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Strom Cuzewon posted:http://www.truegamer.net/SA_911/911%20SATHREAD/ 
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Oct 1, 2015 16:33
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klosterdev posted:I've heard plenty of "where were you on 9/11" stories, which usually involve where they were when they learned about it, but what I want to know is what was the post-attack hysteria like? What were the first few days of the country/world like after an event like that without any real information or explanation? There are plenty of documentaries about 9/11 out there that do a pretty good job of capturing the feeling of that day. If I had to sum it up, (to me anyway) people were mostly shocked and completely bewildered about what the hell was going on at first. Then there was a lot of fear about what might happen next since it seemed like planes were just crashing all over and speculation about who was behind it. I live really close to a chemical weapons storage site, so here we had a lot of dumb rumor-mongering about someone attacking that. The days after that - lots and lot and lots of little American flags on people's cars. 
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Oct 1, 2015 16:47
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Kimmalah posted:The days after that - lots and lot and lots of little American flags on people's cars. Which reminds me, growing up in Canada during the 80's and 90's was mostly about having a smug sense of superiority over Americans. Our high school social education was basically three things - world war 2, white guilt, and how we're not as bad as the US. A lot of that seemed to go away after 9/11. I'm sure there were other factors, but for a lot of people it hit a switch and a lot more sympathy came out of them.
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Oct 1, 2015 18:13
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I was a freshman in Highschool, and I didn't find out about the attacks until I was in my second to last class of the day. When I got home, my parents were watching the news. My mom worked in a skyscraper in Downtown San Diego, and they were evacuated. I remember some news story about citizens of a city in the Middle East Celebrating, which pissed a lot of people off.
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Oct 1, 2015 18:50
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MikeCrotch posted:For you Americans out there, how prevalent were opinions like this: The whole country went a little insane for a while there, it was kind of scary. Initially everyone was really just sort of shocked and confused - I feel like most Americans didn't really have any sense of vulnerability at the time, the idea that someone could come right in and bloody their nose like that was very reality-altering to some people. This is actually a pretty good reflection of it. After the shock cleared, it felt like your choices for an acceptable reaction were basically with white-hot rage, complete despair, or stoic resolution. The circles in which you could have any sort of nuanced discussion about what had happened or why were very small, and you had to be really careful where you made points like that first post. I also remember an overwhelming sense that someone was going to burn for what happened and the ominous waiting to see who it would be. Kind of like if your friend is a fighting drunk and you realize he's just topped his limit and you're waiting to see who he blows up on. This isn't to say that some people didn't say something or try, but people were really willing to lash out at anyone who wasn't in line. As Tendai mentioned, there was an immediate and very emotional outlash at anyone people felt could be associated with the event, which included tons of people - not just Muslims, but also Sikhs and people who someone could perceive as Arabic. Some of my Indian friends even had unpleasant encounters with people who were just angry and ignorant. On 9/11 I had only been in America for a few months - I had come here for university from Kenya. In 1998, Al Queda had bombed the US embassies in Nairobi and Dares Salaam. I was in high school at that time, and knew many people and families hurt and killed. Watching it unfold was a really weird throwback to that experience, although I was far away this time.
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Oct 1, 2015 19:12
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I would have been about 13, I'm from the UK and even I remember it vividly, I was sat in french class when the school tannoy came on, The headmasters calm voice came over and he told us in much a similar way he told us about class changes what had happened, we sat and listened for five minutes while he explained what had happened and the ramifications of the attack. A few kids burst into tears, you don't have to be that old to recognise something monstrous. As you can imagine other than that day life went back to normal, it became a tragedy from a long way away but for a while there in that classroom it felt like it had happened in a town in the UK. Of course since we were young and stupid jokes started flying around, we made light of it, which i a very kid way of dealing with something. I'm not really sure what made it hit so hard for some of us since we were so far away but I hope I never have to worry about it again.
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Oct 2, 2015 06:27
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I went into school that morning and my english teacher talked about his friends from college for about ten minutes. He then ended it with "they worked in the WTC." He then sat down at his desk and cried the rest of the day. 
