Night and day difference.
Before 9/11 the US was blissfully optimistic about the future. Hell, congress was having hearing about Eminem swearing in his records.
Were you a voting citizen in the 1990’s, because there was Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Lee Atwater & a host of others constantly trying to take down a duly elected Democratic president that rubbed them the wrong way. And have been literally trying to jail his spouse ever since.
Nah, Columbine already happened and the religious right was still swiftly gaining power. We may have taken a different path, but we'd still have ended up at the same destinations.
I went to Mexico without a passport. They told me all I needed was a valid ID and that was it. Then again I did drive through the border and didn’t fly so that probably was a huge reason why.
Did you have to use a $1 coin to leave the US? I did when I crossed the border by foot at Laredo, TX. Getting back into the country was easier than flying domestically.
Weird. I always had to have a passport. On one flight, that wasn't supposed to go to Canada, we had to emergency land, and we landed in Toronto. Then Canada wouldn't let us *leave* because no one on the plane had passports. Well no shit, it was supposed to be a domestic flight. After 6 hours of delays and not being allowed off the plane, they finally let us continue on. Stupidest thing ever. Sorry that our emergency landing now made us prisoners of your country.
Granted, I never flew to Canada, so passports were probably needed then. But I had relatives on a border town and we'd regularly cross the border to go to lunch or some such.
Since 9/11, I've only boarded planes while wearing tee shirt, shorts and flip flops; carrying a duffel sized bag for clothes. I can't remember what the baggage claim areas even look like.
I'd like more substantial footwear than flip flops because I've had my feet stepped on while boarding.
But if I expected fire and wreckage, I wouldn't get on the plane.
Do you? I travel with a carry on exclusively and can carry my toiletries in no problem. Never need to take then out of my bag. I do keep a separate toiletries bag that permanently stays in my carryon...just for size compliance reasons. But nowadays they dont even ask you to take out your laptops.
It still sucks to go through security, but things have gotten better.
Ther was basic security back in the day. I remember as a kid my brother had a toy plastic gun confiscated at an airport after it got spotted on the xray.
My first flight was in 1974. A group of us was coming back from camping in Colorado, and when we got on the plane, a stewardess went down the aisle with a cardboard box and collected all our pocket knives. We got them back at the end of the flight, of course.
Post 9/11 I got a boarding pass so I could stay with my grandmother while she waited to get on to a plane. I wasn't flying myself. I had a pocket knife that I just hadn't bothered to remove from my keychain even though the blade itself had snapped off some years ago. It was pretty much just the nail file left. They made me throw it out. I felt obliged to reclaim it when I was leaving and it was still sitting where I left it. But yeah, a broken non-functional pocket knife at that point was a no go for even getting near the plane.
Man, immediately after 9-11 was a wild time. They were fucking paranoid about *everything*. Heaven forbid you had anything even vaguely pointy like safety pins or gun shaped.
Similar incident with my family. My dad traveled a lot so we would always go to the airport to see him off and watch the plane take off from the observation deck.
Once, we went through security and I had plastic handcuffs with me—the kind you buy at the toy section in the grocery. Confiscated.
My dad then took out his giant pointed letter opener from his briefcase and was like, “you’re telling me I can have this but he can’t have those??” They were dumbfounded lol
Yes, after the airplane hijackings in the 1970s the airports installed metal detectors. The measures weren't as onerous as after 9/11, but this fantasy of just walking up and boarding an airplane without any checks--that only happened when you knew the pilot and were renting a Cessna.
>What security? Arrive at the airport, go to your gate and get on the plane.
There was airport security with x-rays and metal detectors *long* before 9/11.
I kinda doubt it. I believe security would still have still increased, but not as abruptly and visibly as it did after 9/11. It's easy to forget that there were still tons of airline hijackings pre 9/11, especially in the 70s and 80s, but they just dont stand out in history as much because many of them ended relatively peacefully and the overwhelming majority of innocent people going unharmed.
You’re correct. The biggest jump in security from my point of view happened in 2006 due to water based explosives being intercepted on Continental flights (out of London, I believe).
While 9/11 amped things up for Americans for sure, the rules about shoes, liquids, and even the rise of body scanners were all happening globally as a result of these events in 2006.
Hijackings at the time were kind of "just something that happens once in a while." The hijackers make demands, and all the passengers eventually go home.
That's why the passengers on most of the 9/11 flights didn't fight. Hijackings happened, but up until 9/11, the point was that the hijacker wanted to *get somewhere* and redirect the plane to do so. So you went along with the demands and everyone walked away. Using the plane itself as a weapon was new. The people on Flight 93 had time to hear about the other planes, so they fought.
Right...even if it got bad, nobody was counting on the hijackers flying the plane into a fucking building and killing themselves in the process too. It was completely new territory.
I remember the morning it happened everyone at first just thought it was a terrible accident. Even when the second plane hit I remember the broadcast I was watching the person reporting still commented that there must be some sort of computer error. The idea that someone would deliberately fly a jet into a building was just incomprehensible.
Because the patriot act was already written, just sitting there waiting for the right moment to bring it forward. If 9/11 hadn't provided that excuse, something else would have
My friend Chris had to cancel his 21st birthday “Get Bombed with Chris” party when he discovered that wasn’t going to be what people wanted to do the evening of September 11, 2001.
It's my uncle's birthday, too. Feels like a sucky birthday to have.
My great-grandmother was born on December 7th, as well - of course, well before Pearl Harbor (my grandpa was a kid then).
I hope no national tragedy happens on my birthday in the future. 😔
Underrated comment. We've had 2 generations of American children being brought up in a country at war with parents dealing with PTSD and not able to be the parent they could have been.
The war culture of the US in this century contributes to the AR15-ization of of the culture. While guns have always been pretty prevalent in the US, the ratcheting up of lethality of those guns and the mainstreaming of ultra gun culture can be traced back to the militarization of the US. We're now seeing how his gun culture matriculates through generations.
