I was in high school during that time. I remember someone saying something about how the first tower got hit and not really understanding what that meant. Then someone said the second tower got hit. Then the towers began to collapse. A hundred and some kids crowded around the only television that the school had, (This was a vocational school so there were fewer students) and watched while the second tower collapsed. I didn't feel anything, because I didn't what any of this really meant. I knew it was bad, but I don't remember being scared. When I got back into regular high school, I went to a teacher I knew was on break and I asked if I could watch the news. For the rest of the day, it was glued to the television. School was still in, but no learning was happening. We were just watching the news. Of course, there are always rumors about Muslim Terrorists. I knew about Muslisms. There was a family of Muslims in our school and I couldn't imagine them being religious zealots. I wrote an internet penpal from England who lived in the Middle East and she described the celebration. I was really mad at that. The next few weeks, kids had nonstop questions. Why? Their answers was the same kind of misinformation that people use to explain the Holocaust: It was self-righteous people who viewed America as degenerates who were angry that America dare give people freedom. The reality, of course, is much more complicated. It involves decades of turbulent history and a lot of mistakes on America's part. I started wising up. I went on internet forums (not much different than this one) and started talking to Muslims around the world. I heard a different side of things. I learned a lot about their religion. A variety of opinions on the matter and different sects.
It was scary and confusing in the aftermath, as others have mentioned. It was also about the last time our nation came together and felt a sense of unity and shared pride, if just for a brief time. The ensuing war started another division, as an earlier post noted. Even the troops on the ground (two of whom are very close friends of mine and were highly decorated in the conflict), eventually didn't understand why we were there. But that's another story. All told, it was a horrible time from which we are still dealing with the effects.
I was literally a high school sophomore at the time, my years in hs were exactly 2000-2004. In my small town everything continued as normal. School was not closed or dismissed early, we watched the whole thing from the classrooms, though on the day itself my father who as the editor for Highlights for Children was home when I got off the bus, so he’d been sent home. The town itself was open, but empty. People went right home after work because the television was the prominent source of news. Flags were EVERYWHERE. I think the words to describe the emotions of the people would be “angry confusion.” We knew we’d been attacked, but it still wasn’t really clear from whom or if it was even over yet. Most large gathering were cancelled for like a week or so. Nightly broadcasts of things like the tonight show or the daily show completely stopped. By the time they came back a week later, the Intel had come in and we knew what we were up against. There was a sense of determination to hunt Bin Laden down to the ends of the Earth and that Afghanistan was about to feel the full wrath of the giant it woke.
As someone else pointed out, the Internet back then wasn't what it is today. That's an important thing to remember. It was pretty much television so everyone only had access to the small amount of the same news clips and bulletins. News anchors were scrambling to figure out what happened. People couldn't really jump online and see 20+ video recordings that were instantly uploaded by phones, street cameras and so on. Even down here in Australia, it was massive. I was just out of school, and in (the Australian version of) college, and we still went but classes stopped. The teachers rolled televisions into the rooms and we just watched the coverage all day. I watched a documentary recently on 9/11 a while ago and it was all raw footage taken from people who videotaped it as it happened either from the street, or from their apartment windows nearby etc. (camcorders, not phones). No news stories, no interviews with "experts", no explanation of who was behind it. Just raw footage, and 100% genuine fear and shock to what was happening, and not having a clue if more was to come. It made me tear up and not much does. And not to get all 'back in my day' but no, your generation on the whole hasn't experienced anything like this. I visited the memorial in 2017 and it brought back a lot of memories. As I said, I witnessed this from the other side of the world - and despite seeing many documentaries and stories on it, I still can't imagine how it really impacted the people closest to it.
Everything changed that day. Our loss of privacy and freedom of movement in this country has been stunning. That is the lasting result I hate most of all.
A while back someone mentioned goldfish memories- that's true with regards to a lot of things. I would say this is not because of some peculiar defect of Americans but the nature of the political and media cycle. Whether it's a deliberate policy or just a result of their own shortsightedness, it falls to the benefit of the ruling class and the military industrial complex that people don't retain much particular information. You rarely hear anyone talk about the "global war on terror" now; even rarer any interrogation as to the motivations or achievements of such war. In the Syria war for instance very few people seemed to notice that the US government was for a while abetting the same sort of people who orchestrated 9/11. In 2001 they were a small network of maybe a few hundred guys and now they field small armies in several countries. There is a general feeling that the Bush administration was not entirely honest about Iraq but the same sort of propaganda tricks don't seem any less effective. What has stuck is the uptick in bootlicking militarism, and despite a lot of handwringing about partisan polarization, this is one key area where both parties agree. There was certainly some of this from before but it seems to have become a much more prominent part of the civic culture since 9/11- the generic cries of "support our troops," "thank you for your service," etc which have nothing do with the actual achievements or causes of contemporary wars, and even less with the wellbeing or actual experiences of soldiers. It's come to a point where the military is virtually identified with the country, so that someone who doesn't stand for the anthem or salute the flag is directly insulting the troops. "The troops" of course are an abstraction; dissenting voices from veterans are duly ignored. I would say "the troops" as a deified abstraction constitute the unofficial imperial cult of the USA at this point in its history and it only seems to be getting stronger.