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Oct 2, 2015 18:20
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Tendai posted:There was also a Palestinian (I think) group who took credit for it in the initial hours but then denied it, I think? Or am I remembering things wrong. Sometime during the first hour or so of the attacks an anonymous person called an Abu Dhabi newspaper to claim responsibility on behalf of...not the PLA it'll come to me...it's not. A Palestinian group. That group denied responsibility about an hour afterwards. There are a lot of recordings of the major American networks on youtube if you really want to experience what it was like for most people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfQI1ohBS8A I've since become deeply ashamed of my response to 9/11. I was 18 and going through an aggressively anti-American stage. So my reaction was a very muddled mixture of excitement, fear, confusion and morbid curiosity. It's important to note that this all happened just after millennium fever when apocalyptic beliefs were all over the place. I distinctly remember thinking "This is the beginning of the end of the world." I suppose there's still time for history to prove me right on that one.
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Oct 2, 2015 21:43
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I was in High School at the time. 9th Grade maybe. But I woke up one day and my parents were already up watching a news report about the ordeal. I watched it until I had to take the bus. Afterwards my homeroom teacher hooked up a TV and we watched the news reports until the next period. The rest of the day was pretty somber and people didnt talk about much.
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Oct 2, 2015 21:58
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I worked tech support at the time, and happened to have that day off. I woke up, fired up SA and saw the infamous thread, then caught up on all of it. My job sent everyone home that day (one of our clients was Bank of NY which was in the buildings I believe). The next day I go to work, and I'm doing support for Rogers Internet customers (Ontario Canada region) and this lady was yelling at me that nobody answered the phone the day before. She was livid and did not care what happened in NYC, she wanted her Wireless Network card to work (remember this is 2001, wireless NIC's were very uncommon). And everyone says Canadians are sooooo nice!
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Oct 2, 2015 23:07
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To be honest, most people I know didn't actually give a poo poo about NYC itself, it was more the idea of what happened. Many people outside New York really don't like New Yorkers for a bunch of reasons. I remember in 2003 one of my Army buddies from Indiana, after being cut off by a guy with New York plates, yelling out his window "that's why you fuckers got planes crashed into you" but at least he had the decency to realize immediately afterwards that he'd gone too far.
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Oct 2, 2015 23:24
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Funky See Funky Do posted:I distinctly remember thinking "This is the beginning of the end of the world." I suppose there's still time for history to prove me right on that one.
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Oct 3, 2015 00:26
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Tendai posted:I don't think this was an unusual belief; the US hadn't had an attack of that sheer organizational scope since what, Pearl Harbor, if I'm not forgetting something. Oklahoma and other bombings were horrible but they didn't have the planning or the scale. I remember talking to my mom, who was born in 1947, and she commented that the feeling for her that morning was kind of like the Cuban Missile Crisis when she and many, many others assumed war was on the way, that kind of horrified, detached "Oh, well, it's all going to poo poo now and I can't do anything to stop it." And during that there weren't even overt attacks. It was the Pentagon getting hit that turned it from (ugh) a really cool spectacle happening on TV to a bunch of Americans I felt deserved it anyway to "Holy poo poo this is not good this is really really not good oh gently caress I have no frame of reference for something like this happening." It really played on my mind for a long time afterwards. I even got into conspiracy theories for a few years after because it was so out of left field and so God damned BIG that I just couldn't accept the idea of it being nothing more than a well coordinated terrorist attack. That governments flat out and blatantly started lying to everyone to convince them that Al Qaeda was somehow an existential threat to Western nations didn't help either. Watching 9/11 live on tv was traumatic. Watching the world decent into lunacy was outright terrifying.
