"Everything changed on 9/11".............not.

[annabanana]

Well, maybe 3 things:

1)The republicans saw an opportunity and they TOOK it.
2)The shredding of the Constitution began.
3)Kids are now allowed to take cell phones to school.

[DenverDem]

1. 4) Anyone disagreeing with publicans became terrorists

Up became down, right became wrong, assininity became patriotism et al ad nauseum,

[annabanana]

3. exactly......but these things changed because of the administration's

RESPONSE to 9/11. The attacks in September were just a continuation (on a MUCH larger scale, of course) of the kind of attacks that AlQaida had been involved with earlier. That is was so big, and on American soil, and went on long enough for EVERYONE to watch it is incidental to what was, to the enemy, more of the same.

[DenverDem]

9. Except for the fact that we don't really know WHO al CIAda is

and exactly WHO ran the 9/11 operation.

History will show that it was an inside MIHOP op and was merely a part of the neo-con masterplan.

[Philostopher]

2. The only people for whom 'everything changed' on 9/11 ...

were people who were living in some freakish fantasy world wherein the only places political violence reached private citizens were the border in Israel, the Middle East, and Ireland/England -- in other words, people who lived by the mantra, 'it can't happen here.'

They were people who were living with their heads up their rectums, who didn't see the OK City bombing as a terrorist 'event' and continued to plug their ears, sing 'la-la-la I'm not listening!' and never contemplate what could happen because of the discrepancies in the concentrations of power and money in the world.

For some people who were voluntarily living in a bubble, the Trade Center attack probably did change everything -- it burst their bubble.

I grew up with the threat of Russia lobbing a nuclear missile at the U.S. -- I never had the luxury of believing 'it can't happen here' because that's the whole reason Reagan and his cronies gave for us all living in fear for a couple of decades there.

Anybody who slipped into denial over it probably needed to have their bubble burst. Violence happens, especially when there are great concentrations of wealth and power and the poorest are ground up in the machinery. Whether on a local, regional, national or international scale, it's going to happen.

[TahitiNut]

10. Cowardice thrives in that bubble.

There is no courage without a sense of vulnerability. Those who delude themselves they're 'safe' often do so to avoid dealing their own cowardice. Cowards typically react in gangs - lynch mobs, bullying, victimization, and scapegoating.

"Land of the free and home of the brave" is an empty, obscene joke.

[Philostopher]

12. Absolutely.

Moral as well as physical cowardice -- I think of it as a sort of cultural Stockholm Syndrome. 'Please Sir -- may I have some more?'

I think they prefer not being asked to think about anything. A certain subsector of our American population has not only allowed itself to be but chosen to be infantilized. They plug their ears, or suck their thumbs, and ask for a nice story -- like the one about how if we go over and start killing people in Iraq, there won't be any more terrorist strikes on the U.S. That and a glass of warm milk, it's all they want to deal with.

I don't know how you wake these people up, especially when so many in leadership positions like it that way. Anybody who wonders why 25% of the population would vote for Bush* when we know better has already answered their own question -- plenty of people are not only willing to be lied to, they are happy to pay to be lied to and to go out of their way to make sure they're lied to.

I'm a little concerned at what happens when all the sleeping giants in our society wake up. None of them, however craven their fear is, can sleep forever -- eventually, something will hit home.

[TahitiNut]

13. Yup. Children addicted to Disneyland.

Peter Pan politics - "I'll never grow up!" The worship of the child and the demonization of wisdom. (Wisdom can only be gained through the loss of innocence/naivete.)

We're living in an age of "The Lord of The Flies."

[noonwitch]

4. Kids are allowed to take cell phones to school-LOL

In the 90s, a teenager who brought a cell phone to school was generally disciplined for it. It was something teachers looked for as part of the zero tolerance of drugs-it was assumed the kid had the phone for illicit purposes.

I would assume that the kids are expected to turn the phones off during class?