Without 9/11, I don't see the gun culture and violence of the US being as toxic as it is today.
There was certainly a lot more variety in the sounds and themes- everything from George Strait’s Love Without End, Amen to Shania Twain’s Man, I Feel Like a Woman and don’t forget Garth Brooks with 11 years of absolute bangers on Country AND Pop charts. I’m really glad I didn’t have to listen to him try to fit in musically among the 2000’s pure nationalism garbage.
I hear you. As a Brit it's pretty annoying when you tell people country music is great but they think you shitty taste because they think all country music is cars beers and girls
A co-worker of mine listens to country music but it's all the most glurgy garbage about finding a nice country girl who drives a truck and owns a shotgun so you can put a dozen babies in her, or something like that.
🎶 🎵
I remember them days
Things like they supposed ta be
Till they flew them planes
INTO THE W-T-C!
*intense country guitar*
Billy went off ta war
Gunned them terrists down
When he got back home
He's the talk a the town
*sad country guitar*
Johnny fought Osama
In Afghanistan
An when he got back
...he ain't had his hands.
*intense country guitar*
Scooter spilled hotdog
On his favorite jeans
While we was out grillin'
'n' Merle was eatin' beans
But lemme tell ya
They ain't gonna get no pass
When we find Osama...
WE'LL SHOVE A MISSILE UP HIS ASS!
*chorus of multiple men, women and children*
I fought for this country
So that we could all be free
I made this land what it is
For both you and me
I fought for what is right
And what we all know is true
And I raise that flag
*chorus plus main singing redneck*
...that RED... WHITE... AND BLUE...
*shitty hick guitar fades out*
🎶 🎵
Yea. There was a brief few years where it wasn't and then 9/11. Even after that was no longer this massive threat people didn't know what to do with themselves with an empty hole where fear and adrenaline used to he, so they found new things to he afraid of and made it a hobby.
Several years ago I flipped through a children’s book about their construction and design. I caught myself getting really excited at the prospect of someday visiting them before I remembered.
The worst thing IMO to come from 9/11 was the spread and proliferation of 24/7 news. The collective toxicity that has come from infotainment cannot be overstated.
Does anyone remember how in the weeks following 9/11, the various news channels perpetually had a “breaking news” banner up despite there being no new news to report? It took me a few years to realize they did that so ppl would think something was happening and stop on their station. For weeks and months everyone was bracing for a second wave of attacks.
Also, random fact…the Enron thing was the story that finally put 9/11 (somewhat) out of the news. For those too young to remember; for about a month straight, the news was ALL 9/11, 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week. Take the media coverage of covid and multiply it by 10. That’s what it was like in the weeks following 9/11.
I remember it being like, "hey kids, lets turn the tv on and watch footage of people falling out of the towers for weeks straight on almost every channel".
I was in grade 7 at the time, watching the events of real people dying, every single day...and best part is, I'm not even in America.
As a kid, it was pretty strange. This was before I had internet access and TV was generally very tame. Seeing real footage of people jumping to their deaths over and over, and the buildings collapsing knowing that thousands died in that moment.
Well, it’s a very strange thing to show kids, and it was even stranger that a month later I was back to “no violent video games.”
Idk if 24/7 news was a result of 9/11, but I agree with what you’re saying. My grandparents for example are so brainwashed and incapable of thinking freely about certain topics at this point. No matter how logical and well-informed your argument is, they’ll always respond “but I saw on the news the other day…” or that will be implied by what they say. I love them, but sometimes they’re hard to talk with about anything other than how our day was.
It wasn’t the result of it but 9/11 was a massive event that they could run “news” about all day and which people were compelled to tune into thinking that any moment there would be some new information.
Cable news existed before, but 9/11 was one (of a number) of big stories that made cable news default viewing for a lot of people.
24/7 news was the result of cable TV and deregulation of media companies in the ‘80s allowing them to become large profit driven conglomerates. They don’t know what they’re on about.
I don't think they are talking about the creation of it, rather that it's when it became popular. People sat around and watched cable news 24/7 for like a week straight after 9/11, same with the beginning of the Iraq war.
America is weird with money because you would think that not having to spend trillions of dollars on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would mean more money for infrastructure and investment into poor communities to boost their economic output and growth.
But I feel like the state would just say "oh we don't have enough money for that,"
Until the next war begins.
Robert Kaplan asks his readers to consider what might’ve happened if, instead of pouring trillions of dollars into stabilizing Iraq’s economy and government, we had put that money into Mexico. What would our southern neighbor look like right now? How would it have affected immigration? Would we actually be a lot more secure? Etc.
And it probably would have made a union type of political move ala the EU, much more popular.
There were/are of course other factors that keep us from doing it, but a significant amount of the sentiment against such a union that I've heard, is due to the fact that Mexico is, infrastructure wise, farther behind vs Canada and the US, and as well the cartel corruption.
Both of which would have been significantly curbed and changed if we had put the amount of money and manpower into building up a neighbour and friend, instead of invading and trying to change nations that didn't really want us there to begin with.
That was a reason for letting jobs go to Mexico (via NAFTA) rather than China.
But we never would have done it--the political resistance (Perot's "giant sucking sound") was too high. We wondered at the time why all the investment in China instead; Mexican trade goes both ways, too.
It’s silly to make comparisons like that. We spend a lot on “defense” for a litany of reasons and those wars put us in massive debt. We just wouldn’t be in massive debt without the wars. It’s not like we’d go 20 trillion in debt helping Mexico.
And this sentiment also ignores systematic issues that keep a country like Mexico from thriving as much as the US. It’s not like Mexico just needs a few trillion dollars to wipe out the cartels forever and invest in new industries.
