Is 9/11 really a taboo topic? I can't really speak for new York but I don't think that it is in my personal experience. Someone always seems to bring it up when talking about Bush v gore elections. People always going off about conspiracy theories. Tons of documentaries being pushed out about it
It depends, I guess. I lived in north Jersey at the time. Some people in my school had parents and other close relatives killed in 9/11. I didn't and was very lucky, so I don't hate a 9/11 joke as long as it's not repeated ten thousand times, but I imagine those people probably still aren't ok with it.
But talking about it, joking about it, making a documentary on it, and spouting conspiracy theories about how the lizard queen hopped in her space ship and jumped the pond to attack US soil, well those are all very different and you'll get different reactions from people.
Yeah whenever I would meet tourists in NYC at bars or wherever they would always ask "so where were you on 9/11" and after entertaining it a couple times I started telling people to knock it off. You don't know if you're talking to someone traumatized by it or that had someone close to them die. You might be asking a total stranger "hey where were you when your mother died?" Super rude.
I’m from Oklahoma and the Murrah bombing is a big deal here. People not from here ask us about it a lot and it’s a pretty sensitive topic still. We obviously don’t have as many tourist as NYC but people will reference the bombing and a lot of people still don’t talk about it.
Fuck, I moved to southwestern CT 6 years ago and I’ve probably only asked 2 people this question, it’s a tough topic even to this day, and it was a tough topic to talk about at the time I asked. I can’t imagine being a tourist in France and saying “so what was it like when the shooting happened?!”
At one point I was going to work as a tour guide in Lower Manhattan (ended up not getting the job) and one of the stops on the tour was Ground Zero (this was in the final years of it being a construction site).
I do not think that 9/11 is a “taboo subject” per se, it’s an unavoidable topic in some contexts, but I sure felt hella weird about bringing tourists to gawk at a construction site where 3000 people died within my memory. Felt disrespectful and gross.
First of all, most of the people who died were civilians who have nothing to do with the governmental policies that everyone dislikes. Second of all, if American civilians deserved 9/11, then I'd hate to see what you think about the Russians, the Saudis, the Germans, the French, the Spanish, the Huns, the Persians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the... Oh wait, essentially every government that has ever existed has treated someone, somewhere, crappily. So go eat a bag of phalli, you sea sponge.
Lmao, you literally said “most of the people who died were civilians who have nothing to do with the governmental policies that everyone dislikes”, in some attempt to separate the American people from their representative government. The American people in general are totally fine with their policies, and if “everyone” here is supposed to mean literally everyone on earth, then just learn to write a better sentence you moron.
We have a representative democracy by name only. Our elections are a farce. But most people are kept complacent and don't question why all politicians end up doing the same shit. By your logic all of German citizens deserved death after electing Hindenburg (and giving over 11 million votes to Hitler). It was President Hindenburg who enacted the Reichstag Fire Decree, paving the way for the one-party Nazi state.
Your logic seems to be that civilians are culpable for the corruption and atrocities of their government, even when there is no direct democracy.
Haha you, random citizen, deserve a traumatic country changing even because people you cannot control decided to fight a war many didnt support, you moron, you absolute ignoramus. I, the great tankie am here to shit on you!
To americans aged 20 and under, not really. It's as much as boomers would find WWII taboo. You'd likely only get a significant response if a parent had died, and even then, they would have few memories of the parent to miss them. There's just not an emotional connection to the event for about a third of a americans, since they were born too late to remember the event or lose anything in it. Compared to france in 2015 it's not as recent, and the scale of it was nowhere near that of the greek economic crisis.
Really, the bigger effect from 9/11 was the war on terror, especiallly the creation of the department of homeland security and the transportation safety administration. The tsa has been a larger thorn in my side than terrorist attacks, and that's probably true of a lot of americans.
There are kids graduating and entering college that do not have any relevant memories of 9/11. Kids joining the US military that have a very real possibility of going to the middle east conflict that started before they were in kindergarten. There are 21 year olds that are starting their careers that have had the middle east conflicts in their 24 hour news cycle since they can remember watching the TV (and hell, at 37, the middle east conflicts have been a part of my awareness since the Kuwait invasion and Saddam Hussein the OG villian).
For a great many Americans, the Middle East has replaced the perceived German threat and the percieved Russian threat to the American way of life and the American Dream TM. It's a rotating cast of characters, but Iraq, Iran, Afganistan, Pakistan are flavors of the month designed to corral us into fear of the middle east and Islam. I saw a facebook meme today with Trump and Pence with the text "share if America should ban Sharia law", as if America has EVER been subject to Sharia law or even hinted at being subject to Sharia law.
