Which was a period of larger upheaval- 2020 (pandemic and police protests) or post 9/11?

[ToddBonzalez]

I was in 4th grade when 9/11 happened so my memory and understanding of the immediate fallout isn't great. As I was a 9 at the time, I had a 9-year old's understanding of what was happening in the US and on the global stage in response. I didn't grow up anywhere near NYC, so beyond the initial "Isn't that sad and horrible", It didn't really have an immediate impact on me.

2020 has been the chaotic period I've experienced during my adult years between COVID and the police brutality protests. It genuinely feels like change might come from all of this when the dust settles, but at the end of the day, who knows. It's hard to make any sort of predictions for what the immediate future might hold.

So for those old enough to remember and really dissect the events surrounding and immediately following 9/11- Which was a period of larger upheaval; then or now? What felt more intense or extreme in the moment?

 

[jwk94]

I was only 8 at the time, but I feel like now would be, mostly because of social media.

 

[Deleted member 13496]

I was in high school for 9/11 and this is like a whole other dimension in comparison. It's way, way, way, way worse. The George Floyd stuff alone, then you add the pandemic, the depression, and the unemployment. I've never seen anything like this in my lifetime.

 

[BDS]

I mean, just speaking as someone who was also very young, I don't recall my life changing in any way. I barely even knew it happened. I still went to school, I could still go outside and play with friends and go to appointments or restaurants or parks. The only thing you couldn't do is wear shoes through security at an airport.

Obviously, from a larger geopolitical perspective 9/11 had a massive impact on life in the 21st century, especially upheaval in the Middle East caused by American imperialism. But from the perspective of day to day life in the US, nothing really changed from my perspective, unlike COVID19 which has upended essentially every aspect of life for the average person at least for the last few months.

 

[StrangeRoboMemory]

2020 by a wide margin. I was in high school in 2001 and all of this is way beyond anything that happened twenty years ago.

 

[TheYanger]

I was delivering pizza on 9-11 talking to tons of people. I was an adult. this is WAY worse.

9/11 for as 'large' as it was, was largely concentrated on the NY area and people nearby that had a real connection with it. Most of the country has never been to new york, and though the media helped them frame what happened easily enough, it wasn't the same as 'Hey there are protests and national guard one town over' in every city in america.

 

[Deleted member 6582]

It's still 2020.

 

[Deleted member 13496]

2020 by a wide margin. I was in high school in 2001 and all of this is way beyond anything that happened twenty years ago.

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100%

 

[Betty]

2020 is much worse.

Yes things were uncertain and tense after 9/11 but the world didn't stop and for the most part people weren't so divided.

 

[collige]

We're in the middle of the 2020 upheaval right this very second

 

[sapien85]

2020 easily. Most of the US was not in conflict in 9/11.

 

[Atolm]

Your country was united after 9/11. There was anger but it was directed towards the Taliban. The US as a whole remained calm and peaceful.

 

[thefro]

I can't speak for anyone in NYC who was personally impacted, etc, but while 9/11 itself was worse than any individual day, 2020 is worse overall by quite a bit.

The US was pretty unified in 2001 and it was "YEAAAH LET'S BOMB AL QAEDA!" by a couple weeks afterwards.

 

[adj_noun]

9/11 was a horror that ultimately didn't affect many concrete aspects of my life.

This is a whole different ballgame that affects every single aspect of my life. Nothing has gone untouched.

Also, we were at least momentarily all on the same side in 2001. Way different now.

 

[NESpowerhouse]

2020 in many ways is like if 2001, 2008, and 2016 all combined

 

[Min]

I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, let alone a month in the future over the fallout that has occurred in the past 5 months...

 

[The Albatross]

Oh Jesus now and it's not close.

Post-9/11 was scary but you felt a sense of brotherhood with other Americans. You were scared and worried and everybody felt nervous for weeks, but there was a commitment that we would live a normal life. The MLB playoffs commenced just a week later, and it made you proud the brush off the dirt and live a normal life. Going to work felt like an act of defiance and patriotism.

Same with after the Boston Marathon bombing. I work in Boston and the city was crippled by fear... We were out at a restaurant/bar the night the terrorists were caught and it came around, the bar stopped and the bar tender made an announcement that they'd captured the terrorists and everybody applauded and hugged each other, cheered and chanted USA and Boston Strong. I know it sounds cheesy in our cynical culture but it was a real moment of togetherness. People cried because they were happy.

There is none of that now. The president is trying to tear the country apart and is using the unnecessary deaths of black people to do it. He's stoking violence and racism and threatening to bring the army down on American civilians, who have just sufferer 3 months of the deadliest pandemic in 100 years, and we're not out of it yet.

