See you tomorrow - after work and shopping. 
Post by BettyNewbie on Sept 11, 2021 10:51:26 GMT -5
Given that this is the 20th anniversary and everything that's happened since then, including just this year... I think some harsh words need to be said.
(We knew America would never be the same after 9/11. We didn’t know how bad.)
(Bin Laden Won)
If Bin Laden wanted to weaken America and upend democracy, unfortunately, I have to say that he succeeded.😞 9/11 was the moment that began the GOP's descent into radicalism, which eventually brought us an Orange fascist in the White House, kids locked up in cages, peaceful protestors getting violently gassed and beaten, and homegrown terrorists attempting their own 9/11 on the Capitol. The peace and prosperity of the 90s came crashing down with the Twin Towers, and the country has yet to recover.
“It was 8:46 a.m.,” I wrote as night fell on 9/11, “and America would never be the same again.”
Looking back two decades later, I can’t decide which is weirder — that I wrote this in the darkness of that confusing day, or that somehow I got it right. America was changed forever and — despite those initial days where we hoped the sadness and the rubble would give rise to national unity and a sense of purpose that had felt missing in the detached irony and greed of the go-go 1990s — for the most part it has changed for the worse. Those drivers going every which way at cross purposes on Vine Street weren’t just a traffic jam, but a metaphor for the road ahead.
Any national unity dissolved rapidly into fear and paranoia, which a cynical new government in Washington preferred to exploit rather than tamp down — the better to plant our flag in oil-rich lands abroad and silence any dissent here at home. Those bad tidings — and the conspiratorial mindset we embraced in the wake of 9/11 — would be turned against nations that had nothing to do with the attacks, against immigrants in general, against legitimate protest, and finally, inevitably, against one another. The era that started with the Islamic radicals who hijacked Flight 93 failing to reach the U.S. Capitol dome ended with American fanatics breaching its rotunda. The late Osama bin Laden could not have drafted a better script for his evil ambitions.
Looking back two decades later, I can’t decide which is weirder — that I wrote this in the darkness of that confusing day, or that somehow I got it right. America was changed forever and — despite those initial days where we hoped the sadness and the rubble would give rise to national unity and a sense of purpose that had felt missing in the detached irony and greed of the go-go 1990s — for the most part it has changed for the worse. Those drivers going every which way at cross purposes on Vine Street weren’t just a traffic jam, but a metaphor for the road ahead.
Any national unity dissolved rapidly into fear and paranoia, which a cynical new government in Washington preferred to exploit rather than tamp down — the better to plant our flag in oil-rich lands abroad and silence any dissent here at home. Those bad tidings — and the conspiratorial mindset we embraced in the wake of 9/11 — would be turned against nations that had nothing to do with the attacks, against immigrants in general, against legitimate protest, and finally, inevitably, against one another. The era that started with the Islamic radicals who hijacked Flight 93 failing to reach the U.S. Capitol dome ended with American fanatics breaching its rotunda. The late Osama bin Laden could not have drafted a better script for his evil ambitions.
(We knew America would never be the same after 9/11. We didn’t know how bad.)
In orchestrating the attacks on September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden had wanted to end the global reign of the decadent West, inflict a staggering blow to American democracy, and entangle every Muslim in the conflict. Bin Laden may be dead, but it is hard not to conclude that he got what he wanted.
I grew up in the shadow of 9/11, 11 years old when the planes hit the Towers. The experience was visceral, future-shattering — the loss of my innocence. I remember hearing about the attacks at school from a boy who used the word “terrorists.” When I got home, my parents had grim looks on their faces, as if they knew what the fire and rubble in New York and Washington portended. We sat in wordless terror as infernal images flickered on the television screen.
Everything changed from that moment. It was as though an entire world had ended on that day, along with the hopes for a more peaceful, humane, enlightened century. America, and soon the entire West, were at war. “We have nearly all had occasion to wonder,” declared the New York Times editorial board on September 12, 2001, “how civilians who suddenly found their country at war and themselves under attack managed to frame some memory of life as it once was. Now we know.”
I grew up in the shadow of 9/11, 11 years old when the planes hit the Towers. The experience was visceral, future-shattering — the loss of my innocence. I remember hearing about the attacks at school from a boy who used the word “terrorists.” When I got home, my parents had grim looks on their faces, as if they knew what the fire and rubble in New York and Washington portended. We sat in wordless terror as infernal images flickered on the television screen.
Everything changed from that moment. It was as though an entire world had ended on that day, along with the hopes for a more peaceful, humane, enlightened century. America, and soon the entire West, were at war. “We have nearly all had occasion to wonder,” declared the New York Times editorial board on September 12, 2001, “how civilians who suddenly found their country at war and themselves under attack managed to frame some memory of life as it once was. Now we know.”
(Bin Laden Won)
If Bin Laden wanted to weaken America and upend democracy, unfortunately, I have to say that he succeeded.😞 9/11 was the moment that began the GOP's descent into radicalism, which eventually brought us an Orange fascist in the White House, kids locked up in cages, peaceful protestors getting violently gassed and beaten, and homegrown terrorists attempting their own 9/11 on the Capitol. The peace and prosperity of the 90s came crashing down with the Twin Towers, and the country has yet to recover.
These articles are harsh, but they're worth a read.
Especially ones like 
