I would like to know what it was like to live in a pre-9/11 world...

At every anniversary, I always think the same thing. I was barely old enough to understand what was going on that day. Almost all of my teenage years were spent at war under the Bush regime.

No matter how hard I try, I can barely remember a time when we weren't involved in some sort of conflict.

It would be nice if I could some day experience a somewhat peaceful US. I just want to be able look at the news and not have to read about US casualties or suicide bombers.

Maybe it's always been like this and I'm just too young to know any better. It just feels like something's out of place.

and always wondered the same thing.

Of course, it was a *lot* more personal for me then, being of draft age and having lost my brother already.

I hope your twenties and thirties (and the rest of your years) are not filled with news reports of war and casualties.

But I fear it won't be.

We seem to get into a war somewhere every 20 years or so, only recently these wars became occupations that last seemingly forever.

but I remember my mom telling me that if the Vietnam War was still going when I turned 18, she'd send me off to Canada. But that fear subsided in early 1973 when the last of the US troops came home from Vietnam. After that, people turned their attention to inflation and the gas crises, and Nixon's troubles, and debates about Ford's legitimacy, and the Carter years and the hostage crisis and still more inflation. And then Ronald Reagan, the Great Snake Oil Salesman, came along and got us moving fast along the wrong track.

insane. We have become more and more accepting of being ruled over and the people coming into power now have never experienced anything else.

9/11 was a milestone to be sure, but we were already well down this path before.

vaguely, but I remember them nonetheless, I was very young and they are some of my earliest memories. The 90's were good for the most part for me, good not great. I was a kid without a care in the world, then Bush came into office and my dad lost his job shortly there after then things started going downhill. I'm also curious as to what it was like to live in a pre-9/11 world from people who were old enough to understand most things going on at the time.

and the 1st Gulf War up to 2000 though we had long ago went down the rabbit hole it didn't feel so game over until 9/11 opened the door for pretty much full on fascism and a dying economy.

We have actually been at war since 1950, coincidentally enough, the year I was born.

I honestly can't think of a five year period in my entire life when the US has not been engaged in military hostilities somewhere in the world.

And then of course we have the drug war, which is going on seventy years now and showing no sign of slacking off in the US at least.

I'm jealous! Enjoy your youth, it only comes once. :party:

Interesting topic, this. As for me, I grew up in the "duck and cover" late 70's early 80's and I pretty much figured I'd be vaporized in a nuclear blast before I reached adulthood. Compared to that, the terrorists aren't all that scary at all (fuck you, Condoleeza and your bullshit about them being "just as dangerous"). Of course, now it's more of a "wrong place at the wrong time" kinda vibe, but hey you could get sucked up into a tornado too, shit happens.

So yeah, same shit different enemy really. It's all very Orwellian, read 1984 and prepare to be amazed.

I agree with TheKentuckian though, there was a period in the 90's where it really felt like things were going in the right direction (although even then there were still wars going on, they just seemed very far removed from "the real world" and not as threatening somehow), but 9/11 went and blew that all to hell.

I can remember 1962 and Cuban Missile Crisis.

I was 8 years old at the time.

We were to go home and stay there, yes we were scared.

Then President Kennedy was killed, all this by the time I was 10 years old.


There was never any peace.

The events of 9/11 only brought the violence and uncertainty most of the rest of the world experienced to the continental US, long considered some sort of magical fortress safe from attack. It was a shock to the American collective psyche which witnessed the spetacle of the most technologically advanced military and security system brought to its knees by a ragtag group with box cutters as weapons. But the rest of the world knew already how easy it is to disrupt society. We were late to the party. It simply was our turn. The world was still the same, full of violent and petty men who refuse to stop killing and seeking revenge for the deaths they cause.

have not done so well by those your age. :(

for me, 911 occurred less than 2 months after my life was hacked into two parts by the death of my daughter. but it is a digression and an indulgence to bring that up.

what i recall is that until 911 - or the gwbush presidency - i actually believed that i lived in the best nation on the face of the earth. that i had a government of, for, and by the people. i despised all the republicans but until gw came along, i felt secure that with our system of government, this was indeed the home of the free and the land of the brave. i have since believed and felt very strongly that we teeter on a slippery slope of powerful fascism that would like nothing better than to see the vast majority of americans and indeed all humans living as slaves to the elite. corporatism, the MIC, patriot act, WAR, WAR, WAR.

not just any wars, wars without reason or justification. wars invented and designed for the sole purpose of making the rich, richer and the poor, poorer.

i used to actually get choked up when i voted, or when i heard the star spangled banner. it doesn't really work that way anymore. but i learned something - belatedly, i have to admit - during the obama campaign. and that it is up to me to stay engaged to as great an extent as i possibly can, to be active, to keep communicating with the powers that be.

