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Incredulity

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Incredulity

Incredulity 11555

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Reflecting with my children about that day. They came home from school today with a lot of questions.

My 12 year old daughter couldn’t really understand a world where everyone didn’t have a smartphone to find out what was really going on.  2001 seems like a very modern time, but so far away.

Honestly I have been fatigued with 9/11 coverage over the last couple weeks, but tangibly felt the need to keep the reality of that day acknowledged.

 

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Goredho

Goredho 17349

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I have no idea how this will be received, but I’m personally ready to forever forget.  I understand the magnitude of the event.  That nearly 3,000 Americans died.   The tragedy, sacrifice and heroism on that day.  I watched it live and remember the visceral impact that I and every American felt when watching the towers fall.

But hanging on to 9/11 is not good for us.  We’ve let Osama Bin Laden and 19 other terrorists control our psyche and cloud our judgment for 20 years now.  Decisions made in the aftermath set off a chain of events that have led us to being in a much worse position in the world, and incredibly unstable internally.  So much so that we can muster absolutely none of the unity and resolve seen after 9/11 in the face of a pandemic that has killed 658,000+ Americans!

So as I see everyone posting their 9/11 memes, tributes and remembrances, all in some way imploring me to never forget, I’ll mostly be thinking this:

America will be better off when the last person to have seen the towers fall has died.

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hpslugga

hpslugga 4044

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27 minutes ago, Goredho said:

I have no idea how this will be received, but I’m personally ready to forever forget.  I understand the magnitude of the event.  That nearly 3,000 Americans died.   The tragedy, sacrifice and heroism on that day.  I watched it live and remember the visceral impact that I and every American felt when watching the towers fall.

But hanging on to 9/11 is not good for us.  We’ve let Osama Bin Laden and 19 other terrorists control our psyche and cloud our judgment for 20 years now.  Decisions made in the aftermath set off a chain of events that have led us to being in a much worse position in the world, and incredibly unstable internally.  So much so that we can muster absolutely none of the unity and resolve seen after 9/11 in the face of a pandemic that has killed 658,000+ Americans!

So as I see everyone posting their 9/11 memes, tributes and remembrances, all in some way imploring me to never forget, I’ll mostly be thinking this:

America will be better off when the last person to have seen the towers fall has died.

That’s a 9/11 every 3 days…200 times over.

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GhostOfTomJoad

GhostOfTomJoad 9308

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My wife was thrilled to see that I was watching a marathon of The Wire-season one yesterday and is thankful that there is a full slate of college football today if for no other reason than to have a break from the non-stop 20th anniversary coverage. Even Ted Lasso last night was a small respite from the continual wave of images and stories. It's emotionally overwhelming at this point.

In hindsight, generations of Americans were probably fortunate that Pearl Harbor happened on a remote island decades before everyone carried a videocamera in the palm of their hand. It's too easy to fall into a dark hole of painful memories & moments. I know it's important to remember & reflect upon this event, but it's also ok to look away from the screen and turn off the videos. Silent, peaceful reflection is underrated.

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Neonmoon

Neonmoon 38127

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I try to avoid most of the news coverage, but I have to admit a few programs I’ve watched on Netflix that were well done. Turning Point 9/11 was a great documentary summary of everything. “Worth” was a good movie with Keaton and Tucci about victim compensation funds

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2 hours ago, Goredho said:

I have no idea how this will be received, but I’m personally ready to forever forget.  I understand the magnitude of the event.  That nearly 3,000 Americans died.   The tragedy, sacrifice and heroism on that day.  I watched it live and remember the visceral impact that I and every American felt when watching the towers fall.

But hanging on to 9/11 is not good for us.  We’ve let Osama Bin Laden and 19 other terrorists control our psyche and cloud our judgment for 20 years now.  Decisions made in the aftermath set off a chain of events that have led us to being in a much worse position in the world, and incredibly unstable internally.  So much so that we can muster absolutely none of the unity and resolve seen after 9/11 in the face of a pandemic that has killed 658,000+ Americans!

So as I see everyone posting their 9/11 memes, tributes and remembrances, all in some way imploring me to never forget, I’ll mostly be thinking this:

America will be better off when the last person to have seen the towers fall has died.

How do you feel about Pearl Harbor?  Is it less horrific, now that most of the folks who actually remember having lived it are in their mid 80s or gone?  What about the Civil War?  should we stop talking about it?

I understand where you are coming from on the 9-11 fatigue.  I respect what you are saying, until that last line.  It makes no sense to me.

Edit: i will admit straight up that i watch very little news on TV. Count me in the GOTJ camp above. Maybe that has something to do with it.

Edited by slorch
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Goredho

Goredho 17349

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41 minutes ago, slorch said:

How do you feel about Pearl Harbor?  Is it less horrific, now that most of the folks who actually remember having lived it are in their mid 80s or gone?  What about the Civil War?  should we stop talking about it?

I understand where you are coming from on the 9-11 fatigue.  I respect what you are saying, until that last line.  It makes no sense to me.

