In my opinion, the 1990s began on Nov 9 1989 and ended on Sep 11 2001.
One of the things it changed dramatically was air travel. Remember meeting family/friends at their arrival gate as they walked off the plane? Remember getting through "security" in a few minutes because the lines moved so fast?
In the 1980s and early 1990s, my father routinely disassembled pistols and put them in his checked luggage so he could target shoot at his destinations. Imagine doing that today.
You have to go to the ticket agent, and say I need to check a firearm. There's a little red ticket form you fill out and place on your bag. Then you take it to a special drop off. It has to be in a locked hard case that only you can open.
See also: https://www.tsa.gov/travel/transporting-firearms-and-ammunit...
I’m not sure about that. Without 9/11, there would be no wars, perhaps no Obama, etc. It altered the arc of history in a profound way.
The recent Frontline episode “America after 9/11”[0] draws a through-line from 9/11 to the events of Jan 6 at the U.S. Capitol.
[0] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/america-after-9-11/
The War on Terror took its toll on much of the world. I don't think the pandemic would have played out exactly the same way in a world without 9/11.
However I think it's worth pointing out that to much of the world "9/11" is not just about the terror attacks but also the immediate aftermath and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. It's more of a period of time than a specific moment. Some of those things happened on the day itself, some in the days immediately after, some only months later.
The goal of the attack was to strike fear into the hearts of Americans on a level that we simply couldn't comprehend, a lasting fear that fundamentally changes our society, a fear that individuals in the war-torn middle east had already lived with for decades up to that point. And I think it's clear that they accomplished their goal. Unfortunately, I also think it's clear we haven't seen the end of it.
(But agree that knee-jerk mandatory restrictions would be a terrible outcome.)
The young, healthy working aged adults are the "front line" against many dangerous viruses and bacteria. What happens when you remove the natural herd immunity? (Wasn't it something like 40-45% of the US was already naturally immune against COVID when the lockdowns first started happening?)
My guess is if we switch to pure defense, when the next big novel virus comes along, it will wipe out a whole lot more of us.
Your worry here seems to be hypothetical and not based on any reasonable epidemiological theory.
> Are common colds and other things much worse there? I don't think so.
I would love to investigate this further, considering the latest 3 deadly strains of H1N1, and SARS have come from here. But given that we don't have any reliable data (data we can trust), it's hard to tell what actually is going on there. We are only told what we want to be told by an authoritarian regime.
Al qaeda won. They destroyed the way of American life before 9-11. We are a different country now. So much government control over the last 20 years because of the 9-11 like TSA, Patriot act, massive government surveillance all in the name of “Homeland Security”.
Anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers exist precisely because of 9-11. The distrust from all of the secret government acts is only part of the equation.
The trillions funneled into the military complex has starved the education system. We have literally produced idiots across the US because of a horrible educational system. They can’t think critically because they don’t have to. So 20 years of this, and you have a large percentage of the population that are literally stupid and can’t think critically. They would rather die than take a vaccine or wear a mask. This is what happens when you spend money on the military and illegal wars than the education of your population.
The pandemic is terrible. But 9-11 destroyed the US and put us on a horrible path that we may never recover from.
Of course, I don't know that they could have predicted the US invasion of Iraq, for example. On the one hand, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but OTOH Al-Qaeda might have foreseen that the US leadership would not let a good crisis go to waste.
Maybe the main plan was just to fight in Afghanistan, where they know they can carry out guerilla warfare indefinitely, and whatever else shakes out is probably going to play into Al-Qaeda's pocket anyway.
Really the main victory Al-Qaeda and other Islamist terror groups have won is being able to frame the discourse around their atrocities as Islamic terror. It creates tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims, which leads to oppression of Muslims, which increases recruitment. In this dynamic, the worse the terror groups are, the more adherents they gain.
1: https://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/01/binladen.tape...
What destroyed American life were Americans, being scared, thoughtless and not talking to each other, in the name of money, absolute security, patriotism and tribalism.
The more the virus bounces around in people, and for longer, the higher the chance it is that it mutates into something the vaccines won't be effective against.
There are people who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons. They should not be put at higher risk of having the virus transmitted to them by an unvaccinated person.
There are still enough unvaccinated people floating around to necessitate mask and distancing mandates and other restrictions. Getting everyone vaccinated will likely allow us to return to some semblance of normal sooner.
And finally we have a world full of overworked, exhausted health care workers who still have to admit these foolish unvaccinated people into their hospitals when they get sick. They have to watch some of them die, begging for the vaccine even though it's too late. Why are unvaccinated people inflicting this harm on our doctors and nurses?
The thing that gets me about all this is the whole "they've chosen this destiny for themselves" bit, as if their decisions don't impact anyone else. They do. And it's selfish to ignore that.
> Anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers exist precisely because of 9-11.
This statement is non-sense. I'm old enough to remember 9/11. I lived closed enough to watch the smoke rising from the towers. I assure you, my choice to not get the C19 vaccine (and refusal to wear a mask) have nothing to do with the events of 9/11.
The term "anti-vaxxer" is derogatory, and is being used as a demeaning caricature. I don't fit your stereotype. I am not getting the C19 vaccine. That does not mean I am against all vaccinations. A person can believe in the effectiveness of vaccines, and decide against getting THIS vaccine (imagine that). Terms like "anti-vaxxer" are used to demonize those (such as myself) who have decided not to get the C19 vaccine. I guess classifying people as "anti-vaxxer" helps people like you justify calling them "literally stupid."