because if this democracy is ultimately saved (i hope and believe that it can be and will be), it will only be because the people insist upon it. and the fact is that that has always been the case. the threats that Eisenhower mentioned so long ago were all along busily chipping away to their own ends and against the greater ends of the public good, and peace. when 911 happened they jumped on that in a big big way to step up their game and speed up the destruction of a free society. i went from LIHOP to MIHOP with regard to my beliefs about what happened 8 years ago today, but regardless of who was behind the attacks, the bush admin USED them to further a very nefarious agenda, and they were very successful for quite a long time.

big messes to clean up. wars to be ended, rights to be restored, justice to be served. i'll be staying awake from here on out and trying my best to wield whatever power i do possess as a citizen of the USA, and hope you'll do the same. it does get very discouraging, and i feel a pull to apathy all the time. i just don't want to give in to it and watch something even remotely like the gwbush years happen again. please not in this lifetime.

sorry, kid.

conflict is not new. it has been a world-wide experience since they started recording history. it didn't begin with 9/11.

ask a native american. ask a person of color. ask a jew.

i'm sure your "experience" in school has been enlightening. but read your history. it goes way back, and is more frightening than you can ever imagine...

But this is just my account. A good way to find your answer would be to go to libraries, archives, and online newspapers - and search for articles written before september 2001. It takes some time, but it may well be worth the effort: you'll soon find out what were considered hot topics before anything not related to the Middle-East was relegated to second position.

You will come to find a world in which terrorism was not the "mot du jour", where differences were not softened because of some strategic alliance. (That, at least, is one thing I find so strikingly different.)

For instance: the coup that ousted democratically elected Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sherif was considered a "serious threat" to the region, with various European nations discussing whether or not to severe ties with the new dictator, Musharraf. This tells you two things: severing ties was the worst threat imagineable - not invasions - and Musharraf was significantly secured in power when Bush needed his support to invade Afghanistan. Of course, that last thing didn't quite work out, as Bush was redirecting resources to Iraq before the job in Afghanistan was done.

As a side note: there actually was a time when Bush was so popular that the Dutch prime minister was chastised in parliament for saying: "I hope the Americans will respond to 9/11 in a worthy and self-restrained way." - "Of course they will", snarled the leader of the Liberal Party in the Netherlands: "What was the prime minister thinking?"

Before 9/11, the biggest topics of conversation in Europe were railway projects, the expansion of the European Union, and the introduction of the Euro - absent one European Currency, the Dollar was less challenged than today. European leaders were still very much resolved in unity. Rumsfeld had not as yet made his "Old Europe and New Europe" remarks, which split up the European Union and which to this day furnish lots of anti-American feelings in (especially the west of) Europe. (They are still there, but lulled by Mr Obama's performance.)

We lived in a world where Fukoyama could still pronounce "the end of ideology" - liberal capitaism had "won". This was the world in which Tchechia was still led by former anti-communist dissident Vavlac Havel (a poet), and where everyone wondered how Poland could possibly prefer a former communist to president (and former dissident) Lech Walesa. In Bulgaria, former dictator Zhivkov was plotting a democratic return to power, while in Istanbul a female president challenged Greece over three uninhabited islands.

Putin was only the seventh prime-minister in four years, and expected to be put aside by Yelstin like all his predecessors. Russia was a "tamed bear". See if you can find footage of the late President Yeltsin and president Clinton holding a press conference. A journalist asks about the economic trouble of Russia (today's trouble is worse, but somehow it doesn't make the news anymore).
Yeltsin was drunk that day - really drunk. All he could stammer was: "Russia... has... lots of... problems... with... its economy." Clinton burst into laughter, Yelstin almost fell over while sniggering - this made the news for 24 hours - more in some parts of the world.

There was a certain innocence about that world. It was still unthinkable for heads of state to divorce (like Putin and Sarkozy have done) or to have open affairs (Berlusconi). It was also still unthinkable for heads of state to be female. Imagine a world with no Tarja Halloonen (Finland), no Michelle Bachelet (Chile), no Ellen Johnson-Serleaf (Liberia was still in a civil war), no Cristina Kirchner (Argentina). When former Sri-Lankan president Bandarserinaike died, it made the headlines she had donated her eyes to be transplanted to help someone blind. And we were reminded that a female president was extremely rare.

Native-American heads of state in South-America? No way. Alberto Fujimori, the Japanese presiding over Peru, was better known than Hugo Chávez. In Brazil, homeless children were butchered - and the world still frowned about it. Also in Brazil, former Suriname dictator and narcotic felon Dési Bouterse could move about freely, since rendition was a rarity.