Edit: i will admit straight up that i watch very little news on TV. Count me in the GOTJ camp above. Maybe that has something to do with it.

My last sentence is hyperbolic, but when 9/11 is just an event in the abstract and not lived through by the majority of Americans, it won’t  inordinately dominate our collective world-view and cloud our judgment as much as it has and still does.

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Celery Man

Celery Man 20886

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I was in AP… either euro or world history when  it started becoming apparent. Great teacher, I’m glad I was in that class. We had a discussion about what was happening and what it could mean for us.

 Right now I can’t separate thinking about the events of the day and thinking about the catastrophe of our response.

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Horn Under a Bad Sign

Horn Under a Bad Sign 20345

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I concur that we should never forget the victims of 9/11, but we should also never forget the way their deaths were cynically exploited as a pretext for disastrous invasions that were built on lies, nor should we ever forget the liars or how they were permitted to get away with it.


 

bush administration.png

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TreatyOak

TreatyOak 16150

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As we lived in Manhattan during 911, we didn't need the to watch the spectacle unfold on TV that day. We just had to look up. It as a terrible time, but it was also an amazing time, as we experienced the best of people. Here are some of my more surreal memories of that time:

After picking up my daughter at her private school, we passed the admissions office, which had been turned into a holding area for people who missing their spouses or parents. The door was mainly shut, but I caught a glimpse of students and parents, all sitting in a circle, wailing in sorrow as they knew someone wasn't coming home.

The next night, we searched the hospitals for a missing friend. This was pre-internet (or at least good internet) and lists of missing people were mixed up with admitted patients. It was all a mess. She never turned up, but I was heartened to see people bringing food from their apartments to the hospital workers. 

The only words heard from her was a message on her mom's answering machine. "We're evacuating. Pray for me." Afterwards, we had to return her rented movies to the video store. Think how strange that would be. 

Two days later, we were back at work, getting reamed out by a big client in Atlanta on a conference call, staring at the smoking ruins from a 48th floor midtown office. While the client was excoriating us for our poor work, we sat wordlessly, unable to take our eyes off the incredible scene in the windows before us and not really giving a fuck about what we were hearing.

A word about Texans. Afterwards, schools, fire stations, etc, would send handmade banners and flowers to the fire and police stations in NYC. Being from Texas, I am proud to say that 1/4 of all the banners hailed from the Lone Star State, mostly from elementary schools. My pic below. 

240948987-10158395176197543-986553414019

Edited by TreatyOak
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Underdog

Underdog 28457

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It's all we've had on this morning is all of the tributes and ceremonies.  

Wife still gives me shit for watching ESPN when all of this unfolded, like I was just doing what I've always have done on my Tuesday off days watching the MNF highlights. 

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aggie08

aggie08 21434

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2 minutes ago, TreatyOak said:

Afterwards, we had to return her rented movies to the video store. Think how strange that would be. 

Not to make light of this whatsoever, but there's some dark humor in the fear of Blockbuster overdue fees being a real consideration post-death.

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TreatyOak

TreatyOak 16150

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1 minute ago, aggie08 said:

Not to make light of this whatsoever, but there's some dark humor in the fear of Blockbuster overdue fees being a real consideration post-death.

Great point, and truthfully, lots of funny things happened during 911. We should never, ever lose our sense of humor, no matter what happens. 

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lemonlime

lemonlime 5503

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4 hours ago, Goredho said:

I have no idea how this will be received, but I’m personally ready to forever forget.  I understand the magnitude of the event.  That nearly 3,000 Americans died.   The tragedy, sacrifice and heroism on that day.  I watched it live and remember the visceral impact that I and every American felt when watching the towers fall.

But hanging on to 9/11 is not good for us.  We’ve let Osama Bin Laden and 19 other terrorists control our psyche and cloud our judgment for 20 years now.  Decisions made in the aftermath set off a chain of events that have led us to being in a much worse position in the world, and incredibly unstable internally.  So much so that we can muster absolutely none of the unity and resolve seen after 9/11 in the face of a pandemic that has killed 658,000+ Americans!

So as I see everyone posting their 9/11 memes, tributes and remembrances, all in some way imploring me to never forget, I’ll mostly be thinking this:

America will be better off when the last person to have seen the towers fall has died.

I'm conflicted.  I was working in the airline industry and was living just outside of NYC on 9/11 and knew some of the people killed that day.  Thankfully, no close family or friends.  But I see how we've used that day since that time and am even more disturbed looking back.  I saw someone somewhere (twitter?) comparing 9/11 to the Reichstag Fire, not the day itself, but the way those in power have used an attack on the country to seize power, and that feels like a good comparison at this point.

Edited by lemonlime
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GW Hayduke

GW Hayduke 1952

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Thinking of 9/11.

Two Guys on Your Head talk about 9/11 and how a social consensus formed with our foreign policy and whether it is a good way to move forward. IMO it is good to be self aware about these sort of ideas. It is only 8 minutes in length.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/remembering-9-11/id845287058?i=1000534931910

Looking at the raw numbers.