This is going to get worse. There's no calm. There's no leader. We're in the worst public health crisis in 100 years, our economy has collapsed, the corrupt impeached illegitimate president is threatening to use the military to kill American civilians and while we have an election in 5 months, he's working to steal that and not step down. If he'd turn guns on Americans because of some protests outside the white house, while he's deep in a bunker rage tweeting, he's not stopping now.

 

[Seductivpancakes]

2020 by far and I remember 9/11 very vividly having been in school in lower Manhattan at the time.

 

[Anatole]

This Isn’t Trump’s Katrina. It’s Stupid, Slow-Motion 9/11.

Trump already had his Katrina, anyway.

slate.com

And this was 2.5 months ago.

 

[CrocoDuck]

I was in 5th grade in NYC when it happened. No comparison, 2020 is way more crazy. The riots were a ticking time bomb along with the pandemic, unemployment and restlessness have created a perfect storm.

 

[Septimus Prime]

2020, hands down.

The thing about 9/11 was that, while it had massive, world-changing effects down the line, at that moment we all experienced it collectively.

2020, on the other hand, is just plain chaos. First we have a virus that indiscriminately kills anyone and is affecting the whole world. And then we have these nationwide riots that, again, feel like they can affect anyone at anytime.

 

[RecRoulette]

Living through 2020 feels like an entire decade has passed already, and it's June 1.

 

[Deleted member 2533]

I was 18 by Sept. 11th, and this year was already worse in January.

 

[jml]

Post-9/11 was scary but you felt a sense of brotherhood with other Americans.

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Unless you were middle eastern

 

[GenTask]

2020 is the aftermath and progression of what this country has been doing since 9/11, shits real bad right now cranked to 11. The AUMF, Guantanomo Bay, and the Patriot Act still exist, absurd amount of wasted money on the Military instead of Social programs, militarization of the police; and nothing has been done to actually move towards Social Uplift, just a lot of can kicking. As MLK said, America is approaching spiritual death.

 

[jett]

I'm sure if you ask the average American they'll say 2020 is much worse. After 9/11 life continued as normal for the western world.

Ask the Iraqi and Afghani people tho.

 

[Servbot24]

The country actually felt unusually unified after 9/11. But I lived in white suburbia.

 

[plagiarize]

This feels unlike anything I've lived through. I don't know that I can go any further with it than that.

 

[jwk94]

2020 by a wide margin. I was in high school in 2001 and all of this is way beyond anything that happened twenty years ago.

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I think the most telling thing here is that a lot of us who were kids question if 9/11 was worse. Kids today can give you that answer because what's going on this year has effected everyone, regardless of location, social status, or age.

 

[New Username]

Edit: Deleted post

 

[crienne]

I was a high school senior during 9/11.

The years and decades following 9/11 have been far worse for this country than the period immediately after. What we're seeing now is nearly the culmination of those years (and the many decades prior). 2020 is far, far, far worse. Infinitely worse, I'd say. At least if we're just looking at this from an American point of view.

 

[Zweizer]

Unless you were middle eastern

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Or just brown in general.

 

[Khanimus]

Nobody was coming to the defense of brown people after 9/11. There was no "upheaval." People were mourning. Muslims and anyone vaguely Middle-Eastern were just "the bad guys" and the public was perfectly fine with that.

 

[Osahi]

9/11 is the moment that heavily impacted the first 2 decades of the century and probably will beyond.

But 2020 seems to try to do the same for the next 2 decades. We'll see what the long term looks like.

Both 9/11 and the pandemic are 2 of the most historic events in my lifetime. Though there are 3 of these turn-in-history moments as I was alive during 1989 too, but was still shitting in diapers then.

 

[jwk94]

Your country was united after 9/11. There was anger but it was directed towards the Taliban. The US as a whole remained calm and peaceful.

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Calm and peaceful unless you were someone from the middle east or someone who looked like they were from the middle east. I remember my best friend moving after 9/11. Years later I found out that his family were made to feel VERY unwelcome in our town after those events.

 

[Atolm]

Calm and peaceful unless you were someone from the middle east or someone who looked like they were from the middle east. I remember my best friend moving after 9/11. Years later I found out that they were made to feel VERY unwelcome in our town after those events.

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Well, yes, there was a surge in racism towards people from the region and Muslims in general, that still continues to this day.

But well, you kno.w..it was different from now.

 

[captmcblack]

It's 2020.

 

[Dyle]

Too early to say but 2020 is doing its best to make it a close fight

 

[CDX]

I was in high school in 2001. 2020 has been far worse than I remember the end of 2001 and 2002 being.

