I believe a lot of the phenomena we see today, rampant conspiracies, misinformation, distrust in govt, political divisiveness, willingness to support a demagogue, rise in nationalism and domestic terrorism, can all be linked back to 9/11.

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.

All those things you write in the 1st paragraph, I wonder if it's 9/11 or the continued spread of Internet access. Previously if you thought the earth was flat, your friends in school or work would laugh at you. Nowadays you can google anything and find a community totally into that idea, and they are indeed communities because they'll quickly indoctrinate that the rest of society/big government/the secret elite cabal are prosecuting them for their beliefs, so they'd have to support each other..

Oh yes, definitely the internet plays a huge roll in the world we have today, probably a bigger roll than 9/11. Humanity has seen and adapted to large scale tragedies before, but this is the first time we've had the internet. But of all the variables, 9/11 is a big one in the US. It also showed the media and advertisers how much more money there was to be made from these events. Ever since 9/11 the news media has been hard at work developing new ways to milk sensationalism junkies the same way that mobile companies milk gaming addiction whales.

Worth noting: most of us belong to several such communities, but we tend not to realize or consider it, as flat earthers do not realize what they do.

Let's wait a while. The long term effects of the pandemic are yet to set in.

I see your point, but I have a hard time imagining how, 20 years down the line, we could point to the SARS-COV2 pandemic as a principal cause of historic change the way the 9/11 attacks were. Contributing factor? Sure, I'm sure it'll have all kinds of downstream effects.

Just imagine what a whole generation of kids will grow up to be like as a result of the social changes that have played out directly due to the pandemic. Definitely a large inflection point. Maybe the changes will be subtler but I would be shocked if we didn’t have noticeable, analyzable changes to the course of history based off that alone.

Imagine masks, distancing restrictions, etc becoming the knee jerk response every year there’s a bad flu scare or something like the Ebola cases in 2014 happens. This pandemic will be remembered not for the virus but for the massive and permanent social changes it brought to the west.

Also: Home office, redistribution of wealth, climate impact and not to forget the financial impact. Plus possible long covid problems in a large share of people. There's a lot we will 'enjoy' for a long time.

If people, post-pandemic, would (voluntarily) mask up and distance when they're not feeling well, I think it would reduce flu and common-cold transmission quite a lot throughout the year. This sort of thing is already common in some places and I'd be thrilled if it became a thing in the US.

(But agree that knee-jerk mandatory restrictions would be a terrible outcome.)

But at what cost -- is the question I have, and too few are asking.

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.

Look at east and southeast Asia. They mask up all the time when they're not feeling well. Are common colds and other things much worse there? I don't think so.

Your worry here seems to be hypothetical and not based on any reasonable epidemiological theory.

My worry is based on the concerns of the top professors of epidemiology at Oxford, and Stanford School of medicine.

> 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.

There’s the joke that you can say the same thing about the French Revolution (“too early to tell”).

This.

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.

I’m not sure why you’re getting downvoted. What you’re saying is accurate. I don’t think the terrorists had the foresight to predict this kind of fallout from 9/11, but it has certainly happened none the less.

Bin-laden directly stated Al-Qaeda's goal was to bankrupt the USA. [1] Now that's not what literally happened obviously, but adjusting for propaganda hyperbole and considering he went on to elaborate that they intend to do to the USA what they did to the Soviets - make the war too costly to be worth fighting - it seems their strategy panned out pretty well.

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...

Al Qaeda won the first time they made me take my shoes off at the airport.

A lot of these 'idiots' that you're talking about were educated prior to 9-11, so it's not obvious to me that 9-11 had the particular causal relevance that you're suggesting (at least insofar as educational quality).

Anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, government mistrust are hardly unique to the last 20 years.

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.

We were told the vaccine was the end all be all solution that stopped the virus. Many have opted to forego it and accept the risk. What’s so wrong with that? Now it turns out the vaccine isn’t as effective as originally thought, and the folks who decided to not get the jab are now somehow devoid of critical thinking skills? Explain what I’m missing. Or is it really not about death, but the bottom line?

Given that the vast majority of COVID hospitalizations and deaths are among the unvaccinated, yes, I would say that people who refuse the vaccine are devoid of critical thinking skills.

Given that they have chosen that destiny willingly for themselves, what's wrong with that? I personally feel it's a bit more nuanced of a decision then you're allowing. What do the vaccinated care? Why does this unvaxxed life matter to them all of a sudden when they've had plenty of opportunities to care about life before but haven't?

And no, I'm not talking about abortion, but everything else on Earth that is considered a preventable death; like car accidents (Ban cars!) and wars that we conveniently forget when about the pendulum swings to our favored political party so we can safely and costlessly say that we've learned and grown and now we're better despite the hundreds of thousands of lives we've cost over the years because we just trusted the "thinking heads" and academics and the corporate elite and government officials in bed with them.

I don't particularly care about the health of the people who refuse to take common-sense actions to protect themselves. But their decision isn't made in isolation.

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.

I personally don’t care. In fact I think we should pay people who don’t want to get the vaccine to engage in monitoring so that we can understand the disease better. I also believe we should pay covid-hoaxers 100k so that we can infect them and then study why the virus is so dangerous for some people and benign for others. I think it’s a win-win for both.

Your first paragraph laments the expansion of government control and surveillance triggered by 9/11 (which I agree with), but in your next, you use pejoratives to identify people who choose not to get a vaccine or engage in hygiene theater. How would you classify the bully tactics being used by the current administration to coerce citizens into getting a vaccine? This is yet another example of government control and overreach. In this case, gov't is violating personal health (rather than privacy), and the justification is "public health" instead of "homeland security".

> 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".

Yeah, either your world view is pretty closed or you’re trolling. I hope it’s the latter.

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.

> The 9/11 attacks did what Al-Qaeda intended them to - got the USA mired in an expensive, unwinnable war, which ultimately broke the US will to fight

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.