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Good post, Madison Cawthorn
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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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chapotraphouse
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Hope I don't get banned for this, but like can someone explain to me exactly why this shit is funny and there's no nuance around it? Like, you can mourn the Muslim lives lost due to American Imperialism AND mourn the lives of the people who had fuck all to do with any of that? Like the janitors in the building for example? Like I get it fuck the state but for it to be something people post about and laugh at all day long is hard for me to grock. What if it was your family that died?
I'm not trying to argue anything or get in a struggle session around it but like, I'm just surprised that I haven't really seen any kind of pushback or critique around making that big of a joke of this.
of course the actual lives lost in 9/11 was tragic, yes, but it is primarily funny (at least to me) because:
A. its been 22 years and most Americans act like it happened yesterday
B. We kinda had it coming (as a country, not saying the janitors or firefighters themselves did)
C. Most Americans will get red in the face if they hear you say or do something even mildly neutral about 9/11. I had a teacher once scream at me in the hallway because I, as a high school senior in 2012, was like "the 8:46 announcement that 'please take a moment of silence the first plane has struck the North Tower' and the 9:03 announcement 'please take a moment a silence the second plane has struck the South tower' are ridiculous and literally just trauma porn & what is worse is that most of the student body doesn't even have memories of 9/11" (the announcement shit was literally done like every 9/11 in my school district. Announcements for both planes striking the towers on the exact minute it happened as well as moments of silence during them. Every 9/11 was like this K-12 - ridiculous)
D. I am kinda super biased against 9/11 in general because I for years, being biracial, had people call me a terrorist because in my 95% white town I was the closest complexion to middle eastern they'd ever seen.
E. Uhhhh the War on Terror??
Your school had 9/11 roleplay?? Every year?? LMAO
Yes lol. Mind you school started at 7:45, so we'd literally be like an hour into first period and it'd just come over the intercom but every one of the 3 schools (and these were separate middle/high schools. So like X North Middle/X South Middle/X East Middle and X North High/X South High/X East High all under the same district) in my school district did this shit.
It was:
No idea whose idea it was but we did this every year from like 6th grade to 12th & it was never really talked about in the community at large lol. Half the time, teachers would either just continue teaching through the moments of silence or get really irate at students who didn't take it seriously. I experienced both over the years and senior year was when I was politically aware enough to realize how fucking stupid it was in general. Still one of those things though that is so clearly politically motivated that I didn't even get in trouble for saying what I said - just yelled at by a chud whose coffee breath is still stuck in my memory - they were that close to me, for like 30 minutes in the hallway about how 2,977 people died and how it was disrespectful to laugh & call the announcements and moments of silence ridiculous (even though most of my classmates, even those who weren't politically engaged or outright conservative, were of the same mind that it was pointless and dumb lol)
Even in the Murica manga no one stops to mourn the pentagon lol
That's really, really funny oh my god. At least your school district had the restraint to not force a moment of silence for the Pentagon too... or did they? 😂
Welcome to the South
American churches should do nativity-style plays every year telling the story about 9/11. They could have little kids in fake beards and wigs playing Mohammed Atta and George Bush.
F. we literally had 14 9/11s on US highways in 2001 alone
Wasn’t there a period of time where the US had a 9/11 worth of covid deaths every day?
About a month as I recall
Oh no! Mama mia...
Thassa lotta never forgetti
Damn that part about having a moment of silence for when each plane hit the towers is...pretty ridiculous. I also don't think we ever really had a moment of silence for it in school as I remember it, and I graduated in 2006. So I too would roll my eyes all the fuck back in my head if I were you.
In terms of your bias due to profiling stuff, do you think it's kind of a reactionary response after so much of that? Being like "fuck you, you are using this as an excuse to be a piece of shit, so I don't care anymore"? I know someone else whose biracial and he was profiles like that and he suuuper doesn't find it funny. Obviously everyone has different ways that they process that shit but just curious for curiosity's sake. Also to be clear when I say reactionary I don't mean that in a disparaging way, it would be super understandable
it is absolutely a reactionary response lol - I wouldn't ever go to like a 9/11 memorial or something and be like "haha deserved" but 99% of my politics (maybe everyone's to an extent) are because of how I grew up. My parents were/are the type of liberal that encouraged me as a child to ask about news/politics/etc and gave me my own computer with internet access at like 10, so as a consequence I was the outspoken atheist kid in middle school who was like "maybe the war on terror is kinda dumb??" in class to which my classmates would go "oh my god you are a terrorist" and I'd just laugh & agree with them.