> We have literally produced idiots across the US because of a horrible educational system. They can’t think critically because they don’t have to. So 20 years of this, and you have a large percentage of the population that are literally stupid and can’t think critically.
I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. The irony is that, based on your comments, you'd consider me "literally stupid", and I would say your critical thinking are severely lacking.
> They would rather die than take a vaccine or wear a mask.
I can assure you that if contracting COVID-19 meant certain death, the government would not have to spend millions on propaganda to convince people to get the C19 vaccine. Contracting C19 does not imply certain death: I know this first-hand, anecdotally, and it is backed by statistics published by the CDC (for whatever those are worth these days). In other words, for the overwhelming majority of the population C19 is no worse than the flu. For those with pre-existing health conditions, the risks are greater and the vaccine is a godsend. I won't address the mask fallacy. If you want to wear a mask, by all means. I am not one to pull a binky out of a child's mouth -- whatever it takes to get people to get out and live their lives.
The fact that you jump to the conclusion that "everyone who does not get vaccinated or wear a mask is stupid" does not reflect well on your critical thinking skills. As I've explained above, there are legitimate reasons for not getting the vaccine. Maybe a better approach is to give others the benefit of the doubt, and attempt to engage in meaningful conversation? We likely won't agree on everything, but maybe I'd convince you that people who decide against the C19 are not all "literally stupid".
The world trade centre attacks caused about 3000 deaths, and ongoing military action impacting a few countries around the world. The US makes up roughly 5% of the worlds population.
The pandemic has so far killed over 4 million people. It has created lockdowns in thousands of cities you’ve never heard of and forced the scientific community of the world to work together on common problems. It has affected every government and billions of people around the world, rather than the few hundred million in the US.
The pandemic is orders of magnitude more significant than the singular terrorist attack the US experienced 20 years ago.
For billions of people in the world, the US and it’s foreign policies have little to no significance.
Citation very much needed.
Al Qaeda is a religious fundamentalist group that wants to bring about the Islamic caliphate under theocratic rule. As I understand it, their plans with the US were primarily to get rid of the US and US influences. Destroying the US was more of an indirect long-term goal as a consequences of establishing a global Islamic hegemony.
I also don't think you can talk about "breaking the US will to fight". Post-9/11 saw the transition from US soldiers to military contractors and drone strikes but also no reduction in US military bases. The influence of the US is led by its economy but reinforced by its military. If anything, the wars increased the US population's aversion to "boots on the ground" but arguably that was already on the way out ever since the traumatizing defeat in Vietnam.
The US continues to be interventionalist and it continues to engage in military operations outside formal declarations of war. It also continues to maintain a massive global network of military bases and an oversized arsenal of nuclear weapons. None of that has changed.
I think there's an observation to be made how the short-lived grief on 9/11 rapidly developed into a thirst for revenge and retaliation, and how computer games influenced the initial coverage of the wars (I distinctly remember the spinning 3D renderings of the missiles used in the initial attacks on Iraq) or how the US military at first embraced embedded reporting and then reporting became increasingly abstract as the wars dragged on and journalists were prohibited from showing the coffins of fallen soldiers.
Twenty years later it now seems that what remained is mostly the dehumanization. I distinctly recall US politicians demanding the assassination of "traitors" like Snowden or Assange during the Obama years but even today the illegal act of war of assassinating an Iranian military official in Iraq hardly raised any eyebrows (except for people worrying about whether this would be followed up by an invasion of Iran or Iran retaliating by attacking someone else like Skinner's pigeon impotently hacking at its cell mate after an electric shock).
The US hasn't lost its will to fight, but it has lost all pretense of its moral high ground. The US government being the hero in Hollywood movies was a bit quaint in the 90s but after 9/11 it's become increasingly uncomfortable to watch for non-Americans.
It’s an interesting comparison, and one I make a lot. 9/11 was in your face, and a bunch of pre planned events were canceled. But that lasted about a week or a month (depending on the kind of event), and people could still gather in public and support each other.
The pandemic was a much slower burn, but also denied us even the ability to gather and required much bigger changes to daily life.
I also imagine that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 large events would have had a hard time getting necessary approvals if they had decided to go forward.
The commercial reality was that people didn’t have a desire to attend large celebratory events immediately after 9/11. Disrespectful organizers did not have much of a choice if they lacked respect for the loss of life - their customers had already decided.
It's not as American-centric as you might think; I'm not from the US but after 9/11 and for several years, I had recurring nightmares about trying to escape from a building that got hit by a plane.
I can't imagine what it was like for people closer to it.
Mom waking me up to say “you need to watch this,” with the TV on and both towers are on fire. The morning variety newscasters breaking their household familiarity speaking in a frightening shock that was so out of character.
Still went to school that day and there was a big assembly and then we sort of carried on as normal through motions. I remember every week on Tuesday we had to turn in an analysis of a world event for one of our classes and mine suddenly felt so insignificant compared to the attacks (kinda wish I remember what I had written).
I think the pandemic has far more historical significance but nothing for me will feel more visceral than 9/11. I appreciate this is likely a very American -centric perspective but it’s how I feel.