It was a world with a few more dictatorships on the way of disappearing. With no more cold war to justify their existence, military regimes felt forced to re-introduce democracy - and not as the platitude Bush made it sound like. Imagine a world in which Indonesian dictator Sukarno, who commanded a nation of 180 million, felt forced to leave his post - and compare in to a world where even the Kyrgyzian head of state feels emboldened enough to overturn an election, citing "terrorism".

AIDS still made the front pages. And the entire world agreed that, since we were lucky to have survived the Millennnium Bug, the recently discovered Ebola virus was the only thing left to change our world forever.

He doesn't know a world without extremists, political or religious. He doesn't know the world I grew up in, where my best friend and I would hitch-hike and the folks picking us up were cops or firefighters who would lecture us on the dangers of hitching, but still make sure we got to where we had to go.

He watches Woodstock and asks WHY people aren't like *that* anymore. And I cannot honestly answer the question because I don't honestly know, either.

Something IS out of place - we've lost our caring heart in this country. We've lost our soul. We've been bludgeoned into a zombie state -- existing only to buy heavily marketed crap, or fight in corporate sponsored wars.

When I grew up in the 60's we had hope even after JFK was killed and the Warren commission lied about a lone shooter. LBJ helped with welfare and getting Blacks the freedoms that they were cheated out of during Jim Crow. Then we got Nixon and things got ugly in Veitnam. After Watergate I remember things seemed to be on the upswing peacewise but then Carter lost to Reagan who helped destroy the unions and suppported the wealthy and funded clandestine small wars all over the globe. I dont know if we will ever recover after Bush and the corporate sell-out of this country to China. Now we have no privacy, a patriot act that goes against the Constitution and cameras everywere you go. I feel less safe with all these new changes then I did about nuclear war, so what does that say? I am glad I am not young anymore becuase "1984" really did come true.

You know how, when things are very quiet for awhile here at DU, people start fighting and arguing on DU over the most asinine, trivial bullshit? Like getting offended over archaic words, or getting huffy and incensed about POSSIBLE insult to some professional group in a McDonalds ad, if you interpret it sideways on Tuesday while it's raining?

Yes, there's a lot of that here now, too...people squabbling over nonsense and getting distracted by shiny objects. But in at least a large percentage here, people spend a lot of time getting incensed and REALLY CARING about things that genuinely matter. Loss of civil liberties, poverty, cruelty, war....

At certain times during periods of quiet, econonic stability, and relative peace, things get just a little inane and narcissistic and self-absorbed. Picture a society in which Seinfeld gets to be the big hit on TV....a show about nothing, and we had no trouble filling our days with navel-gazing and endless bitching about nothing.

I am not saying it was all like that. Of course there were big issues then too, and I am oversimplifying. But I do remember that, after 9/11, I looked around and realized that a lot of the things I had been bitching about in my mind were really unimportant. I stopped and hugged the people I loved. And I became more politically involved in the important issues and involved in my community.

I would NEVER say that 9/11 was good for us. I am just saying that sometimes tragedy can refocus a nation and a people for a little while, and put the more important things on the front burner agaion. We had the debacle of GWB. Now we have Obama. I have a hard time imagining that we would have elected our first black President without the chain of events that brought us here. I think people, in at least some sense and some quarters, woke up a little bit to what is important; we made progress that none of us could have imagined 20 years ago, and achieved this milestone faster than any of us could have imagined.

The Republicans had spent the entire Clinton presidency screaming bloody murder over every little thing he did. During his first term, they sowed hate against the entire federal government, until they got some guys to blow up a building in Oklahoma City, then they changed tactics and went after Bill personally.

They tried to impeach him over a blowjob. The party of Christian family values made sure all the kids in grade school at the time knew about blowjobs and clitoral stimulation with cigars.

All this time Iraq was kept on simmer with brutal sanctions and occasional airstrikes. The end of the cold war threw the weapons industry into a panic, and they were desperate for a new war. It was only a matter of time.

war is the way of the world

9/11 is an irrelevance, a distraction, a chimera.

It's much like the Soviet Union insisting up until the time it collapsed that all its economic problems were a lingering effect of World War II.

Since the recession of 2000-01 and the no-growth "recovery" that followed, most Americans have been in increasingly dire economic straits. That is our real problem. That is why things feel "different" now than they did in the relatively optimistic 90's.

America is not under siege from without. America is not threatened by faceless menaces from abroad. America is dying slowly at the hands of its own corporate and financial leaders -- but that is precisely what they and their compliant media enablers don't want you to realize.

Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, we will probably all go to our graves still insisting that 9/11 was when "everything changed" and that none of it can be blamed on the massive failure of our society to provide for the needs of its own people.

