severely damaged us both in terms of how we think about our fellow people, and the sort of restrictions and surveillance we have imposed on ourselves in the name of safety since.
pydry 3y ago
It certainly fulfilled its objective of pulling the US into an unwinnable war in Afghanistan the "graveyard of empires".

bongodongobob 3y ago

I don't think most people considered the WTC as a symbol of anything other than tall buildings. Or at the worst, a symbol of unfettered capitalism. It seems to me it was made into that symbol after the fact to get everyone's feathers rustled. In 2000, if you were to ask someone what building represented the success of the US, I'd bet the majority would say Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, or Sears Tower. Maybe that answer would be different for New Yorkers though, idk. The psychology that should be noted was the government and media whipping the populace into a psychotic frenzy which made us willing to murder a quarter million people in a country that had nothing to do with the attack. The fact that this isn't brought up every time 9/11 is mentioned is a travesty.

idiotsecant 3y ago
I think you have the cause and the effect mixed up. The government didn't have to 'whip us up' we did that entirely on our own. The government was able to go places they never could because of that fervor, but they had at most a marginal role in creating it. You're wildly misremembering how much fear there was on day 0, before the government had a chance to do anything. We, as a civilization, are riding the razors edge of stability. The amount of energy required to destabilize the system, when applied in just the right way, is shockingly small.
- nyokodo 3y ago
  > We, as a civilization, are riding the razors edge of stability. This is massively overstating the impact on the west, and America specifically. Obviously it massively disrupted life and civilization in the Middle East and elsewhere, and it lead to the death of 10s of 1000s of military personnel and degraded civil liberties in America and elsewhere. But it had no substantial impact on “civilization” in the west.
  - TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
    Apart from seeding a culture of paranoia and xenophobia, and converting the Anglosphere from a mid-trust culture into a low-trust culture. See also, airport security theatre.
nyokodo 3y ago
> I don't think most people considered the WTC as a symbol of anything other than tall buildings The WTC clearly represents American economic might, but the Pentagon was attacked also and that represents American military power. The White House narrowly avoided being hit. Additionally, people don’t have to consciously understand what things symbolize for that to be make an impact on them. Plus, it wasn’t just a message to Americans but to the world, especially the Muslim world, and the WTC had been unsuccessfully attacked 8 years previously so it was a symbol of failure for them. Not afterwards!
wkat4242 3y ago

carlosjobim 3y ago

3000 civilians were killed in a single attack. It's not about the buildings or any symbolism, it's about the tragic loss of life in first hand. Everything else second. If you're looking for symbolism, you have the January 6 insurrection.

MisterBastahrd 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

nathancahill 3y ago

Fixed: Cue a generation of death, destruction, and the reshaping of the world as America co-opted the trauma to start a generation of unjustifiable wars and massively reduce civil liberties.

latentcall 3y ago

Yep. The world generally felt for us after 9/11, and then the wars started and that really affected public perception. We invaded a country that had nothing to do with it and destabilized an entire region and didn’t find the guy that orchestrated the whole thing for an entire decade. All that along with torturing prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib made us look even worse. Not to mention it really created an “us vs. them” environment in the American homeland which is still ever present if not getting worse. I think Bin Laden was counting on “death by a thousand cuts” aka creeping normality and I believe that was largely successful. Americans seem to have partly turned on each other over political differences. People now have an even larger distrust of the institutions in this country. Empathy seems to have taken a sideline. I’ve seen families broken up and almost experienced it myself. People now spend so much time online in their echo chambers and sometimes refuse to even converse with “the other side”. This goes both ways. With all of this happening I think of this part of Lincoln’s Lyceum Address: “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”