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Oct 3, 2015 01:38
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Funky See Funky Do posted:I've since become deeply ashamed of my response to 9/11. I was 18 and going through an aggressively anti-American stage. So my reaction was a very muddled mixture of excitement, fear, confusion and morbid curiosity. It's important to note that this all happened just after millennium fever when apocalyptic beliefs were all over the place. I distinctly remember thinking "This is the beginning of the end of the world." I suppose there's still time for history to prove me right on that one. Realistically I don't hold it against anyone how they reacted shortly following 9/11. I was super Jingoistic and was happy that Bush was in office and not that tree hugging pussy Gore, because Gore wouldn't do poo poo and W would lead us to glorious victory against the terrorist mother fuckers that did this to us! It was an intense time and a lot of poo poo went down. For a long time I had this picture hanging on my barrack wall of a plane with all these bombs and poo poo laid out in front of it with a caption of "We've seen your best, now it's time for you to experience ours" or some bullshit like that. I think the main thing (that a few people have touched on) is that with oceans on both sides, stuff like Islamic Terrorism seemed like a fairy tale. It was something that happened in Israel or other Middle Eastern countries, Islamic terrorism didn't happen on American soil goddammit! Then the USS Cole happened and people realized hey this poo poo is serious, but still the USS Cole happened and Ocean away. 9/11 was such a shock because it happened in a scale in America that is usually not seen here. This thread has been a little cathartic for me because it helped me get out some feelings that I've been holding inside for 14 years (that I wasn't even aware I was holding in).
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Oct 3, 2015 02:04
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I was stationed in Ballston Spa, I heard it over the car radio when I was being driven to the hospital, I first thought it was an add for a movie and I thought the plot was dumb as hell. Nobody knew what to do so people were putting on big security side shows of doing SOMETHING. Like stationing guards publicly but not in a way that'd be useful at all, making people get out of their cars then walk to their houses from a lot, the first person I stopped who had to do that was five months pregnant with four bags of groceries and two kids, five and three. Apparently everyone who stopped her apologized because she immediately started assuring me she was fine to walk and it wasn't going to be a problem at all and that I was just doing my job. I did see one lawn sign in my neighborhood change from, "No dogs, no navy on lawn." to "Avenge Us Navy!"
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Oct 3, 2015 06:44
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It's almost impossible to convey how completely sideways the nation went after 9/11. Seeing that happen on live TV collectively mindfucked the country in a way that no previous tragedy ever has. Only the Kennedy assassination comes close. And really, though we all immediately knew the World Trade Center attack was going to be our generation's Pear Harbor, what we were feeling was that same death of hope that all those people coming of age in the 60s must have felt after JFK got shot. The 21st Century was here and holy poo poo, strap yourselves in because we just went off the rails. I was in college at the time, and I watched the towers come down and the subsequent press conferences with my roommate. During Rumsfeld's briefing, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton stepped up to assure us that "make no mistake about it, your armed forces are ready." When my roommate turned to me and said "man, I can't wait for the war," I felt like I was going to be sick. I skipped all my classes that day but went to marching band, since we were supposed to be performing the halftime show at the Bears game that weekend and I figured it would be lovely of me to miss rehearsal (though it ended up not mattering, since the games that week got rescheduled). On my way to the practice field, I saw a pickup truck tearing up and down the main campus road with an American flag hanging off the back, and that was the first hint I got of how ugly things were about to get. In the first few days there was a huge outpouring of sympathy from other nations - even France said, "we are all Americans this day" - and a lot goodwill from random strangers you'd meet on the street, but there was always that ugly, jingoistic undercurrent. Suddenly everyone was a patriot, and if you were One Of Us then you were good people, but God help you if you were one of Them. Or if you looked like Them. Or if you just didn't look like the rest of Us. Despite all that, the War in Afghanistan was something I could get behind at first. Take out the Taliban, deny al-Qaeda a safe place to operate from, and find bin Laden? Great! Makes perfect sense. We'll do this, and then life can get back to normal. Then 2003 rolls around and the administration decides hey, good enough, NATO and the ISAF can handle this while we go invade Iraq, and life continues to not go back to normal. Now, over a decade later, I still half expect someone to come up to me and say "HAHA, we were just loving with you, that was all fake," because none of it made any goddamn sense. 9/11 broke our brains.
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Oct 3, 2015 07:28
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I think that's probably where a lot of the irritating, BuzzFeed-style 90s nostalgia comes from. It's hard to describe just how different the cultural mindset of America is after that in terms of just, like, the general outlook on the future. Part of that is likely related to other things -- climate change wasn't being nearly so focused on, things like that -- but 9/11 was probably the single moment that defines the change from "the future is bright!" to "holy poo poo the world is dangerous everyone is out to get us" on a mass level in the US.