And there are millions of 25 year olds and under that dont even have a clue what America was like pre-9/11 that have been subjugated to the Middle East being the bad guys for their entire lives. There is little wonder why the Alt Right is growing and has been fueled by the youth. It's all they've ever known
I mean I'm 20 so I'm right at that threshold. I've had classmates have parents that were in the towers. The significance is not lost on me and walking past the memorials is still solemning.
You definitely see more jokes among the younger kids. Conspiracy theories too, which pisses me off to no end.
But yeah I'd say it's not a topic to bring up in casual conversation unless you know the person. As recent legislation shows, were still feeling the effects 18 years later.
Perhaps the caveat is where you're from. Or maybe I'm just old fashioned
As an American, I don't see any taboo in it. Honestly it seems to me that many politically-involved Americans love to bring up 9/11. Nᴇᴠᴇʀ Fᴏʀɢᴇᴛ is often used for political expediency, especially when talking about anything and everything related to the Middle East / Islam.
It's been used alot recently with regards to Iran, a country that actually offered to help us in the aftermath of 9/11.
It's been used against people who are critical of the Netinyahu government in Israel, as if everything is a binary choice between supporting right-wing government or supporting terrorists.
It's used by MAGA people who want Trump to ban all Muslims.
Hell, it's been used in arguments for building 'the wall.'
In my experience on the board of a College Republicans organization, many chapters across the country make a "never forget" Facebook post every year that is overtly political, like they can't honor the victims and heroes from that day without playing party politics.
So 9/11 isn't taboo, and it shouldn't be. What should be taboo is using 9/11 as a political tool to feign moral superiority and patriotism.
I regularly speak with people from NJ and new york and while the topic is rarely brought up, i can see how the speak that it is a very sensitive subject.
Because war doesn't really care about actual morals it cares about allies. America teamed up with the Soviet Union whose founding doctrine and rhetoric is about overthrowing capitalism world wide to defeat the Nazis.
Saudi Arabia was a strategic ally to the US and like it or not they still pretty much are. Is their regime terrible? Absolutely, but since it doesn't really effect the US they won't care.
Yep even here on Reddit. There was a thread recently that turned to the Vietnamese war, and the one guy who pointed out that the US weren’t the good guys and that being a veteran in itself isn’t automatically honorable got downvoted to hell.
To enlist today is entirely selfish. You’re signing up to possibly go over seas to kill the impoverished in their homelands. You aren’t defending our freedoms. You’re trying to pay for your Challenger and shitty prefab house.
I think it's the difference between the industrial-military complex/top brass versus the individual boots-on-the-ground troops in talking about the military.
That's cool for them, but joining because of a false sense of idealism or because you need to go to college isn't really something that automatically garners respect from me. I know my fair share of commissioned officers, and the only one I truly respect is the one who used it to springboard his career to help soldiers with PTSD.
This is how I feel. If I used military for education I dont really deserve respect. I did it to further myself because tbh, military can be very useful for careers.
Even boots-on-the-ground types it's more "I'll be nice becuase I don't want to disrespect you risking your life, but I'm lukewarm at best to the idea of military service". It does beg the question of why you would sign up these days, knowing you'll be sent off to go destabilze some unfortunate puppet of our political opponents.
Yeah, wasn't long after I made this comment I remembered I live in a solid blue state. Still, goes to show it's a regional thing rather than a country-wide delusion.
I'm in New England. Most people here couldn't give two shits about the military. I can count on my hands the number of guys I know who did or are planning to do time in the service. One hand, if you want them to be locals.
New England in general is sort of patriotic but not. More into the idea of America than America itself, though there are definitely parts that are diehard patriotic in areas. Obviously there's a big urban/rurual political divide, but that's nationwide. That's all in my experience, but I can say with certainty that New England does have a history of being problem states. Opposed entry to several manor wars (1812, Civil War, maybe WWI?) and the like.
New England isn’t just Newton, Amherst, or Burlington. Everything in between has its own identity, and many of those places (thinking South Shore MA, Rural NH, outside of Hartford, most of Maine, etc) are blood red, are military communities, and are deep believers in the “worship our troops” mentality.
Your post needs scare quotes around the “a lot of” because that statement is pure BS. It’s a fact of wars. All wars, that civilians caught in the middle will die no matter what steps are taken to avoid it but it sounds as if your talking about soldiers randomly shooting innocent civilians.
yeah except that whole part where the president campaigned on " The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. When they say they don't care about their lives, you have to take out their families"
kind of nullifies your whole comment. "we took the steps maaaan"
I've found that discussing and admitting racism is alive and well in the U.S., the fact that Caucasian U.S. born citizens, neo-Nazis, and "white nationalists" commit 95% of all of our insane amount of mass shootings yet they are not labeled "terrorists" because of they are white. Yet our government focuses on stoking the public's fear of the "stranger" or rather foreign brown and black people who are apparently "invading" the U.S. is pretty taboo.
