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this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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You ever watch movies from the 90's to 2001? Notice how they are so damn light, jovial, inconsequential, happy, and just plain old fun? I'm talking American Pie, peak 90's humor, plus like Adam Sandler movies that were actually funny like Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison, Dumb and Dumber, Road Trip, Dude Where's My Car, things like that. They really capture the spirit of the 90's. There was this sense of optimism and joy that the cold war was over, technology is taking off, maybe we're about to enter this utopian future that Star Trek is always talking about.
Then boom, 9/11. Those first few days and weeks were something else. Unity like I'd never experienced before, it was incredible, absolutely dominated every conversation like nothing I've experienced since until Covid.
Then we started to fundamentally change in horrible ways. The Patriot act. Warrantless wiretapping. Torture. Illegal aggressive wars. The Bush Doctrine of preemptive first strikes. "You're either with us or you're against us." Free speech zones. Military WORSHIP where if you said a single fucking word against the military you are basically a treasonous bastard who should be shot. It was so fucking terrifying.
America is basically a textbook example of someone who went through a major trauma, had everyone's support almost universally, and then instead of getting therapy and working through it and resolving the issues that caused the trauma, it started spiraling out of control. Pushed away friends and allies, started fights it couldn't win, got more and more aggressive and closed minded. Radicalized.
It's a shame you didn't get to know America before 9/11. I was 19 on 9/11 and I barely got to know the country. It was far from perfect and everyone knew it, but the place we are at now is DIRECTLY related to 9/11 and I fucking hate it.
Going to copy-pasta my response to the other reply, but it rings true to your reply as well:
I could definitely see that, thanks. It's been a great frustration of my life to see "American the brave" regularly be "America the scared", and as I've gotten older I've increasingly found it (and many post 9-11 policies) ridiculous. I hope we can fix this in the coming decades, I wasn't old enough to speak up or understand what was going on then... I am now.
Yeah it's the cowardice that really pisses me off the most, that really gets to me. If we truly were so strong and proud we would've plugged the holes in airplane security quick and easy, sent in some special ops to capture Bin Laden, and most importantly, simply rebuild the towers exactly as they were before but updated and better, as a big fuck you to the terrorists. But instead..well, you know the rest.
To be fair, we did most of that, but we also added all this extra stuff that is totally unnecessary and made air travel a nightmare. Like honestly, is an airplane really that much bigger of a terrorist threat than hijacking a bus full of people, or a train and causing a head on derailment or something ala East Palestine?
I think we need to rethink a lot of post-9-11 changes, and I hope as more people in my generation get older they'll draw similar conclusions.
Freedom fries.