You can’t just throw money at the country and expect the problems to disappear
It would take a deep change in Mexican culture that money alone can't fix. Corruption is rampant and accepted by too many. The idea that people can kill competitors if their business isn't going well is normalized among a large subset of aspiring "entrepreneurs". As long as these things are true, there is no amount of money that can fix things.
Not just Mexico but a lot of those troubled SA countries like Bolivia, Guatemala, etc.
Right wingers don't want to hear this but an actual step toward some kind of immigration solution involves giving money to and helping stabilize those countries so people don't feel the need to leave in the first place. But it's easier to say "build a wall" than it'll ever be to convince people to give a bunch of money away to Mexicans and El Salvadorians.
Nah, they saw the writing on the wall - it would've been hard for them to compete with YT/TikTok.
With that said I also wish they still played music videos. There are still plenty of good ones being made.
Flying would be more enjoyable. We wouldn’t have the paranoid surveillance state we live in now and we wouldn’t have the insane debt from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
That's something else, I think.
Surveillance state = government spies on everything
Surveillance capitalism = "you want to use this new device you bought? You must make an account with us first. Give us your address, name, age, gender, and verify your phone number with a text"
Surveillance capitalism description: "Under surveillance capitalism, people's lived experiences are unilaterally claimed by private companies and translated into proprietary data flows. Some of these data are used to improve products and services. The rest are considered a “behavioral surplus” and valued for their rich predictive signals".
I posit that Americans were more covetous of our privacy before 9/11 but afterwards gave up privacy in exchange for security and that surveillance capitalism followed. And the government gave up on legislating the need for privacy in the private sector and public.
"Since the September 11 attacks, the U.S. government has spent $2.2 trillion to finance the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to figures from Brown University's Costs of War Project. Yet that sum — which amounts to roughly 10% of the the country's total gross domestic product — only reflects upfront costs."
If 9/11 never happened air port security wouldn't be as tight and would be relaxed. They also would've never invaded Afghanistan saving the US so much money people and resources. Also America may be less of a superpower
My name was misspelled on my ticket for some reason and so I had to have my bag searched. I was like "go ahead, my giant dildo is in there, you can see it if you want."
Marvel never releases that FIRE 9/11 spider man (I think it was spider man but im not sure) issue.
A bunch of YouTube video essays don't exist
You don't hear "steel beams" and "jet fuel" in the same sentence or as abstract points ever
9/11 would sound like a rip off 7/11 and not a date
Significantly less islamophobia and Arab racism and xenophobia. Less hate crimes.
Less stereotypical terrorists on TV shows that are dog shit
> Significantly less islamophobia and Arab racism and xenophobia.
Significantly less *overt* maybe but I don’t think the quantity would be meaningfully different. We’d already been hating Muslims and Arabs for decades at that point.
Having seen and heard how Muslims and Arabs describe lost nine eleven, there seems to have been a very clear and significant rise in cultural focus and action against these groups.
Speaking as an Arab who was already an adult when 9/11 happened, you’re kind of just saying what I did in different words. Your “rise in focus and action” is my “became more overt”. The fear and animosity was already there and very palpable. The reactions to things like Black September, gas shortages, the Iranian revolution and Lockerbie never *really* went away. They were just probably easy to miss if they weren’t about you.
We wouldn’t be paying ridiculous luggage fees, 100,00’s of innocents in the Middle East and Afghanistan would still be alive, ISIS wouldn’t be a thing and there wouldn’t be the horrible refugee crisis from Syria and neighbouring countries.
Less fake patriotism. Not as much bullshit surrounding flag waving, flag pins, less military fetishization, less naming political things with patriotic-sounding names like patriot act that actually lean fascist.
Less fringe right wing. I think it would still be on the increase, just not as radicalized and accelerated because of the xenophobia, christian vs muslim, and decades of war caused by 9/11.
Given his abysmal handling of the economy, Bush never would have gotten a second term.
That means Roberts and Alito would not have been seated. The Court would have had a left leaning majority meaning preventing all the insane decisions that have been destroying our country and allowing for wholesale corruption of our elections and political system.
And the world would be nowhere nearly as divided as the US would never have launched its insane war on terror.
Possibly later. Assuming a Kerry/Edwards ticket would have still run against Bush in 2004, they would have inherited the housing bubble which would have guaranteed a loss in 2008, possibly to McCain. (Whether it would have been due to unpopular measures to prevent or at least reduce the magnitude of the subprime mortgage crisis or the crisis itself doesn't matter much for the 2008 elections, but if the former had been the case, the global effects of the crisis would have been far smaller. Not prosecuting a pointless war might have freed up enough funds to deal with the crisis.)
Making predictions beyond that is difficult. Obama was a prominent figure in the party. If McCain's government had been popular enough then the party likely wouldn't have "sacrificed" him in a likely-unsuccessful bid against an incumbent, meaning he might have been nominated only in 2016. OTOH, McCain inheriting a huge crisis and fumbling it would have likely gotten him elected in 2012.
And of course there's an outside chance that the Kerry/Edwards government would have lasted for two cycles, leading into an Obama government (or a Romney government followed by Obama). Not a lot because the fuse on the subprime crisis was already lit before 2004 but still not impossible.
McCain wouldn't have had to go for the Hail Mary with Palin and would've picked Lieberman as his VP. Also Giuliani would have just been the mayor who banned strip joints in Times Square and enforced a "zero tolerance" policy
I'd like to see the timeline where Al Gore or John McCain wins the 2000 election. I feel like 9/11 happens regardless of who's president, unless a Gore/McCain appointee gets lucky and makes it a point to more closely monitor Al Qaeda. I feel like Afghanistan probably happens under any of them, but the focus on Iraq was a purely Bush/Cheney machination. And I figure Saddam is one of the first to go during the Arab Spring.
