Like most members of this forum (indeed, I suspect all members) I am too young to remember 9/11. I wasn't even born yet–I only came into this world later, a few months before Bush launched the US invasion of Iraq.
Despite this, I still feel a sense of familiarity with what we "lost" when the towers fell, the nineties optimism that went out of the world when Bin Laden's goons murdered 3,000 people and delivered unto American society a greater shock than Watergate, Pearl Harbor, JFK's assassination, and the Vietnam War collectively ever did. I am old enough that most of the educational content when I was in elementary school was still stuff produced during the 1990s and infected with that optimism and the 90s flavour of "multiculturalism" which implied mutual respect: America and other Western nations were equals with other cultures of the world, rather than the zero sum game we have now where either A) we are trash and understanding them is more important than respecting ourselves, while they offer no mutual respect back or B) we have to be insane bigots who babble racist nonsense (eg. "Indians poop in the streets") like some narrow-minded peasant. Science would continue advancing for the good of everyone. The world would continue to integrate and develop and everyone would be equals. I know what we lost and I know I never got to experience it myself, and selfishly that is what 9/11 means to me.
My parents worked in New York at the time (they lived in northern New Jersey, right across the river). One of the things I remember from the stories they told me is that Dad stupidly thought the first tower was some kind of accident, like a plane had clipped part of the tower (and then I guess just landed in the Hudson like Sully Sullenberger would eight years later?) so he went out of the office with a camera, knowing neither just how bad the first impact really was nor that there would shortly be a second. The other thing I remember is that mom said when they finally made it back across the river to New Jersey, everybody was hugging everybody in relief-even people you didn't know-because they were just glad you were alive.
The direct aftermath of the attacks are less tangible to me. I was vaguely aware as a kid we had soldiers overseas, "fighting terrorism" and "doing peacekeeping." I remember sometimes reading picture books produced for education purposes about stuff like reconstruction teams helping children in Afghanistan or protecting zoo animals in Iraq or mundane things like that. It was only come middle school that "the situation in the Middle East" became a more real thing to me, and by that point it was post-Arab Spring and the big news was ISIS' atrocities and rapid expansion across Syria and Iraq.
I don't really know how I feel today, on the 25th anniversary of the attacks. In previous years, since I became more Online during COVID, I'd usually spent the day angry at people on twitter trying to justify it ("muh bin Laden wuz like a anti imperialist an' shit, bro" leftists etc etc) or something. I'd also try to observe some solemn memorials. I suppose part of the blame falls on Trump, for how much he's made everything worse, but in general I just feel...hollow and quietly sad.
Despite this, I still feel a sense of familiarity with what we "lost" when the towers fell, the nineties optimism that went out of the world when Bin Laden's goons murdered 3,000 people and delivered unto American society a greater shock than Watergate, Pearl Harbor, JFK's assassination, and the Vietnam War collectively ever did. I am old enough that most of the educational content when I was in elementary school was still stuff produced during the 1990s and infected with that optimism and the 90s flavour of "multiculturalism" which implied mutual respect: America and other Western nations were equals with other cultures of the world, rather than the zero sum game we have now where either A) we are trash and understanding them is more important than respecting ourselves, while they offer no mutual respect back or B) we have to be insane bigots who babble racist nonsense (eg. "Indians poop in the streets") like some narrow-minded peasant. Science would continue advancing for the good of everyone. The world would continue to integrate and develop and everyone would be equals. I know what we lost and I know I never got to experience it myself, and selfishly that is what 9/11 means to me.
My parents worked in New York at the time (they lived in northern New Jersey, right across the river). One of the things I remember from the stories they told me is that Dad stupidly thought the first tower was some kind of accident, like a plane had clipped part of the tower (and then I guess just landed in the Hudson like Sully Sullenberger would eight years later?) so he went out of the office with a camera, knowing neither just how bad the first impact really was nor that there would shortly be a second. The other thing I remember is that mom said when they finally made it back across the river to New Jersey, everybody was hugging everybody in relief-even people you didn't know-because they were just glad you were alive.
The direct aftermath of the attacks are less tangible to me. I was vaguely aware as a kid we had soldiers overseas, "fighting terrorism" and "doing peacekeeping." I remember sometimes reading picture books produced for education purposes about stuff like reconstruction teams helping children in Afghanistan or protecting zoo animals in Iraq or mundane things like that. It was only come middle school that "the situation in the Middle East" became a more real thing to me, and by that point it was post-Arab Spring and the big news was ISIS' atrocities and rapid expansion across Syria and Iraq.
I don't really know how I feel today, on the 25th anniversary of the attacks. In previous years, since I became more Online during COVID, I'd usually spent the day angry at people on twitter trying to justify it ("muh bin Laden wuz like a anti imperialist an' shit, bro" leftists etc etc) or something. I'd also try to observe some solemn memorials. I suppose part of the blame falls on Trump, for how much he's made everything worse, but in general I just feel...hollow and quietly sad.