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[Strife26]

I wasn't commenting on the strength of the emotion about Pearl Harbor so much as the type of emotion on display.  Nobody ever talked about the sacred ground zero of Pearl Harbor and how we shouldn't let Japanese people do anything it AFAIK.  People made songs about Pearl Harbor that were calls to action while people made songs about 9/11 that were about the pain it evoked.

That's because we *had* someone to call to action against. We don't cry about Pearl Harbor because we destroyed Imperial Japan. The 9/11 attacks were worse, being against a purely civilian target and against an enemy that we were *not* preparing to fight (there's a reason why the war on terror is a learning process for the US). Moreover, I'd argue that a helluva lot of songs about 9/11 are of the nature of "we're going to fuck you up" or "we'll survive (with the implied caveat of "and then fuck you up").

There is a very very very big difference between an act of God fucking a country up, and the willful, cowardly act of man. You don't think anyone gives a damn about the Spanish flu anymore, do you?

[mainiac]

Maybe it is different for those who live in New York, and had to deal with an empty ground zero.

Oh most certainly.  Just like Katrina was a huge f*ing deal for people from New Orleans.

There is a very very very big difference between an act of God fucking a country up, and the willful, cowardly act of man. You don't think anyone gives a damn about the Spanish flu anymore, do you?

Yes, I know it's not an exact one to one comparison.  A unique event is unique.  But the behavior is startling.  It is an article of faith among the American public that 9/11 not only changed New York but changed America and the entire world together.  People do not attribute the same amount of significance to events that are arguably far more world changing such as the Spanish Flu, Hurricane Katrina or Pearl Harbor.  It is understandable that we might have different sets of emotions over 9/11.  But why do we insist that it is going to be one of the most significant acts of the 20th century?

[Duke 2.0]

I wasn't commenting on the strength of the emotion about Pearl Harbor so much as the type of emotion on display.  Nobody ever talked about the sacred ground zero of Pearl Harbor and how we shouldn't let Japanese people do anything it AFAIK.

I'm pretty sure when we went to war with Japan we did horrific things to Japanese Americans. And all other Asian Americans for good measure. And as a further difference Pearl Harbor is in the middle of an ocean somewhere that most Americans will never see. New York and DC have millions of people who saw the events unfold and were in the firing line. It was also made by people who wanted us dead, and this was a sign that they could make us dead. It was a threat right on our home door as opposed to on our cubicle at work. It doesn't surprise me that a war of some form was inevitable at that point.

 I think our extreme reaction and response to our own emotions was pretty healthy in the long run. It only took a year or two before people were being defensive for people from the middle-east as a general public view. War was growing unpopular very quickly and we rapidly changed our viewpoint on things around us from the initial shock of the attack. Those personally effected and who were there for the event can still mourn for the event, and the memorial pillars of light look pretty kickass.

 I don't remember what age or grade I was in exactly. I was in elementary school and got a half day for some unknown reason. Sixth grader friends made some comment about planes dropping on us and I suspected a solar flare fried flying planes(I was a weird kid). Only when I got home did news stations play what had happened. I had never been to New York, I sorta hated life at the time so I was indifferent to it all. I was slightly sour that the next day of school was not canceled.

[RedKing]

I wasn't commenting on the strength of the emotion about Pearl Harbor so much as the type of emotion on display.  Nobody ever talked about the sacred ground zero of Pearl Harbor and how we shouldn't let Japanese people do anything it AFAIK.  People made songs about Pearl Harbor that were calls to action while people made songs about 9/11 that were about the pain it evoked.

Well, I don't think anyone tried to build a kabuki theater anywhere near Pearl Harbor but I see your point.

Erm...I always feel compelled to point out that Japanese-Americans are the largest single ethnic group in Hawaii, and there are in fact at least two Shinto shrines within a couple of miles of the USS Arizona memorial.

So in fifty years' time, I'm not gonna shit a brick if there's a mosque somewhere in the vicinity and Arabic-speaking cab drivers drop you off at that really good falafel stand right next to the Ground Zero memorial. New York is a pretty damn cosmopolitan city. Most of them got over the xenophobia part quickly. It's the rest of the country that's lagged on that count.

FWIW, I was working that morning when a couple of the internal IT guys came racing into our section (which we called "the bunker" because it was in the interior of the building with no windows and only one door in. But, we had a TV in our tiny little break room. They cut on the TV and I start hearing whistles and murmurs of "Holy shit". About that time, my wife emails me a short message mentioning that a plane hit the World Trade Center and asking me what I knew. I hadn't gotten any info at that point, so I just emailed her that it might be like when that B-25 hit the Empire State Bldg in bad visibility. I didn't know it was a clear day in New York.