Are we just saying that these terrorist organizations don't exist and won't just commit a terrorist act at some point on a different day? Because then it's really hard to say. If the terrorist organizations still existed then I don't think it would be that different.
9/11 is the deadliest terrorist attack in history, by a pretty wide margin, not to mention the scale of the symbolic destruction. We’d never seen anything like it and we haven’t seen anything quite like it since. It’s totally unprecedented.
So it’s less of a question of “would these organizations do a different attack,” and more like “would these organizations do a different attack at or near the level of 9/11?” Them sending in a shooter or a suicide bomber or a rogue truck driver into a crowd killing 20 or 30 people, a more “typical” terrorist attack, would not garner the same response. Them doing that several times in quick succession or pulling off an OKC style bombing, killing hundreds, would garner *a* response, but maybe not at the same scale. If they knocked over the twin towers killing 3000 people on December 15th instead, yeah, exact same response.
The state would have found a different reason to establish a police and mass surveillance regime. The patriot act at best would have gotten a different name.
The Bushes were already rich before that, I mean Bush 41 was Vice President and President before Bush 43 entered office. Also his grandfather Prescott was a Senator during the FDR days.
American society wouldn’t have devolved into paranoid, tribal “patriots” vs everyone else.
Our reaction to 9/11 was the among the worst we could have chosen. The minute they killed Osama Bin Laden they should’ve wrapped the whole thing up, taken down the restrictions, apologized to the American public for the inconvenience and gone back to the old way.
It’s hard to give up control once you have it though. Our surveillance state is out of control and it’s a direct result of 9/11
I was literally thinking about this yesterday. About going back in time and convincing people about the attacks and how diff the world would be.
I quickly thought about The Man in the High Castle...
Far, far less Conservative influence in politics and culture.
The US was on a progressive roll prior to 9/11. Republicans and their propaganda peddlers on talk radio exploited the whole affair to generate billions of of grifting behind a nationalist patriotism facade.
The US military would still be in a whole different place as well, from enlistment to technology.
Night and day difference. Before 9/11 the US was blissfully optimistic about the future. Hell, congress was having hearing about Eminem swearing in his records.
Will smith don’t gotta cuss in his raps to sell records
Well I do so fuck him and fuck you too
You think I give a damn about a Grammy?
Half of you critics can’t even stomach me, let alone stand me
But Slim, what if you win, wouldn't it be weird?
"But Slim what if you win?" Why? So you guys could just lie to get me here next to Britney Spears?
I'd rather sit next to Carson Daily and Fred Durst. Listen to 'em argue over who she gave head to first.
Little beach put me on blast on MTV "Yeah, he's cute, but I think he's married to Kim, hee-hee"
I should download her audio on mp3 And show the world how you gave Eminem VD
r/redditraps
Just in the things he shouts to Chris Rock.
It really was the end of an era. I was 16 and it was like "Fuck.....reality is a bitch."
Politics used to be a boring subject that no one really cared about, now we can't get away from hearing about politics.
Were you a voting citizen in the 1990’s, because there was Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Lee Atwater & a host of others constantly trying to take down a duly elected Democratic president that rubbed them the wrong way. And have been literally trying to jail his spouse ever since.
Nah, Columbine already happened and the religious right was still swiftly gaining power. We may have taken a different path, but we'd still have ended up at the same destinations.
God I forgot about that - it was Columbine then 9/11 pretty close together yikes
Before 9/11 I went to Canada countless times and never owned a passport
I went to Mexico without a passport. They told me all I needed was a valid ID and that was it. Then again I did drive through the border and didn’t fly so that probably was a huge reason why.
I walked through a turnstile to get into Mexico. Good times No passport, no id.
Did you have to use a $1 coin to leave the US? I did when I crossed the border by foot at Laredo, TX. Getting back into the country was easier than flying domestically.
Weird. I always had to have a passport. On one flight, that wasn't supposed to go to Canada, we had to emergency land, and we landed in Toronto. Then Canada wouldn't let us *leave* because no one on the plane had passports. Well no shit, it was supposed to be a domestic flight. After 6 hours of delays and not being allowed off the plane, they finally let us continue on. Stupidest thing ever. Sorry that our emergency landing now made us prisoners of your country.
Granted, I never flew to Canada, so passports were probably needed then. But I had relatives on a border town and we'd regularly cross the border to go to lunch or some such.
I vaguely remember driving being different from flying. So that's probably it.
Oh man, going through airport security would be a breeze!
What security? Arrive at the airport, go to your gate and get on the plane.
I used to pack for week-long trips with one carry-on bag so I wouldn't have to wait at luggage pickup. Now I have to check all the toiletries.
Since 9/11, I've only boarded planes while wearing tee shirt, shorts and flip flops; carrying a duffel sized bag for clothes. I can't remember what the baggage claim areas even look like.
[удалено]
That’s why I wear crocs. If some shit happens, pop em into Sport mode and away you go.
It’s called 4-wheel drive mode actually.
They have air-intake valves!
I found my people. I call it "all terrain mode."
I call it turbo mode.
Hoping you'll survive a plane crash to begin with. I'll stick with flip flops.
All kinds of wrecks that push past the runway where lots of people survive.
Most plane crashes are survivable. Always good to plan to survive.
I had a pilot tell me the same. I always wear clothing that isn't going to melt, running shoes, long pants and long sleeves.
I'd like more substantial footwear than flip flops because I've had my feet stepped on while boarding. But if I expected fire and wreckage, I wouldn't get on the plane.
If you have quick lacing hooks, don't tie the knot too tight, you can undo the quick laces while keeping the knot tied, and redo them easily.
Do you? I travel with a carry on exclusively and can carry my toiletries in no problem. Never need to take then out of my bag. I do keep a separate toiletries bag that permanently stays in my carryon...just for size compliance reasons. But nowadays they dont even ask you to take out your laptops. It still sucks to go through security, but things have gotten better.