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Oct 3, 2015 18:00
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I was in junior high at the time (in the same time zone as NYC), and after the second plane hit my teachers pretty much threw out the rest of the morning's work and we were all glued to the available televisions and radios.until lunch. I remember some of the adults being worried that the local Air Force base would be attacked, since a lot of Gulf War operations had been carried out from there..
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Oct 3, 2015 18:27
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I was a 7 going on 8 year old Canadian child. My dad woke up me in sort of a panic saying that "today's a very scary day". I thought he was joking, so I asked him what was going on, expecting a joke answer. He then told me straightforwardly that a bunch of people hijacked a plane and crashed into the WTC. I immediately thought that this was cool and started making plane crashing noises only to be yelled at by my dad that this was serious. As we drove to school, my dad kept the radio on the news station. I remember thinking that this whole thing was bizarre. I didn't really understand what went on until much later in life. At school everyone was talking about the WTC and I think that my third grade teacher was trying to calm everyone down and answering questions. The loudspeaker came on and the principal asked everybody for a moment of silence. There were TVs replaying the news footage everywhere. I remember in the community centre where my daycare was held in that there was a big TV playing the news footage in the lobby. Like I said, I didn't know what to think. I remember talking it out with my toys and my dad checking news sites on the Internet. I remember not playing this N64 game called Mickey's Speedway USA because I'd thought I'd show respect or something. On September the 10th, I wrote a journal entry about my guinea pigs and I remember getting a sticker for it. (I didn't do so well on last week's journal entry) It still is bizarre that one day I was writing about guinea pigs and the next day was 9/11. I remember everyone seeming so happy on September 10 2001. We were so unaware of what would be coming tomorrow. I remember on September 10 the weather was sunny and the very next day it was cloudy and drizzly. I always felt like I grew a bit older on September 11. In a way, I think that everyone else did as well. In the days that followed, I listened to the CBC for the first time and there were a lot of Americans singing their national anthem. I remember a newscaster describing a story in which red, white, and blue balloons were launched from someplace important during the singing of The Star Spangled Banner. I kept asking my mom who the bad guys were and she got angry because she didn't know. I don't think that anybody really did until much later.
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Oct 4, 2015 04:41
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Tendai posted:I think that's probably where a lot of the irritating, BuzzFeed-style 90s nostalgia comes from. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TGj227OVKY The 90s have a weird countdown timer sell-by date. We all thought it was Y2k.
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Oct 4, 2015 05:07
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My dad was not a bit surprised when it happened, he's a mild tinfoil-hat type anyway. He stocked up on 12 gauge buckshot and stuck his 870 behind the seat of his truck and resumed business as usual, apart from having to say "I told you so" pretty often. I, on the other hand, was 9 years old, and wondered what the gently caress mom was doing at my bus stop when I came home from school. I had been a big boy for a couple years now, she had no business walking me home from scho "We're at war." she said. Oh. ... well then. poo poo's hosed up I guess, is about all I could tell. I didn't have a clue where Afghanistan was, but I did know there was gonna be a shitload of tanks and TV news reporters there.
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Oct 4, 2015 05:47
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Tendai posted:I think that's probably where a lot of the irritating, BuzzFeed-style 90s nostalgia comes from. It's hard to describe just how different the cultural mindset of America is after that in terms of just, like, the general outlook on the future. Part of that is likely related to other things -- climate change wasn't being nearly so focused on, things like that -- but 9/11 was probably the single moment that defines the change from "the future is bright!" to "holy poo poo the world is dangerous everyone is out to get us" on a mass level in the US. I also remember people complaining that the 2000s was the worst decade ever. Is that because of 9/11?
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Oct 4, 2015 06:01
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Violet_Sky posted:I also remember people complaining that the 2000s was the worst decade ever. Is that because of 9/11? War, 9/11, Bush presidency, patriot act, take your pick
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Oct 4, 2015 06:27
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3 out of 4 of those things were the result of the aftermath of 9/11 so yeah.