I can't speak for anyone in NYC who was personally impacted, etc, but while 9/11 itself was worse than any individual day, 2020 is worse overall by quite a bit.

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I agree with this assessment.

 

[jerf]

9/11 was a shellshock. Almost like a day dream. The first 3 or so days were like living in a soundless void. After that though the world quickly came together. It was very clear that everything had changed, yet at the same time for almost all of us the day to day had not really changed.

This is an unending nightmare that its not clear we will wake up from. And if we do what are we waking up to? 9/11 was something "done to us". This we did all to ourselves with half gleefully laughing along.

 

[delete12345]

It's still 2020.

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Let's pretend it's been 4 years.

 

[Chopchop]

IMO probably 2020. For a lot of people, the 9/11 attacks and the events afterwards were things that you saw on the news, but had little to no actual effect on your everyday life. They were shocking and horrible for sure, and a lot of people's lives WERE changed by it, but for most of the population, their day-to-day life was still the same.

Contrast that with the lockdown right now. Everyone is told to stay home and limit public exposure. Many have lost their jobs and possibly their homes due to the lack of income. Many are either sick, or know someone who sick, and some know someone who has died from it. That's just the lockdown.

Now you have the protests, where people are now going to have to fear for their lives at the hands of the police and government, on top of fearing for their lives from COVID.

 

[RolandGunner]

2020 by a wide margin. I was in high school in 2001 and all of this is way beyond anything that happened twenty years ago.

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Yes, this. People were stunned for a week or two after 9/11, especially with the anthrax attacks in the mail. But this is so much worse.

 

[Huncho_Houdini]

This is much worse, and I was in NY during and after 9/11.

After 9/11 things were bad for brown people, many were attacked and murdered; overall the country was stable. The level of civil unrest now is a few orders of magnitude higher, and combined with the pandemic, this entire situation is unprecedented.

 

[colorblindmode]

I was in high school for 9/11 and this is like a whole other dimension in comparison. It's way, way, way, way worse. The George Floyd stuff alone, then you add the pandemic, the depression, and the unemployment. I've never seen anything like this in my lifetime.

Click to shrink...

I was in 7th grade at the time, but yeah, you're right. I distinctly remember how that felt (and the subsequent MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner) versus how this feels, and this feels like it's a whole different world of upheaval.

Granted, I don't live in NYC. So it's possible the experience of those living there at the time have a drastically different view.

 

[RolandGunner]

Nobody was coming to the defense of brown people after 9/11. There was no "upheaval." People were mourning. Muslims and anyone vaguely Middle-Eastern were just "the bad guys" and the public was perfectly fine with that.

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George Bush, awful as he was, tried to distinguish between Muslims and terrorism. Can you imagine Trump saying anything like this:

George W. Bush's comments on Muslims after 9/11 are still very relevant today

"Islam is peace," - George W. Bush's comments on Islam are strikingly different than Donald J. Trump.

www.youtube.com

 

[Samiya]

We still don't know the aftermath and consequences of 2020 yet - but I can tell you that so far it pales in comparison to 9/11. That shit altered the world and gave us a whole lot of bad stuff - two foreign wars that are still ongoing, mass surveillance, two terms with Bush, it fucked up the entire Middle East and ultimately gave us ISIS. Patriotism made everyone lose their minds and news media fell in line unless they wanted to be labelled un-American.

 

[kess]

After 9/11 Bush received almost totemic veneration from the already firmly established Religious Right. The way the event permeated the early internet is a throughline to almost all online extremism. Nothing that Robin Cook said in his resignation speech turned out wrong.

We are reaping a bitter harvest now.

 

[Khanimus]

George Bush, awful as he was, tried to distinguish between Muslims and terrorism. Can you imagine Trump saying anything like this:

George W. Bush's comments on Muslims after 9/11 are still very relevant today

"Islam is peace," - George W. Bush's comments on Islam are strikingly different than Donald J. Trump.

www.youtube.com

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His actions speak differently. Let's not make this a competition of which of these two is a less despicable monster.

 

[delete12345]

2020 is like a roller coaster that never ends.

The United Nations has declared 2020 as the International Year of Plant Health.

They're not far off, given how nature was able to recover.

Home

www.fao.org

Here's what happened in 2020:

• Australian bushfires emergency was announced on the 2nd day of 2020.
• On the 3rd day, the world went in World War 3 crisis.
• The 16th day, we went into Trump's impeachment trial.
• 30th day, COVID-19 time.
• Then COVID-19 economic recession.
• Then lockdown.
• Then unemployments happened.
• Then 100,000 deaths than anything in the world happened in the US. More than 9/11.
• Then police brutality protests happened.