I was in the Army stationed in Germany. We were cleaning up at the end of the work day. I specifically was being all I could be with a broom down the second floor hall. At the back end of this hall were disused offices which had been converted into living space for single soldiers. This was where I developed my unique ability to be late to work even though I lived in the same building -- but I digress. One of the single guys, Cpl. Chris W., had slipped off to his room early to skip cleanups, but instead of staying quiet and hidden until work had finished, he came out and flatly announced: "Hey, someone just flew a plane into the World Trade Center." So what? I thought. Someone did that this summer. I remembered the news images of a tiny single engine plane dangling from the windows. Still, everyone was gravitating to Chris' room, so I downed my broom and joined in. We all goggled slack-jawed at the TV. The same World Trade Center I had visited a year before was rent by a smoking black gash. Softly babbled inanities had just started when -- Oh my Jesus! -- it happened again! Over the next few minutes, those with homes off the base trickled away before the Army got its act together and locked us all in. They missed the towers coming down. Do you remember January 6? It was a bit like that. Something unprecedented was happening in America, no one in the entire country knew what was going to happen, and we were scared. However, where January 6 was on some plane laughable ("Worst production of 'Les Miz' ever!" meme'd a friend of mine), there was nothing funny about 9/11. Many of us were in fear for our lives. We learned in the successive days how easily our water could be poisoned, power cut, dirty bombs exploded anywhere. Something that scared me personally as September unfolded was watching the Humvees, cargo trucks, tanks, and howitzers changing from green paint to tan: something was coming, and a lot of people like me were going to die. The rest is history.
I was forty years old when 9/11 occurred. Had a training seminar at a facility in Port Arthur, Texas. Remember our breaking in the morning and walking by one of their conference rooms. Several individuals were sitting watching a TV and I saw one of the planes hit the Towers as I passed in. Stepping in I asked, "What the f...?". They told me the story and soon everyone from the training session was in the room. Of course, training was cancelled. I still remember sitting in a hotel room for the next twelve plus hours just watching the TV. Over and over again seeing the planes hit. Hearing of all the heroism that occurred while this all transpired and wishing there was something I could do. I also remember going out that night to get something to eat and just the eerie quietness everywhere you would go. We meet briefly the next morning and everyone was dismissed. I drove the long eight hours back home and finally got to talk with my family about what had occurred. My son was only five at the time. One of the girls at the meeting was from Seattle. She had to rent a car and make the long drive back. I think it ended up taking her a week (few days to get a car and then drive). Afterwards it felt like the entire US came together for an oh to brief period of time.
It was horrible - I never want to experience anything like that again. I was in tech school at the time, studying heating and air conditioning. Sleeping late on the day the towers went down, my mom called me and told me planes had hit the twin towers in New York City. I turned on the tv and skipped school the rest of the day, to watch the events unfold. At first, I was numb and in shock. As the days and weeks passed, I slowly came to resent all Muslims. I remember writing in my personal journal, a couple of days after it happened: “I not only want to see Bin Laden’s head on a platter, but Safdam Hussein’s as well.” Sure enough, President Bush eventually decided to go to war with Iraq, as well as Afghanistan - I was very happy and pleased, as I wanted blood. Now, the school where I was attending at the time was mostly African-American. I was one of the only white students there. In the days before 9/11, I was sort of Liberal - I was a professional level jazz saxophonist, liked Bill Clinton and listened to a lot of grunge and rap. In the days after 9/11 and as my anger towards Muslims festered, I left that tech school and enrolled in regular college. I changed my major to Business Administration - as I studied economics, history and politics, I became very conservative. Once into jazz, I started to listen to lots of country and Christian stuff. I made new friends, wore my Alabama jerseys and went to conservative Christian churches. I attended many redneck rock concerts and posted on conservative websites. By the time I graduated from college, I was a card-carrying tea partier, born again Christian and soon to be Trump supporter. Fast forward to the present day and age: Nowadays, I think for myself. I have, after a twenty-five year layoff, picked up my saxophone again. I play with a local jazz band in town. I have thrown politics out the window. I have worn lots of hats in my life. As a young teenager, I studied private saxophone lessons with Jackie McLean, a protege of Miles Davis and Charlie Parker. I am trying to tap back into those early years as of late. Don’t get me wrong, I still like country western music and go to church every Sunday. You could call me a quilt - like I said, I have worn lots of hats in my 50 years. The journey continues. - Grogu
Glad to hear this part. I think it's pretty natural to lean toward one party, then maybe see the problems with it and lean the other way. And then hopefully you see the problems with that party as well and rise above the whole ugly deal. It's how I went, though I would say I was unconsciously liberal when I was younger—just bought into the stuff you always hear on mainstream media without thinking about it. I certainly wouldn't have called myself liberal, and in fact I would have said I just wasn't political at all. It was a different event that began my journey into learning about politics—leaning hard one way for a while, then the other, and then up and out. Isn't it frustrating though, if you don't agree almost completely with someone's politics they'll accuse you of being an extremist on the other side.