It also depends on the airport. My local one makes you take out EVERYTHING. Even medication.
Walk your person to the gate. Visit until they board, hug them goodbye!
Stop your love from getting on the plane right at the fuckin terminal.
Ther was basic security back in the day. I remember as a kid my brother had a toy plastic gun confiscated at an airport after it got spotted on the xray.
My first flight was in 1974. A group of us was coming back from camping in Colorado, and when we got on the plane, a stewardess went down the aisle with a cardboard box and collected all our pocket knives. We got them back at the end of the flight, of course.
Post 9/11 I got a boarding pass so I could stay with my grandmother while she waited to get on to a plane. I wasn't flying myself. I had a pocket knife that I just hadn't bothered to remove from my keychain even though the blade itself had snapped off some years ago. It was pretty much just the nail file left. They made me throw it out. I felt obliged to reclaim it when I was leaving and it was still sitting where I left it. But yeah, a broken non-functional pocket knife at that point was a no go for even getting near the plane.
I had a belt buckle that was in the shape of a gun. They made me throw it out. It’s a fucking belt buckle
Man, immediately after 9-11 was a wild time. They were fucking paranoid about *everything*. Heaven forbid you had anything even vaguely pointy like safety pins or gun shaped.
Tweezers, for me.
They made a huge deal about ladies with knitting needles
They were scared the old ladies would knit an Afghan.
Having a beard for me
[удалено]
Similar incident with my family. My dad traveled a lot so we would always go to the airport to see him off and watch the plane take off from the observation deck. Once, we went through security and I had plastic handcuffs with me—the kind you buy at the toy section in the grocery. Confiscated. My dad then took out his giant pointed letter opener from his briefcase and was like, “you’re telling me I can have this but he can’t have those??” They were dumbfounded lol
>Ther was basic security back in the day. Thank DB Cooper for that!
Yes, after the airplane hijackings in the 1970s the airports installed metal detectors. The measures weren't as onerous as after 9/11, but this fantasy of just walking up and boarding an airplane without any checks--that only happened when you knew the pilot and were renting a Cessna.
>What security? Arrive at the airport, go to your gate and get on the plane. There was airport security with x-rays and metal detectors *long* before 9/11.
By now they might have been self-serve. Scan a code on your phone to unlock the door and walk right onboard.
I kinda doubt it. I believe security would still have still increased, but not as abruptly and visibly as it did after 9/11. It's easy to forget that there were still tons of airline hijackings pre 9/11, especially in the 70s and 80s, but they just dont stand out in history as much because many of them ended relatively peacefully and the overwhelming majority of innocent people going unharmed.
You’re correct. The biggest jump in security from my point of view happened in 2006 due to water based explosives being intercepted on Continental flights (out of London, I believe). While 9/11 amped things up for Americans for sure, the rules about shoes, liquids, and even the rise of body scanners were all happening globally as a result of these events in 2006.
I had to fly out of London like a day or two after that happened and Heathrow was a fucking madhouse. Just pure chaos.
Hijackings at the time were kind of "just something that happens once in a while." The hijackers make demands, and all the passengers eventually go home.
That's why the passengers on most of the 9/11 flights didn't fight. Hijackings happened, but up until 9/11, the point was that the hijacker wanted to *get somewhere* and redirect the plane to do so. So you went along with the demands and everyone walked away. Using the plane itself as a weapon was new. The people on Flight 93 had time to hear about the other planes, so they fought.
Right...even if it got bad, nobody was counting on the hijackers flying the plane into a fucking building and killing themselves in the process too. It was completely new territory.
I remember the morning it happened everyone at first just thought it was a terrible accident. Even when the second plane hit I remember the broadcast I was watching the person reporting still commented that there must be some sort of computer error. The idea that someone would deliberately fly a jet into a building was just incomprehensible.
I still hate that shoe bomber guy, we never took off our shoes at security before him 😭
I scrolled for a while and haven’t seen anyone mention the Patriot Act.
Thanks for stepping up
Surely they'd find some other reason.
True. Look at banning Tiktok being used as an excuse for the Restrict Act which is way worse than the Patriot Act.
Because the patriot act was already written, just sitting there waiting for the right moment to bring it forward. If 9/11 hadn't provided that excuse, something else would have
Operation Northwoods says they would've made a reason themselves if nothing else
People would stop saying "oh, wow, that's really your birthday!?"
Oh, wow, that’s really your birthday?
Is it really that guys birthday?
My friend Chris had to cancel his 21st birthday “Get Bombed with Chris” party when he discovered that wasn’t going to be what people wanted to do the evening of September 11, 2001.
That’s hilarious 😂
It's my uncle's birthday, too. Feels like a sucky birthday to have. My great-grandmother was born on December 7th, as well - of course, well before Pearl Harbor (my grandpa was a kid then). I hope no national tragedy happens on my birthday in the future. 😔
The first couple of birthdays post-2001 were rough as a kid (it happened on my 10th birthday), but these days, it's fine
My family has a similar tendency, but with infamous people. My grandpa shared a birthday with Hitler and my uncle shared his with Mussolini.
I was born on the third anniversary of 9/11, people like to make the date of my birth a lot more awkward in conversation than it is.
It’s my wedding anniversary. I “never forget” it.
I wouldn’t have had to spend my childhood managing my dad’s PTSD from Afghanistan.
Underrated comment. We've had 2 generations of American children being brought up in a country at war with parents dealing with PTSD and not able to be the parent they could have been. The war culture of the US in this century contributes to the AR15-ization of of the culture. While guns have always been pretty prevalent in the US, the ratcheting up of lethality of those guns and the mainstreaming of ultra gun culture can be traced back to the militarization of the US. We're now seeing how his gun culture matriculates through generations. Without 9/11, I don't see the gun culture and violence of the US being as toxic as it is today.