About that time the IT guys hauled the TV on a cart out of the break room, and I took a break to go watch it. I saw the footage of the plane hitting...then I noticed there was already a smoking hole in the other tower. That was my "oh shit" moment. It wasn't taped footage, it was live. And it was a second plane. No accident. I can't even describe what I felt at that moment. It was sort of...well, growing up in the tail end of the Cold War, it was sort of the feeling I thought I'd have when the word finally came that the US and the Soviets were in a hot war and nukes could be flying any second. It was just sort of a "Okay, everything you knew is history. Time to reassess the situation and figure out what to do."

My wife and I started emailing each other back and forth pretty rapidly. At the same time I had posted the news on a political forum I was on back then, when I first got word of it. By this point, others were confirming and reporting a third strike, this one on the Pentagon. That was when I really started to worry about the scope of this thing. How big? How many planes? How many targets? Was this just the first wave of something larger?

The weirdest part that I'll always remember is this: we lived in an apartment complex very close to RDU airport. We had near-constant air traffic around. There was always at least one, if not 2 or 3 or 4 aircraft visible in the sky, and the dull rumble of jet engines were ambient noise. It was actually kinda nice, because it was very similar to where I grew up--made it feel more like home. That day, when I got home it was deadly quiet. No airplanes. No noise. And that complete stillness was the most palpable indication that something abnormal had happened that day.

[Itnetlolor]

11th grade A/V class. Watched some of it on the screens, both towers up, 1 on fire, then class, and after class was over (last 5-odd minutes left before the bell) no more towers.

Of course, I've been re-assuring everyone in class that this was another incident that'll blow over and we'll continue on with our lives. Once I saw the blank canvas that was part of the skyline, I was pissed off. Not as much that the towers fell, but that the confidence of everyone that witnessed just as it started and after, turned into a vacuum; there was less confidence throughout the whole place than a hardcore badass alpha bully being confronted and defeated by the resident weakling victim (you know the kind; the ones that even other victims bully on). Was I the only other person in my school that had more than enough faith in our country (and everyone in New York) that despite whatever caused it (which I learned later were planes), those towers would still stand (albeit unstably)? Even the sheer force of our will (again, every witness) would make them stand at least a little longer, the lack of it I felt, pissed me the hell off. Knowing our military, I knew also that the leader of the whole operation will not last long either. We will find them, and they will be executed (and so we did).

Of course, at the time, I was the full-on faithful type which devoted alot into these kinds of faith things. And even throughout the decade afterwards, I was not shaken up by the event once, I wanted the effect of it to stop making everyone lose face in front of conflict and essentially not move on with their life despite it. In a sense, I think my behavior throughout that fateful day sealed the deal with my chances of making any new friends or even getting a date with anyone at that school (in a sense, I was the school's resident heretic from that day forth). Of course, I still moved on.

Oh right, I was born in New York, and I knew what they were capable of. Okay, I was startled a tad when it happened (like reacting to a spider wandering right into my sight out of nowhere), but I didn't let it rule the rest of my life like most people I knew.

EDIT:
I find it nice that we share a common trait of not having this day rule our lives. It means that we still have our heads, even if a few of us have a few screws loose (not that it's a bad thing).

[Strife26]

Maybe it is different for those who live in New York, and had to deal with an empty ground zero.

Oh most certainly.  Just like Katrina was a huge f*ing deal for people from New Orleans.

There is a very very very big difference between an act of God fucking a country up, and the willful, cowardly act of man. You don't think anyone gives a damn about the Spanish flu anymore, do you?

Yes, I know it's not an exact one to one comparison.  A unique event is unique.  But the behavior is startling.  It is an article of faith among the American public that 9/11 not only changed New York but changed America and the entire world together.  People do not attribute the same amount of significance to events that are arguably far more world changing such as the Spanish Flu, Hurricane Katrina or Pearl Harbor.  It is understandable that we might have different sets of emotions over 9/11.  But why do we insist that it is going to be one of the most significant acts of the 20th century?

Because it *is.*

War in Afghanistan and Iraq, a major reorganization of the military away from doctrinal war(and one that's at least partially focused on something that the US military is neither comfortable nor good at doing), an incredible divide in American politics over war weariness, a country that can't safely be isolationist, but isn't willing to be a hyperpower.

Sure, the loss of American life in Katrina was worse, in the end, it's long term effects will be having to rebuild most of New Orleans and panic the next few semi-major hurricanes. Maybe FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers improved. Nothing compared to a war that's stretched the post-drawdown military and totally changed the focus of US diplomacy. 