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Oct 4, 2015 06:35
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Violet_Sky posted:I also remember people complaining that the 2000s was the worst decade ever. Is that because of 9/11? Bush's cabinet being chock full of Nixon era Cold Warriors, the country giving him carte blanche, Democrats having limp dicks and so on made it worse. Culturally, everyone had a stick up their asses (remember Janet Jackson's tit causing everyone to lose their poo poo?). Just put it in this light. Clinton left us a surplus and a road towards a mythical Balanced Budget that would pay off the debt. Bush drove us headfirst into a deficit and helped foster the first big economic downturn of the 21st century (on par with the Great Depression)
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Oct 4, 2015 06:48
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Violet_Sky posted:3 out of 4 of those things were the result of the aftermath of 9/11 so yeah. Yes i know. I just was pointing out that a lot of poo poo in the early 2000s loving sucked.
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Oct 4, 2015 06:51
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SalTheBard posted:War, 9/11, Bush presidency, patriot act, take your pick on the other hand metal gear solid 3
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Oct 4, 2015 07:34
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I was taking night classes at a technical college and working a day job to pay for it. I didn't have work that day, so I woke up at around 10AM to go run errands and kill time before my classes that night. No one else was in the house, so I left without even turning on the TV. Found out from one of my neighbors while walking to the bus stop. Said "I'm going to pick up my kids from school... they bombed NYC and the Pentagon!". Called my folks who live in upstate NY to get hard facts, and they tell me it was a plane, not a bomb, and that my second cousin who works in the Pentagon had long been evacuated as was fine. Without any other people I knew hanging around me to react to, and no TV, I was only a little disturbed. "drat, the World Trade Centers are gone" was about all I thought. I then went to get my hair cut. All the TVs in the hair salon were on MTV or something and no one seemed to care. Then I went to go shopping, but the mall started to close at around 3:00PM or so, so I headed home. I called my professor on the way back and he said that classes had been cancelled. At around 6:00PM, I ended up at one of my neighbors houses, where everyone seemed to have gathered (it seemed like they wanted all their kids in one place?), and where I finally saw footage from that morning. "drat, that's hosed up" was about all I could feel. Then I saw Bush talking. Then another neighbor started passing around a xeroxed image of what was supposedly "the face of Satan" appearing in the smoke coming from the hole in one of the towers. Yeah. As for the aftermath, I remember there being a nice Middle Eastern buffet in the shopping center downtown. First they stayed closed for a few days. Then, they had all their windows smashed in. Then, someone bought it, fixed it up, and renamed it a "World Buffet". That, too, was vandalized. Mosques all over started getting vandalized, threatened, etc. The few Muslim co-workers I had vanished. It was a poo poo show. At least I can say that seeing that made me want to treat people different than me with respect.
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Oct 4, 2015 14:49
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FilthyImp posted:Just put it in this light. Clinton left us a surplus and a road towards a mythical Balanced Budget that would pay off the debt. Bush drove us headfirst into a deficit and helped foster the first big economic downturn of the 21st century (on par with the Great Depression) Then 9/11 happened and the financial situation in the country poo poo itself, politics suddenly became even acrimonious and suddenly instead of seeming bright and limitless the future seemed scary and uncertain to a lot of people.
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Oct 4, 2015 15:37
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Gary Condit, remember him? He was a sleazy congressman who became entangled in the 2001 disappearance of Chandra Levy, a young, female Washington intern. Although I don't think he had anything to do with her disappearance in the end, it came out the investigation of her disappearance that they had an affair, and the media was quick to judge that he was involved in her (at the time, presumed) murder. Condit was all over cable television news for weeks. Then September 11th happened, and I don't think I've heard anything about him on television since. Apparently Condit's political career tanked anyways. But it terms of a national public perception, he's possibly the only public figure to have unintentionally benefitted from 9/11 and the media's immediate drop in their interest of him. It was a pretty bizarre. As for hysteria, there was a fair bit on the day itself. Nobody really knew what was going on or who was responsible, other than the (obvious) plane crashes. I recall local news reports of suspicious vans and unattended packages. None of it amounted to much, of course, and honestly those things were probably all there on September 10th too, just nobody noticed. By the next day though the focus had shifted to the tragedy of the attacks themselves and the plight of stranded travelers. I don't think folks were generally worried that more attacks were imminent (at least, until the anthrax attacks started a week later), but I think folks did have the sense that the day changed things (politics, optimism, general attitude, etc.) that weren't going to be the same for a long time, if ever. On a personal note, I happened to be outside at the time of, and witnessed Flight 93 turning around over Northeast Ohio, which I remember thinking was really unusual. I didn't learn of the attacks until a half hour or so later, and when I did it wasn't clear to me if/how that flight was involved--they were shutting down the airspace after all. It was later that evening when they showed the details of Flight 93 and, specifically, its flight path on the evening news that I made the connection. Although the attacks affected far more lives in far greater ways, it's still a kind of personal thing that makes the whole day all the more real.