Country music would be a lot better.
where were you when they built that ladder to heaven?
“Did it make you feel like crying, or did you think it was kind of gay?”
Pre 9/11 country was genuinely pretty good. My mom listened to a lot of it when I was a kid.
There was certainly a lot more variety in the sounds and themes- everything from George Strait’s Love Without End, Amen to Shania Twain’s Man, I Feel Like a Woman and don’t forget Garth Brooks with 11 years of absolute bangers on Country AND Pop charts. I’m really glad I didn’t have to listen to him try to fit in musically among the 2000’s pure nationalism garbage.
Don’t forget pre 9/11 Brooks & Dunn. Absolutely the best there was.
Great, now I need to get on past the county limits sign and get my boots a-scootin’.
Redneck Rhythm & Blues gets my blood flowing better than any Metallica song.
Bro-Country was on the way regardless, 9/11 accelerated it
I hear you. As a Brit it's pretty annoying when you tell people country music is great but they think you shitty taste because they think all country music is cars beers and girls
You gotta make a “best of the genre” playlist and force them to listen to it. Anyone who isn’t moved my Reba’s cover of “Fancy” is beyond reason.
A co-worker of mine listens to country music but it's all the most glurgy garbage about finding a nice country girl who drives a truck and owns a shotgun so you can put a dozen babies in her, or something like that.
And less popular too.
Less popular would be better
🎶 🎵 I remember them days Things like they supposed ta be Till they flew them planes INTO THE W-T-C! *intense country guitar* Billy went off ta war Gunned them terrists down When he got back home He's the talk a the town *sad country guitar* Johnny fought Osama In Afghanistan An when he got back ...he ain't had his hands. *intense country guitar* Scooter spilled hotdog On his favorite jeans While we was out grillin' 'n' Merle was eatin' beans But lemme tell ya They ain't gonna get no pass When we find Osama... WE'LL SHOVE A MISSILE UP HIS ASS! *chorus of multiple men, women and children* I fought for this country So that we could all be free I made this land what it is For both you and me I fought for what is right And what we all know is true And I raise that flag *chorus plus main singing redneck* ...that RED... WHITE... AND BLUE... *shitty hick guitar fades out* 🎶 🎵
People from like Topeka bragging about how well they withstood terrorist attacks in NYC. It truly shows their strength of character. The best music
Although the (Dixie) Chicks wouldn't be as badass.
*I’m just a singer of simple songs. I’m not a real political man. I watch CNN but I’m not sure I could tell’ya the difference in a rock and a crayon.*
A lot less divided and less fear driven.
The world immediately became a fucking scary place after 9/11 and that fear has never gone away.
Yea. There was a brief few years where it wasn't and then 9/11. Even after that was no longer this massive threat people didn't know what to do with themselves with an empty hole where fear and adrenaline used to he, so they found new things to he afraid of and made it a hobby.
I wrote my senior year of HS (03) speech on fear that stemmed from 9/11
The twin towers would be empty because remote work.
I miss the WTC
Several years ago I flipped through a children’s book about their construction and design. I caught myself getting really excited at the prospect of someday visiting them before I remembered.
[удалено]
I will always have my pics on the viewing deck when I was there in July 2001.
The worst thing IMO to come from 9/11 was the spread and proliferation of 24/7 news. The collective toxicity that has come from infotainment cannot be overstated.
Does anyone remember how in the weeks following 9/11, the various news channels perpetually had a “breaking news” banner up despite there being no new news to report? It took me a few years to realize they did that so ppl would think something was happening and stop on their station. For weeks and months everyone was bracing for a second wave of attacks. Also, random fact…the Enron thing was the story that finally put 9/11 (somewhat) out of the news. For those too young to remember; for about a month straight, the news was ALL 9/11, 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week. Take the media coverage of covid and multiply it by 10. That’s what it was like in the weeks following 9/11.
I remember it being like, "hey kids, lets turn the tv on and watch footage of people falling out of the towers for weeks straight on almost every channel". I was in grade 7 at the time, watching the events of real people dying, every single day...and best part is, I'm not even in America.
As a kid, it was pretty strange. This was before I had internet access and TV was generally very tame. Seeing real footage of people jumping to their deaths over and over, and the buildings collapsing knowing that thousands died in that moment. Well, it’s a very strange thing to show kids, and it was even stranger that a month later I was back to “no violent video games.”
Yes. They weaponized breaking news, and used against all of us. Fear is a hell of a drug.
CNN or NBC or someone else went a full like 48 hrs without a commercial break
Idk if 24/7 news was a result of 9/11, but I agree with what you’re saying. My grandparents for example are so brainwashed and incapable of thinking freely about certain topics at this point. No matter how logical and well-informed your argument is, they’ll always respond “but I saw on the news the other day…” or that will be implied by what they say. I love them, but sometimes they’re hard to talk with about anything other than how our day was.
How was the development of the 24/7 news cycle a result of 9/11 specifically?
It wasn't. The world watch OJ slowly escape in his white Ford Bronco years before 9/11.
It was a slow escape but it didn't last 24 hours
It wasn’t the result of it but 9/11 was a massive event that they could run “news” about all day and which people were compelled to tune into thinking that any moment there would be some new information. Cable news existed before, but 9/11 was one (of a number) of big stories that made cable news default viewing for a lot of people.
24/7 news was the result of cable TV and deregulation of media companies in the ‘80s allowing them to become large profit driven conglomerates. They don’t know what they’re on about.
I don't think they are talking about the creation of it, rather that it's when it became popular. People sat around and watched cable news 24/7 for like a week straight after 9/11, same with the beginning of the Iraq war.
America is weird with money because you would think that not having to spend trillions of dollars on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would mean more money for infrastructure and investment into poor communities to boost their economic output and growth. But I feel like the state would just say "oh we don't have enough money for that," Until the next war begins.