[annabanana]

7. they put them on "vibrate" while in class

The fundies can make of that what they will
lol

[TahitiNut]

14. Over-indulged children. Free lunches.

Self-indulgence is now the preeminent theme of Amerika. Religion has returned to the days of indulgences.

[ProfessorGAC]

5. Another One

#4) Dimwits who weren't paying attention now know just how much some people hate America.

Of course, i already knew that, so nothing changed for me. But, i'm no dimwit.
The Professor

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. American reaction to 9/11 is very narcissistic

We're like a self-centered, spoiled person who disregards other people's misfortunes and then turns his or her own stubbed toe into a dramatic scene.

While nearly 3,000 people (not all of them Americans, by the way) were killed on 9/11, the infrastructures of New York and Washington were affected in only minor ways.

Imagine being on the receiving end of a World War II bombing: not only thousands or tens of thousands of your fellow citizens dead, but many more lost everything they owned. I just looked up the German bombing of Rotterdam, Netherlands, and while "only" 900 people were killed, 78,000 were made homeless.

Imagine camping out in the rubble of your former home in midwinter, with only the clothes you were wearing when the bombs struck. Millions of people in Europe and Japan experienced this in 1945.

Or think of the floods in China a couple of years ago. Ten million people--that's ten million--lost their homes. We shrugged.

Or how about Haiti, its people already on the brink of starvation and living in tin shacks, undergoing a military coup, and now, this year, being blasted by a hurricane.

Nothing in U.S. history is even close to this scale of suffering.

We're such big babies.

[CBHagman]

8. Very true, Lydia L.

I often want to ask Americans how they would feel if the men in their towns were rounded up and executed. That's what happened in the Balkans, and yet that fact doesn't seem to have penetrated the skulls of many of the people who write to the newspaper or call C-SPAN.

How would they feel if ALL the people in their towns were lined up for execution, children included? That's what happened in El Mozote in El Salvador, but I almost never hear mention of that fact, just Dick Cheney's recycled Reagan-era rhetoric about "terrorists" trying to stop the voting.

How would they feel if people were slaughtered right in a church or a school? That's what happened in Rwanda, and yet some so-called Christians in this country whine about how persecuted they are. Persecuted? Do these people even have a clue?

That said, I take what happened on 9/11 very seriously and have never stopped grieving. I probably never will.

The worst of it, though, is how cynically politicians and other U.S. citizens have used 9/11 to justify anything and everything, and to indulge in the biggest U.S. pity wallow of all time. Some idiot wrote to a women's magazine recently and tried to justify the goings-on at the Abu Ghraib prison in light of 9/11. It was sickening.

And one more thing: Pollster Frank Luntz apparently came up with the mantra "September 9/11 changed everything, and it's better to fight the terrorists in Baghdad than in New York or Washington." Uh, since when was the attack of 9/11 coordinated in Baghdad? How does the participation of 15 Saudis plus a handful of others (an Egyptian et al) in 9/11 justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq?

It's a combination of naivete and cynical exploitation that could be the downfall of this country.

[EstimatedProphet]

15. There's a reason that the mantra worked

Underlying in the statements about Islam and the middle east there is a subtext of racism. There's an unspoken statement that 9/11 happened because all Arabs are evil and uncivilized subhuman monsters, and solve all their problems by trying to blow things up (Of course, these statements aren't really true of any group but Freepers...), so it's OK to be racist and hate them all. And if there's one thing that really gets a Freeper hard, it's being allowed to be a racist.
That's why it was and still is OK with so many people that we attacked Iraq, even though there were so many people saying that Iraq had nothing to do with it: to these people, it's all the middle east, and they're all cameljockeys and ragheads.

[leftofthedial]

11. everything changed on December 12, 2000

the official date of the coup.

[kath]

16. You beat me to it, Lefty -- DECEMBER 12 , 2000 is the day that

everything changed. Truly a day that will live in infamy.