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Oct 4, 2015 21:08
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I also remember that I had a Occupational Therapist of some sort who was unable to get back home after her vacation because the planes were grounded right after the attack. I don't remember why my family and I needed her help. Also, my mom worked as an accountant in some publishing company and she remembers the customer service people getting bitched out whenever they phoned the U.S. on 9/11.
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Oct 5, 2015 00:01
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I was in 10th grade at the time. Only a couple things I really remember about it: - I remember thinking about how hosed up it was that I literally just saw thousands of people die live on TV (since they turned on the TV soon after the further tower was hit, I was watching it when the towers came down). - A bunch of students were crying and I remember feeling really awkward because I did not feel like crying at all. While I was disturbed by seeing it happen, I didn't personally know anyone at risk (nor did any of my fellow students; I was in Memphis, TN). I felt self-conscious and worried that other people would think I wasn't sensitive enough or something because I wasn't visibly reacting to things.
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Oct 5, 2015 00:31
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Mezzanine posted:Without any other people I knew hanging around me to react to, and no TV, I was only a little disturbed. "drat, the World Trade Centers are gone" was about all I thought. I then went to get my hair cut. All the TVs in the hair salon were on MTV or something and no one seemed to care. Then I went to go shopping, but the mall started to close at around 3:00PM or so, so I headed home. I called my professor on the way back and he said that classes had been cancelled. I think this sums up my feelings from the day perfectly. Like, I saw the attacks in the afternoon on the news, thought 'that's really terrible', but didn't feel scared or anything or think the world was going to change overnight, which seems very different to a lot of Americans i've spoken to who felt that this was the end of the optimism of the 90's. I guess the 90's wasn't a great time for the UK, at least compared to the US - there certainly isn't the same kind of nostalgia for the 'bright future of the 90's' as some people have put it. Was the last big terrorist attack in the USA the Oklahoma City bombing prior to this, or had there been any others in between? For people who remember the OKC bombing was it just the scale that felt different or something else?
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Oct 5, 2015 11:03
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Tenth grade English class. Teacher had a crying fit and abandoned the classroom for a few minutes. People chatted in low tones. Not a whole lot changed in the coming days on the local level. I lived in South Carolina so the religious and ethnic groups were pretty much white and Christian of black and Christian. No Muslims at all so there wasn't really any Islamaphibia that I noticed because no one was there. There was no one to hate so very little happened during or after except for a few of my teachers who were ex-military getting reactivated. A few got redeployed when Iraq kicked off, but that was years later. I lived with exchange students for a while from the middle east. One was a piece of poo poo, the other cool, both Muslims from Saudi. They were absolutely floored by America when they came here. One place was an oppressive monarchy with very few rights to...Well...The US. From what I understand is that you have to leave nations with robust personal freedoms to actually appreciate them. The corruption isn't that bad, the weather is great and we have/had a solid infrastructure (like roads) that we take for granted that are definitely not standard in many countries. We may rage and scream at each other in politics, but we don't imprison or behead people when they dissent. You worship how you want in the way you want without being jailed or levied an extra tax for being different. There was also a woman with me named Evi who was a Muslim from Jakarta, Indonesia that came to learn English and get a business degree. She was why I didn't take any of the later Islamaphobia seriously. Fantastic person all around: Intelligent, friendly, devout, humble, curious, pretty. She answered a ton of my ten year old questions about Islam and served as a sort of anchor when 9/11 went down that no, most people aren't like that for my sixteen year old self. She'd moved with her husband to NYC years later. She left the US for Jakarta because she didn't feel safe in the US anymore and sadly I couldn't blame her. What bothered me right after 9/11 was that my parents constantly watched the news and for a solid year 9/11 was the headline. Then after the anniversary that wall to wall coverage stopped. A year after that we're at war with Iraq for no real reason. 9/11 inflicted a small blow on the US in the grand scheme of things and I knew even when I was younger that people were going to lose their poo poo and thirst for blood. It happened, people overreacted and we're paying for it today.