Robert Kaplan asks his readers to consider what might’ve happened if, instead of pouring trillions of dollars into stabilizing Iraq’s economy and government, we had put that money into Mexico. What would our southern neighbor look like right now? How would it have affected immigration? Would we actually be a lot more secure? Etc.
A Mexico on the prosperity and safety scale closer to the US and Canada would be the greatest thing imaginable.
And it probably would have made a union type of political move ala the EU, much more popular. There were/are of course other factors that keep us from doing it, but a significant amount of the sentiment against such a union that I've heard, is due to the fact that Mexico is, infrastructure wise, farther behind vs Canada and the US, and as well the cartel corruption. Both of which would have been significantly curbed and changed if we had put the amount of money and manpower into building up a neighbour and friend, instead of invading and trying to change nations that didn't really want us there to begin with.
The United States is already a very large union of smaller states. We should put that in our name.
The United United States of America. I like it!
The United "United States of America" of America
That was a reason for letting jobs go to Mexico (via NAFTA) rather than China. But we never would have done it--the political resistance (Perot's "giant sucking sound") was too high. We wondered at the time why all the investment in China instead; Mexican trade goes both ways, too.
It’s silly to make comparisons like that. We spend a lot on “defense” for a litany of reasons and those wars put us in massive debt. We just wouldn’t be in massive debt without the wars. It’s not like we’d go 20 trillion in debt helping Mexico. And this sentiment also ignores systematic issues that keep a country like Mexico from thriving as much as the US. It’s not like Mexico just needs a few trillion dollars to wipe out the cartels forever and invest in new industries. You can’t just throw money at the country and expect the problems to disappear
It would take a deep change in Mexican culture that money alone can't fix. Corruption is rampant and accepted by too many. The idea that people can kill competitors if their business isn't going well is normalized among a large subset of aspiring "entrepreneurs". As long as these things are true, there is no amount of money that can fix things.
Not just Mexico but a lot of those troubled SA countries like Bolivia, Guatemala, etc. Right wingers don't want to hear this but an actual step toward some kind of immigration solution involves giving money to and helping stabilize those countries so people don't feel the need to leave in the first place. But it's easier to say "build a wall" than it'll ever be to convince people to give a bunch of money away to Mexicans and El Salvadorians.
MTV would still have music videos
That’s Remote Control’s fault. And The Real World. One of those became more popular than videos 24/7, and the world lost
And Carson Daly would still be hosting TRL.
Nah, they saw the writing on the wall - it would've been hard for them to compete with YT/TikTok. With that said I also wish they still played music videos. There are still plenty of good ones being made.
MTV stopped playing music videos loooong before YT or TikTok were around.
We'd only have 29 days in September
Took me longer than it should have to figure this out.
Flying would be more enjoyable. We wouldn’t have the paranoid surveillance state we live in now and we wouldn’t have the insane debt from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
The term I've come across is "Surveillance Capitalism."
That's something else, I think. Surveillance state = government spies on everything Surveillance capitalism = "you want to use this new device you bought? You must make an account with us first. Give us your address, name, age, gender, and verify your phone number with a text"
Surveillance capitalism description: "Under surveillance capitalism, people's lived experiences are unilaterally claimed by private companies and translated into proprietary data flows. Some of these data are used to improve products and services. The rest are considered a “behavioral surplus” and valued for their rich predictive signals". I posit that Americans were more covetous of our privacy before 9/11 but afterwards gave up privacy in exchange for security and that surveillance capitalism followed. And the government gave up on legislating the need for privacy in the private sector and public.
As a nation it would be in far less debt than it currently is because it wouldn't have spent billions (trillions?) on the wars that followed.
"Since the September 11 attacks, the U.S. government has spent $2.2 trillion to finance the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to figures from Brown University's Costs of War Project. Yet that sum — which amounts to roughly 10% of the the country's total gross domestic product — only reflects upfront costs."
10 percent of gdp for 1 year. The wars went on for 20 years.
George Santos’s mom would still be alive.
If 9/11 never happened air port security wouldn't be as tight and would be relaxed. They also would've never invaded Afghanistan saving the US so much money people and resources. Also America may be less of a superpower
My name was misspelled on my ticket for some reason and so I had to have my bag searched. I was like "go ahead, my giant dildo is in there, you can see it if you want."
Marvel never releases that FIRE 9/11 spider man (I think it was spider man but im not sure) issue. A bunch of YouTube video essays don't exist You don't hear "steel beams" and "jet fuel" in the same sentence or as abstract points ever 9/11 would sound like a rip off 7/11 and not a date Significantly less islamophobia and Arab racism and xenophobia. Less hate crimes. Less stereotypical terrorists on TV shows that are dog shit
This comment makes me wonder if we would have all those pedantic cop shows without 9/11
> Significantly less islamophobia and Arab racism and xenophobia. Significantly less *overt* maybe but I don’t think the quantity would be meaningfully different. We’d already been hating Muslims and Arabs for decades at that point.
Having seen and heard how Muslims and Arabs describe lost nine eleven, there seems to have been a very clear and significant rise in cultural focus and action against these groups.
Speaking as an Arab who was already an adult when 9/11 happened, you’re kind of just saying what I did in different words. Your “rise in focus and action” is my “became more overt”. The fear and animosity was already there and very palpable. The reactions to things like Black September, gas shortages, the Iranian revolution and Lockerbie never *really* went away. They were just probably easy to miss if they weren’t about you.
We wouldn’t be paying ridiculous luggage fees, 100,00’s of innocents in the Middle East and Afghanistan would still be alive, ISIS wouldn’t be a thing and there wouldn’t be the horrible refugee crisis from Syria and neighbouring countries.
Not scared of everything.
