I was in college when 9/11 happened. A pretty shocking day all around but I had one experience that has stuck with me ever since. Just anecdotal and probably means nothing... but later in the day I went with a friend of mine into town to pick up some t-shirts for a school event. We were talking about it all when my friend said:
"It's kinda weird but, I actually want the death toll to be higher"
For context, to this day my friend is one of the most ethical, good-hearted people I know. He's also fairly non-political and definitely isn't a "death to America" type. What he was telling me was a confession. He knew he wasn't supposed to think like that, but his brain couldn't help it.
And when I think back to the day it happened and shortly after when the death toll numbers were flying around... I feel like a lot of people felt like this but wouldn't dream of verbalizing it. I think A LOT of Americans wanted to see a huge death toll and ultimately were a bit disappointed at the final numbers.
What this says about Americans if true... I don't know. Maybe nothing. But it seems meaningful to me somehow and I've never quite parsed out what that meaning is.
I think it has to do with disasters as media events. In Debord's words, we live in the society of the spectacle. We have learned not to experience calamities as the real life tragedies they are, but as shows, sporting events, blockbuster movies, and therefore they're reported in terms of records - "yesterday we had the highest death toll in the pandemic!"
When I got home from school that day, the first thing my dad said was "they stole my idea!"
OMG this was my experience too.
"Doesn't stuff like this happen all the time?" I had an anxious mother, and I was (surprise!) an anxious child.
I was oddly comforted that this was seen as uniquely bad - thankfully it didn't make me more anxious... quite the opposite.
Really cool to hear someone else shared this reaction.
I had this same reaction. I didnt think it was super common, but the near apocalyptic response the country had to a terrorist attack in New York always seemed a bit overblown to me.
i also have a weird 9/11 memory. I was a kid. I remember wondering what all the adults were fussing about. I remember wondering “doesn’t this kind of stuff happen all the time?”
I had a similar response, I was in middle school and was bored by the news and didn't get why it was interrupting class. I was just like, "Don't way more people die in car crashes every year?" It seemed like the sort of thing that was on the news all the time. I think that was a completely reasonable response and I have yet to see any reason to change that perspective and seeing all the adults go nuts for no fucking reason over it definitely influenced by politics and my worldview. Of course, now we've got a 9/11 happening every day with Covid and the same people who went nuts don't give a shit so what can I say, Boomers are truly mysterious creatures.
I have come up with a theory that the reason they reacted like that was that they were used to a Cold War mindset and fearing nuclear armageddon, and so when 9/11 happened it occupied that space in their heads of, "This is the big one." Whatever the case they really fucked everything up with it.
Everyone has a death drive, if you believe Freud on the matter. It's the part of you that slows down to take a good look at that gnarly car crash in the other lane
I think you're right, blood sport is part of the zeitgeist. That's why we have constant "death toll clocks" on all MSM channels, but they aren't offering anything more concrete than that.
I was home sick from school this day and was flipping through channels and saw the second tower get hit, I wasn't really sure what to think because I didn't understand why somebody would do that... was pretty messed up to watch happen live and just seeing peoples reactions in real time.
9/11 was when the US news media went completely off the rails with their coverage and reporting.... and it really went to hell leading up to the invasion of Iraq.
I was in HS and had similar thoughts. Maybe it was the spectacle, excitement of history actually happening, subconscious frustration with the status quo, misguided misanthropy, hatred of Wall Street, etc. So many reasons to cheer for the "event", for it to have meaning, for it to become the catalyst for change in a positive direction.
Maybe it’s a distance thing?
Maybe it’s some crazy threshold we have inside of us before we can feel we lived through something horrible?
I get it, in a small, awful way. Maybe it’s like “if there were more, we’d care forever?”
Or it’s just an intrusive thought.
Not that 3,000 deaths seem to matter to Americans today.
Not that 3,000 deaths seem to matter to Americans today.
Depends on the cause. If 3000 Americans were to die because of a muslim terrorist attack, they'd matter - even if it would be during the covid-crisis.