Literally still have a friend who I used to argue politics with all the time from like 7th grade throughout high school, who I'm sure the next time I happen to see him when I'm back home for the holidays will be like "what've you been up to you fuckin terrorist??" because of how it was always leveraged as an insult against me and, as a consequence of association, him too lol.
One could probably argue that that type of stuff growing up (along with the other casual racism, etc) is what led me to immediately seek out left-leaning people in college, and because of that, discovered marx/etc so
we took one minute for both world wars at my school
Idk why I find that hella funny, maybe that's me empathize with everyone who thinks a moment of silence for 9/11 is funny. I cracked the code!
it is in poor taste, but for those who came of age post-9/11, that one day was used as a cudgel for years by the worst types of people for the flimsiest appeals to patriotism. the flag humpers and such. also, state sanctioned violence (evictions, unaffordable health care, covid 'rules') have killed millions more than that one attack. it was a matter of america's chickens coming home to roost, as
would say
and there's no nuance around it?
The fact that the whole ordeal was a giant fucking tragedy caused by American imperialism is funny for that reason, not because those people are dead.
That is the nuanced take.
I think that everyone here does have a nuanced take on this, don't get me wrong - many of you appear to be much smarter/well read than I am at this point. I just thought it was kinda weird to log on and just see a bunch of lulz with no other discussion from anyone at all; but I guess that's because you've had this conversation before. That said, there are people who would totally joke about this without having that nuance so I was just making sure I didn't enter the twilight zone or something lol.
I don’t want to speak for everyone but I’ll say this for myself.
After being told for over 20 years that I should still be morning these people and for the same amount of time our foreign policy hasn’t gotten any better, in fact it’s worse just makes me angry. They died and we’re worse as a country for it. It makes me deeply sad, but at some point the sadness just became a bitter sense of humor I reckon as a defense mechanism so I didn’t truly descend into madness.
Or in other words, it jokerfied me.
Lollllll jokerfied. I think how you phrased this resonates with me. The anger and furiousness can only last so long so it turns to gallows humor.
man this day has been the national meme holiday for about a decade, I'm shocked this is your first encounter with it
fuck patriots and fuck patriotism. america is shit and if you love it you're complicit.
Thanks for that. I think I have very similar sentiments about it all but yeah just how extreme the lulz go makes me feel uncomfy but I get it. It's not like I've never said "happy 9/11 day" lol
Personally I got sick a long time ago of having the mawkish sentimentality around 911 shoved in my face while being used to justify bullshit wars that ultimately accomplished nothing and were for nothing, yet killed nearly five million people and displaced nearly 40 more. You can't unleash that kind of brutal nihilism and expect me to take 9/11 seriously.
Also, this actually is a pretty good post from a surprising source. It's funny that it's Madison Cawthorn saying it.
I totally forgot who Madison Cawthorn was so I looked him up, I wonder what his mindset is in posting this since he's a huge chud?
Also I get your reasoning for sure, I think it's just off-putting to really rail on it and make fun of it instead of just being like "fuck this day I'm tired of it" or just forgetting it completely. To each their own I guess I laugh at some 9/11 memes too though so I get it to a degree
Take a look at those 2 numbers again and tell me, which group have you heard more memorializing about from westerners? Yeah lets care about them both equally, that means we should spend 99.99% of the time talking about the deaths in the middle east
I didn't say anything about caring equally. I know that 9/11 is peanuts compared to the atrocities enacted by the US. I just don't find it THAT funny to post a million memes about it, and wanted to know people's actual perceptions since I hadn't seen much actual discussion around it. I'm glad that I asked because it's interesting to hear each persons' unique perspectives while we are all in general agreement on many of the reasons that it feels like bullshit
The memes will continue as long as people are offended by them. Americans really need it beaten into them that their precious 9/11 is really nothing special and they commit a worse crime weekly
I totally agree that people need to be educated about all of the disgusting shit our government enacts daily, but I guess I see the memes as potentially entrenching their beliefs even further. I'm not anti-9/11 memes, it just makes me feel uncomfortable but I can also sit with that myself
the joke is that they said something objectively correct and how absurd it is that saying it is controversial
I have many family members who are veterans. Some of them shot during wars. I don’t particularly care about them, but let’s say I do. Maybe I’ll mourn their deaths in the attacks, but then what? It’s done and over with. They are heroes in the eyes of America. Someone will always be there to ‘stand up’ for them.