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Oct 5, 2015 12:19
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MikeCrotch posted:I think this sums up my feelings from the day perfectly. Like, I saw the attacks in the afternoon on the news, thought 'that's really terrible', but didn't feel scared or anything or think the world was going to change overnight, which seems very different to a lot of Americans i've spoken to who felt that this was the end of the optimism of the 90's. I guess the 90's wasn't a great time for the UK, at least compared to the US - there certainly isn't the same kind of nostalgia for the 'bright future of the 90's' as some people have put it. Well, in the case of the Oklahoma City bombing, it was kind of an out of the way place, and it didn't really challenge American power in the way that trying to destroy the Pentagon was. It was a bombing of an American government building by Americans, so when it came time to look for people to blame for the Oklahoma city bombings, you could only blame Americans. With that said, I had a coworker who thought blowing up federal government buildings was a good start, and cheered at someone finally giving the federal government what for. I also had another coworker who used to work for the Oklahoma City government, and knew several people who died in the Oklahoma City bombing. There was a rather nasty bloody beat down fight in the middle of the office. We managed to pull the Oklahoman aside, and convinced him to take it outside. thrakkorzog fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Oct 10, 2015 |
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Oct 5, 2015 12:36
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thrakkorzog posted:Well, in the case of the Oklahoma City bombing, it was kind of an out of the way place, and it didn't really challenge American power in the way that trying to destroy the Pentagon was.
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Oct 5, 2015 14:31
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I'm a bit older than most people here I guess. I was 24, living in the UK at the time, and had been sent by the company I worked for to work a tradeshow in Boston about a week before 9/11, then went to visit my girlfriend in Michigan for a few weeks. So, first I heard about it was her sister phoning us at like 7am and the both of us driving to her mother's house and watching it on TV and wondering what the hell was going on. I do remember seeing repeated clips of a bunch of people in Palestine celebrating it and shouting death to America etc. I think it was like a dozen people but it kind of looked like it had been framed to suggest there were more. I'd been sitting there about half an hour when it occurred to me I should probably phone my parents back in the UK. Turned out my dad wasn't quite sure when that tradeshow was and when I was leaving it - and the planes that were hijacked flew out of Boston. It's 5 hours later in the UK than it is in the eastern US, so mum and dad had spent the whole day wondering if I'd been one of the poor sods on one of those planes. That phonecall is the one and only time I've ever heard my dad cry.
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Oct 5, 2015 14:44
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Tendai posted:Sadly, I think Sikhs bore the brunt of what few physical attacks I remember reading about in the news. I can't actually remember hearing about an honest-to-god Muslim guy being attacked or anything, probably because western Muslim men generally don't wear a turban and obviously turban = Muslims. Dumb fucks. Lots and lots of muslims got beat up too, the heavy reporting of the Sikhs was mostly really lovely "and he didn't even deserve it! that is the weird thing about this!" type stories that had a really dark undertone. Like those were the sum of the ones that outraged people, not the sum of the attacks that happened.
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Oct 6, 2015 13:37
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Lots and lots of muslims got beat up too, the heavy reporting of the Sikhs was mostly really lovely "and he didn't even deserve it! that is the weird thing about this!" type stories that had a really dark undertone. Like those were the sum of the ones that outraged people, not the sum of the attacks that happened.
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Oct 6, 2015 14:33
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Tendai posted:Huh, I didn't know that. All I could remember offhand was the Sikh man who got shot at his gas station. It was a little bit of people only getting mad if the "wrong' people got lynched instead of being mad there was people getting lynched at all. I don't think they were exactly burying the stories when muslims got murdered or beat up but I think the only ones that really got big media reaction was the "oops they beat up the wrong guy" stories .
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Oct 6, 2015 15:52
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