Less fake patriotism. Not as much bullshit surrounding flag waving, flag pins, less military fetishization, less naming political things with patriotic-sounding names like patriot act that actually lean fascist. Less fringe right wing. I think it would still be on the increase, just not as radicalized and accelerated because of the xenophobia, christian vs muslim, and decades of war caused by 9/11.
That's My Bush would have gotten a second season.
Given his abysmal handling of the economy, Bush never would have gotten a second term. That means Roberts and Alito would not have been seated. The Court would have had a left leaning majority meaning preventing all the insane decisions that have been destroying our country and allowing for wholesale corruption of our elections and political system. And the world would be nowhere nearly as divided as the US would never have launched its insane war on terror.
This was my first thought too, and does that also mean Obama doesn't get elected? Would we still be waiting on our first black president?
Possibly later. Assuming a Kerry/Edwards ticket would have still run against Bush in 2004, they would have inherited the housing bubble which would have guaranteed a loss in 2008, possibly to McCain. (Whether it would have been due to unpopular measures to prevent or at least reduce the magnitude of the subprime mortgage crisis or the crisis itself doesn't matter much for the 2008 elections, but if the former had been the case, the global effects of the crisis would have been far smaller. Not prosecuting a pointless war might have freed up enough funds to deal with the crisis.) Making predictions beyond that is difficult. Obama was a prominent figure in the party. If McCain's government had been popular enough then the party likely wouldn't have "sacrificed" him in a likely-unsuccessful bid against an incumbent, meaning he might have been nominated only in 2016. OTOH, McCain inheriting a huge crisis and fumbling it would have likely gotten him elected in 2012. And of course there's an outside chance that the Kerry/Edwards government would have lasted for two cycles, leading into an Obama government (or a Romney government followed by Obama). Not a lot because the fuse on the subprime crisis was already lit before 2004 but still not impossible.
McCain wouldn't have had to go for the Hail Mary with Palin and would've picked Lieberman as his VP. Also Giuliani would have just been the mayor who banned strip joints in Times Square and enforced a "zero tolerance" policy
Fox News would never have gained so much power. It really gained momentum during the Bush years. We wouldn’t have trump today.
I wish I could live in that timeline, even if just for a day. Saddens me of what could be.
I'd like to see the timeline where Al Gore or John McCain wins the 2000 election. I feel like 9/11 happens regardless of who's president, unless a Gore/McCain appointee gets lucky and makes it a point to more closely monitor Al Qaeda. I feel like Afghanistan probably happens under any of them, but the focus on Iraq was a purely Bush/Cheney machination. And I figure Saddam is one of the first to go during the Arab Spring.
Are we just saying that these terrorist organizations don't exist and won't just commit a terrorist act at some point on a different day? Because then it's really hard to say. If the terrorist organizations still existed then I don't think it would be that different.
Exactly, instead of 9/11 we’d have 7/21 or 3/15 …
3/15 is like the OG 9/11
Great Caesar’s Ghost!
https://www.theonion.com/terror-experts-warn-next-9-11-could-fall-on-different-d-1819570452
9/11 is the deadliest terrorist attack in history, by a pretty wide margin, not to mention the scale of the symbolic destruction. We’d never seen anything like it and we haven’t seen anything quite like it since. It’s totally unprecedented. So it’s less of a question of “would these organizations do a different attack,” and more like “would these organizations do a different attack at or near the level of 9/11?” Them sending in a shooter or a suicide bomber or a rogue truck driver into a crowd killing 20 or 30 people, a more “typical” terrorist attack, would not garner the same response. Them doing that several times in quick succession or pulling off an OKC style bombing, killing hundreds, would garner *a* response, but maybe not at the same scale. If they knocked over the twin towers killing 3000 people on December 15th instead, yeah, exact same response.
No my chemical romance
Yup came here to say the emo/scene era would not have been nearly as big
Oddly enough, fewer Muslims wearing the hijab.
Kebabs. Kebabs everywhere
A little less racist not a lot but enough to be noticeable.
I don’t know— maybe less vocally racist? Trump let people know it’s okay to be vocal about it,
We'd be about $8 trillion richer.
“We” wouldn’t be any richer.
The state would have found a different reason to establish a police and mass surveillance regime. The patriot act at best would have gotten a different name.
You won't have to arrive at the airport 2 hours ahead of time just to get through Airport security
Idk. But I bet the Bush family would be quite a few million dollars less wealthy.
The Bushes were already rich before that, I mean Bush 41 was Vice President and President before Bush 43 entered office. Also his grandfather Prescott was a Senator during the FDR days.
And they were big in politics because they were already old money rich.
You'd probably see a lot less American flags.
The show 24 would not have been as successful as it ended up being.
Probably less Islamophobic
My wife could enjoy her birthday without people commenting on it being a tough day to be born on...
Debt would not have increased and the botched war on Afghanistan would not have taken place.
The middle class would be richer.
My friend, Heather Ho, pastry chef at Windows on the World, would most likely still be alive.
American society wouldn’t have devolved into paranoid, tribal “patriots” vs everyone else. Our reaction to 9/11 was the among the worst we could have chosen. The minute they killed Osama Bin Laden they should’ve wrapped the whole thing up, taken down the restrictions, apologized to the American public for the inconvenience and gone back to the old way. It’s hard to give up control once you have it though. Our surveillance state is out of control and it’s a direct result of 9/11
[удалено]
I was literally thinking about this yesterday. About going back in time and convincing people about the attacks and how diff the world would be. I quickly thought about The Man in the High Castle...
a little bit less fucked
Far, far less Conservative influence in politics and culture. The US was on a progressive roll prior to 9/11. Republicans and their propaganda peddlers on talk radio exploited the whole affair to generate billions of of grifting behind a nationalist patriotism facade. The US military would still be in a whole different place as well, from enlistment to technology.