2,996 people died from the attacks on 9/11. The cost of the war in Afghanistan included over $2 trillion or $300 million per day for 20 years and the lives of 2,448 US service members, 3,846 US contractors, 66,000 afghan military/police, 1,144 allied service members (NATO, et, al.), 47,245 afghan civilians, 444 aid workers, 72 journalists, and 51,191 taliban and opposition fighters. Another way to put things in perspective is to compare the 3k lives lost from 9/11 to the lives lost from covid (600k in US) or to any other cause of mortality.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/hanktucker/2021/08/16/the-war-in-afghanistan-cost-america-300-million-per-day-for-20-years-with-big-bills-yet-to-come/?sh=73f3fe4a7f8d

https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-business-afghanistan-43d8f53b35e80ec18c130cd683e1a38f

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7014e1.htm

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hpslugga

hpslugga 4044

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1 hour ago, lemonlime said:

I'm conflicted.  I was working in the airline industry and was living just outside of NYC on 9/11 and knew some of the people killed that day.  Thankfully, no close family or friends.  But I see how we've used that day since that time and am even more disturbed looking back.  I saw someone somewhere (twitter?) comparing 9/11 to the Reichstag Fire, not the day itself, but the way those in power have used an attack on the country to seize power, and that feels like a good comparison at this point.

Far be it from me to ever agree with anything that Joe Biden says even remotely close to foreign policy, but when he said that any sentence Rudy Giuliani says contains a noun, a verb, and 9/11, I couldn’t have agreed more.

There’s 9/11, the actual day in 2001 where 3k people were murdered, and there’s 9/11TM, as Keith Olbermann put it, which he described as any pathetic attempt to engender jingoism and intolerance against anyone in the Middle East they simply do not like.

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hookemATL

hookemATL 11611

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2 minutes ago, hpslugga said:

There’s 9/11, the actual day in 2001 where 3k people were murdered, and there’s 9/11TM, as Keith Olbermann put it, which he described as any pathetic attempt to engender jingoism and intolerance against anyone in the Middle East they simply do not like.

Hes Right GIF by MOODMAN

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Aqua Buddha

Aqua Buddha 14522

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I'd disagree about being ready to move on.  The 20th anniversary of something is a big deal.  It's essentially the last anniversary that really matters.  The 25th and 30th just aren't the same and as you move on, fewer and fewer people have a memory of something.  The 20th Anniversary of the Oklahoma City was a big deal but the subsequent ones have faded.

George Bush gave a great speech this morning but he should be personally embarrassed in how when he left office, we still didn't know where Bin Laden even was and didn't seem to care.

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hookemATL

hookemATL 11611

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9 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

George Bush gave a great speech this morning but he should be personally embarrassed in how when he left office, we still didn't know where Bin Laden even was and didn't seem to care.

Fuck him and his speech. 9/11 was the best thing that ever happened to him. Otherwise he is a one term joke at best or dead of a wayward pretzel at worst. 

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Satchel

Satchel 6908

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3 hours ago, Goredho said:

My last sentence is hyperbolic, but when 9/11 is just an event in the abstract and not lived through by the majority of Americans, it won’t  inordinately dominate our collective world-view and cloud our judgment as much as it has and still does.

Interesting. Why do you think Jews haven’t adopted this approach when it comes to remembrances of the Holocaust?

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Bateshorn

Bateshorn 9905

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I had to evacuate Capitol Hill with my  overdue first wife.  I huddled in an apartment at one point with Steny Hoyer. 

My son was born on 9/15.  I was ready to move on from 9/11 by that Friday.  I wish this country would move on as well. 

Edited by Bateshorn
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Guest Lobo

Guest Lobo

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1 hour ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

 

Did you explain to her that this was your way of making sure the terrorists didn’t win?

Yeah, but did he have to be watching the WNBA to re-engage normalcy?  

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TreatyOak

TreatyOak 16150

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21 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

You would hate Cormac McCarthy, James Joyce and William Faulkner. 

Big fan of Cormac McCarthy. In his fiction writing, he disregards the rules of grammar to create a mood. Thompson was writing a non-fiction commentary, so his lack of grammar seems somewhat silly to me. Hunter S. Thompson does seems like a natural for Surly, though. 

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Hank Scorpio

Hank Scorpio 17723

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59 minutes ago, TreatyOak said:

Big fan of Cormac McCarthy. In his fiction writing, he disregards the rules of grammar to create a mood. Thompson was writing a non-fiction commentary, so his lack of grammar seems somewhat silly to me. Hunter S. Thompson does seems like a natural for Surly, though. 

We got ourselves a real intellectual here. 

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RDCanecutter

RDCanecutter 26284

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2 hours ago, washparkhorn said:

You would hate Cormac McCarthy, James Joyce and William Faulkner. 

I'd beat the living shit out of Joyce or Faulkner the first time they tried a three-page sentence on me. Cormac, I dunno, wouldn't fight him because he's crazy, but maybe drug him and sell his body to lonely miners in Northern Mexico.

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