Millions of Muslims and their families have turned into dust and no one will ever care. Their countries will likely continue to crumble for centuries, and again, no one gives a shit.
Grieve away for the Americans, but I don’t care anymore. I don’t find the attacks funny and the memes are often try hard, but I can only shed so many tears. Enough people are already doing it for America, and not enough are grieving for the ones who will never, ever recover.
I hear that. I am definitely more in the camp of "I literally do not care about recognizing this but do feel bad for those that passed when I remember that it was even a thing".
September two years ago I was taking a walk by my old school before the school year had started, and I saw the football team gearing up for the season. The coach thought they were slacking with their suicides, so he gets them all in a line and starts yelling at them about 9/11. Some dude he didn't even know but went to school with had died in the towers I guess. Still sad of course. But it's been 20 years, everyone on the team was born after 9/11, no one even knows this guy who died (the coach didn't even really either), and his central thesis (the rant went on for like 10 minutes, you could hear him quite a ways away he was yelling so loud) was that "those people in the towers died so that you could stand on this field today." I hadn't really heard that sort of rhetoric since 2011 when Osama died, about the arab terrorist threat at the door and only the brave men and women in the US military can protect us. Brought back memories of my middle school peers wanting to "carpet bomb the middle east," the racist jokes that came from South Park, Family Guy, and all the shitty stand up comics from around that time, the constant "support our troops" and "never forget" stuff. In 2011 I was in high school and all the jocks and other chuddy people brought American flags to school and just skipped class to stand on the cafeteria tables chanting pro-America slogans after Osama died.
So I think most people are just reacting to the way it's been bludgeoned to death for years, was used to justify really horrible domestic and international policies, and how insufferable most Americans were and are when it comes to 9/11. If someone was to say "hey my dad died in the towers" I doubt most people here would say ha well he deserved it. But 9/11 has moved from just being a tragic event to being a cultural touchstone associated with really horrible things.
my god, I do remember guys like this. My uncle would tell me about how every girl in my school would be wearing a burka if not for the surge of troops into Afghanistan. Every bloodthirsty reactionary American got to live out a fantasy of impending subjugation from some imaginary Islamic State that would soon beat down the doors and force everyone under their rule.
the worst part is that some of what these idiot Americans imagined would happen did come true, it came true for people living in Iraq/Syria who came under attack from ISIS and it came true for Afghans now living with the Taliban, both of which can be squarely blamed on America in the first place. It was all projection the entire time.
Meanwhile depending on which state you're living they didn't do shit to stop fascists from taking away those girls' rights to bodily autonomy.
start no shit, won't be no shit. But America prefers to start shit, so civilians will die and then someone will say they died for freedom again, so we mock that.
Totally. Its disgusting that it's been used as a reason to continue invading other countries and just decimating them. I think it's just the way that some jokes are delivered are more general and that makes it feel weird.
I think most of us are just using dark humor more than anything.
That makes sense. I was in middle school when it happened so that may also affect my perspective. I remember one of my friends who had family in New York absolutely losing it at school. I appreciate the responses though!
i was around the same age. I remember going to lunch and someone said the 2nd tower fell. I remember thinking "wow" but was too young to figure out all the implications. I wasn't even really political at all then, too young to know or care really. I had a friend who joined the army cause he wasn't too bright for school but was crazy good at languages so he was an interpreter, then he worked privately and he got blown up in Afghanistan. I do think about how 9/11 got him killed kinda indirectly and that makes me a lil sad, but also don't join the army and sure as fuck don't work for some private military mercs and one can avoid that.
I thought the joke was that Maddison Cawthorn would actually give a shit about the innocent Muslims. Is this a real tweet of his? Isn’t he the Hitler fanboy house rep?
That's my bad I forgot who he was until I checked out this post and...yeah that sounds super bizarre that he would post that
It's the second-most recent post on his verified instagram account, and the first is a selfie video, so I think this is for real.
I don't give a shit because most of the people in that building weren't innocents.
And for the ones that were I refer to Frankie Boyle: https://youtu.be/zwc32B1DlIA?t=629
Some thoughts on this from the 9/11 megathread. My comment (objectively the most correct take):
lmao what did they pass some new law against mourning America's dead? Did I miss something, is that the mainstream position now? I spent most of my childhood watching adults wail and rend their garments about this shit. It replaced baseball as the national pastime. if you know someone who actually died in the attack that sucks for you, but otherwise get over it, we don't need to go through the whole charade on a supposedly radical internet forum.