That's part of it. Now you wanna talk?

...and I can truly say that the 50s and 60s were great for the most part. However:

I was pretty much a Soc...until VN came home to me. My first crush/love in HS was killed in VN ~~ April 16, 1967. He was awarded the Metal of Honor for his heroism which caused his death. My world changed and it has never been the same. My moment of political wakening. Yeah, I had always been interested in politics ~~ but not like this. I never looked back. I still think about this person today. If he had lived, last March he would have been 63 years old. He died at age 21 years in an immoral bullshit war ~~ which made people rich.

So...yeah, 911 changed your world and I fully understand because Vietnman changed my world, too.

:hug:

for SOME group, country, person, etc.

We "choose" to celebrate commemorate the horrific event(s) that happened on any given date.

pre-9/11 or post-9/11, we have been "at war" with someone.. always.. somewhere.

Our foreign policy seems to dictate that anyone who does not LIKE us, and who does not AGREE with us, must be "defeated"..militarily, financially, politically.

It's pretty much always been that way.

Wars are like love affairs.. some are BIG and HOT,
(WWII)

some are wishywashy and lingering, but without a lot of effort, even though there are many lives lost
(Viet Nam & Korea)

and some are downright cold-hearted, one-sided, and stalkeresque..(the ones where we relentlessly pick on small countries & destroy them from within
(pick any Central/South American country)

The artificial "peace" we had after WWII was only because the public looked away for a while as they bought up "stuff" they had been deprived of during the depression & war. While they were momentarily distracted, oour government was hard-at-work on the next & perpetual Cold War, which would eventually strip that complacent populace of their future monetary security, because of the need for so damned much money to buy cold-war-toys.
We are living with that legacy now...:(

It's easier to sit back and let the world come to you, then go out to find out what is going on in the world. If you wanted anything done, you'd have to expand more effort than a few clicks on a keyboard and mouse.
It's like we're just waiting for the next high energy event to turn us on, and when we aren't actually doing something "productive" - or rather - reactive, we just sit and vegetate.
Everything's getting quicker and more "X-treme!" - rush, rush, rush - no time to actually take time and "muse", to take a leisurely pace, to work towards a goal, to analyze, to anticipate.
Even leisure time - it's not leisure, it's "We only have 12 hours scheduled for this - we've get there, do this, have fun, then go back". Time off has become a project - it's like - "Operation Honey Do", "Operation Kid Time", "Operation Shop", "Operation Three Day Weekend Camping Trip".

And that's the primary difference in public attitude I've seen develop over the years. Time is a commodity, stress is considered normal, and people are being encouraged to sit back and wait for the next thing to come screaming around the corner at them...
True, there was never really any such thing as an "Andy Griffith" or "Father Knows Best" type of life. TV, magazines, and other popular culture media has lied to now well over four generations on that sort of easy going, stress free lifestyle - but that's just one part of the change. The major part of the change is the passive, simplistic attitude that is encouraged by an increasingly monopolistic leadership structure that is also getting more rigid and less nuanced as time goes on. If you become part of "the team", awaiting your marching orders and your next game plan, you are supposed to be safe. We're turning more and more into drones.

Y'know, I really am beginning to believe that those who already have money and power have realized that it's the United States that is hampering "freedom" - If everyone is encouraged to leave the United States to create their own personal America - it will become so much more profitable to those with the means to "feed" those individual realities. And those who can't afford "America" will just have to suck it in the real world, which has been gleaned of anything of value or comfort that could be packaged up and sold to the highest bidder.

We've become consumers, not Citizens. We're giving up the United States for our own private America, and that's why you keep hearing all those tea-baggers crying "We want our country back" - they want "their" fantasy back, 'cause, damn it - they paid lots of perfectly good brain cells for the privilege of living in "Leave-it-to-Beaver-Land".

Haele

i'm an old fart and the usa has always been at war, it was ever thus, whether it was the so-called "cold war" where it was mostly people in latin america being slaughtered while we were warned to learn how to hide under a desk (duck and cover) because we could all be wiped out by nuclear bombs with a mere 15 minutes warning or the vietnam war or more undeclared war on any latin american nation around under reagan or bosnia in the 90s or so on and so forth...there was always war, always will be war, as long as we insist on being the world's police officer

no one in the 1950s/1960s/1970s felt safe, not with the constant threat of nuclear annihilation being held over our heads, people didn't spend all their time getting high and fucking because they thought they would live forever but because we figured we had no future so it would be stupid to be a nice working stiff raising a nice family just to see it all get blown to blooey

the world is as it always has been, as the saying goes in kenya, when elephants contend the grass gets trampled

the usa was born in conflict and has always been involved in conflict and i don't see this changing anytime soon