[mainiac]

The death of Mohamed Bouazizi has already resulted in the overthrow of two nations (Tunisia, Libya) and resulted in major protests in a third (Egypt) as well as pressure being felt across the Arab world.  And that's just in the first 11 years of the decade.  If you think 9/11 is the most significant event of the 21st century, you must think it's gonna be a really, really dull century.  Heck, even the Bush-Gore election was more consequential.  If that had been just slightly different there would have been no Iraq war and the US would be a very different place without the Bush Tax Cuts or Medicare Part D and with some sort of action on global warming.  Given the role that a tiny amount of global warming can have over a hundred year time span, surely that is far more significant.

I mean look at the events in the last century.  Two world wars. The communist revolutions.  The fall of communism.  9/11 looks pretty minor in comparison to those.

[Duke 2.0]

 With the massive changes of the last century I don't doubt that 9/11 will be overshadowed. It is the event that changed the last decade the most though.

[Strife26]

I'm sure that we'll get something more interesting* in the future years, but thus far, it's certainly 9/11. Arab Spring hasn't had nearly enough time for us to conclude what is going to end with.

[Eagleon]

Freshman in highschool, 14 years old. I was home sick I think. My parents came home from work (both government employees in a large government building), and I saw both towers as they fell. I remember my mom crying - she grew up in Brooklyn, and until a few years before that had family there. I was affected, yeah, but not the way other people jumped. I never saw the point in the vengeance, I knew that it was a one-off thing, that the people involved were pretty remote from mounting another attack of that magnitude, and that people in the US were too stubbornly Western to actually buckle and surrender under that kind of fearmongering.

Basically, I knew it was pointless stupidity, that the people causing it didn't realize it, and pretty much instantly forgave their ignorance. It bothered me more that people were supporting a massive conflict we couldn't win in countries we couldn't win over with military strength in a thousand years (same as ours), than any individual bull-headed hate-filled terrorist ever could. I really think Al-Qaeda incited more hatred from 9-11 than they themselves really have of the US.

Honestly, it really bothers me when people make that blanket "defining event" statement about my "age group". Are we really so homogenous that this could possibly be true? I think my experiences in Norway when I was borderline suicidal are a lot more defining, watching the Aurora pass overhead in a silent snowy field, knowing that despite my insignificance, there was still beauty in the world and that it was worth living because of it - then trudging back to the folk highschool and playing ADOM on our old laptop until my brother came home from a class. Hell, I think watching the first Matrix was more pivotal for me, talking about the brain-in-a-vat problem with my oldest brother afterwards.

I remember my parents having a brief phase where they'd attribute all my issues with school to 9/11 - I think that's what this mostly is, retroactive sharpening of our remorse to deal with all the other problems we're having. It's an easy outlet.

[Jacob/Lee]

I will say 9/11 was a terrible event, it makes me sick knowing people can go and commit mass murder like that based on something that technically doesn't exist* and think they will be rewarded. I feel sorry for those affected. Bush, however, didn't seem to think this through. Starting a pointless "war" against terrorism over there and spending so much on it just drove our economy to hell fast. He didn't seem to realize the terrorists don't even have a real army so it isn't as easy as fighting a conventional war. Sure, we finally killed Bin Laden, but what did that get us? Nothing, nothing at all.

[RedKing]

Saying it's not going to be that significant because it's still early in the century isn't really that sensical. Powered flight was invented in 1903, yet I'd say it was one of the most significant inventions of the 20th century. Hell of a different century without it.

When all's said and done in 2100 (and it's a foregone conclusion that I won't live to make this assessment), it may not be the single most significant event in the 21st century. But I think people will agree that it'd have been a hell of a different century without it.

[sonerohi]

I was getting a skull surgery done at the time. Saw it on the news in the waiting room, but I was little so I thought it was just some weird TV show. When I got out I was still under the druggy stuff they gave me, and I kept asking my mom to put the show on the TV and couldn't understand why she was upset. I also remember that was the only time my dad ever came home early from his old job.

[Bauglir]

Strife and Jacob/Lee, what are those asterisks for?

Myself, I was in 7th grade, and I remember us all getting dragged out into the cafeteria to watch on the only TV in the place large enough to be seen by a significant number of people. At the time, the most important part of the event was that it meant class was cancelled and we'd therefore have to work extra-hard to catch up later in the week. It's really only defined my life to the extent that everybody keeps talking about it, and through the wars that arguably resulted. That's not to say I don't understand that it's caused tremendous pain to people who were in New York and/or lost loved ones. I just don't have the emotional response to it that so many people seem to. I wish it were practical for every tragedy to get this attention; the only way I think this event gets overexposed is in comparison to some others.

I do think, however, that people that took it as a personal injury solely because of patriotism or symbolism are being rather self-centered about it, and maybe even a little insulting to those who lost important people in their lives. It's not "America's" pain that I think was the tragedy there, but the lives that were lost on the insane whim of a few people.

[Jacob/Lee]

My * means one could argue that it is proven a god exists, I just took it from a science standpoint and said it "technically" doesn't exist.