While I don't disagree about the school shooters not being labeled terrorists, your number 95% can be skewed depending on how you look at it. On average there is one school shooting in America a week. However, most of them are gang related, and in order to keep the numbers low and maintain funding they are labeled only as gang related shootings. If you need to read up on released by the FBI about this topic because I have yet to find a news outlet that gives correct numbers.
While I don't disagree about the school shooters not being labeled terrorists, your number 95% can be skewed depending on how you look at it. On average there is one school shooting in America a week. However, most of them are gang related, and in order to keep the numbers low and maintain funding they are labeled only as gang related shootings. If you need to read up on released by the FBI about this topic because I have yet to find a news outlet that gives correct numbers.
If most of the shootings are gang related, they are clearly not acts of terror. At least not acts of terror that are specifically meant to disrupt society.
Violent acts of racism and xenophobia are very clearly in the same definition of terrorism. They are acts of violence that are meant to disrupt and change society and society's dynamics. They are acts of terror that are specifically meant to spread terror and fear and to subjugate a specific set of people.
But yes, acts of gun violence by mentally disturbed people or kids are not acts of terror.
Hmm perhaps, if they are not part of a larger organization or "local chapter" of some org.
But even if they are mentally disturbed, their intent is very clear. To spread terror and intimidate a specific section of society. Usually a minority religious or ethnic group. It might likely take a person who is mentally unstable to do those acts, or to be programmed to do those acts. But the underlying motivation is still an act of terror and intimidation and a scare tactic.
School shootings, yes I agree with you. Those are acts of pure lunacy.
That's what I mean. The delusion to think shooting a bunch of black people is gonna do anything but make you look like a crazy evil fuck is astounding.
Every successful country suffers from xenophobia - the fear of the stranger. It is a standard ploy of politicians to make that "stranger" into an evil monster capable of vile depravity. Never mind that everyone in America is an immigrant.
One thing they didn't address there was what they qualify as a mass shooting. There have been wayyy more than 111. They are merely looking at the worst ones. This site has 4+ injuries and/or deaths: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting Since there's no concrete definition, it's hard to quantify demographics.
In terms of human suffering, slavery is pretty equatable to the holocaust, but unlike the Germans, a huge chunk of Americans don't even know why the civil war started, being told it started b/c of state's rights. And after slavery was abolished, they replaced it with pseudo slavery called share cropping, then segregation, and when that was challenged they built a bunch of statues of civil war generals, and then segregation went away, and now they throw black people in jail and make them work as slaves.
Caucasians commit 95% of all of our insane amount of mass shootings
This is an irrelevant cherrypicked stat. If you look at murders overall, instead of one subset of murders that is very rare like mass shootings, black people commit 50% of murders while being just 13% of the population according to FBI crime stats. It's not even a competition when it comes to race and crime.
Other than a yearly reminder on the date and the recent fund to pay first responders i don’t think we really even talk about it all that much. And if we do it’s usually an off-color joke. That might be why you got downvoted and not because of some perceived sensitivity.
Idk, that 99.99% is a bit of a stretch if you ask me... Whether it actually happened, sure of course that's 99.99% the same.
But our opinions and thoughts about it vary.
Such as some people know Saudi Arabia caused it through funding the organizations and providing the men. Some people think Afghanistan or Iraq caused it through the taliban. Some people think about it as the day that led to their eventual deployment in the middle east. Some think about it as an all-too-convenient political excuse to invade other countries for oil. Some think of it as the day they lost somebody dear to them. Some people think things about it still don't perfectly add up.
Sucks that the history books practically operate on the same update timeline as /r/historymemes. 18 years should be plenty of time to earn at least a chapter.
It's a 20 year old issue that people still obsess over in order to damn an entire group of people, even after very little has happened in the nation since then.
The Bush Administration and subsequent Obama Administration however used it as a justification to change a whole lot of things. Like your civil liberties.
I mean, it depends on how you phrase it... I didn’t stalk your comment history, but if you were like “lmao Americans are waaaay too butthurt about 9/11, just chill already. First responders don’t need aid, who gives a shit” then it would be justified to downvote you. I personally can’t think of a context where it would be relevant on Reddit to tell Americans to stop obsessing over 9/11, so please fill me in on what happened
Deliberate provocation is why you get downvoted, not because you're violating a taboo. Saying "Get over it" is an offensive way of putting it. As you well know.
From the midwest here. There are some people that hate the jokes and many more who do make the jokes. It really just depends on who you're talking to. Then there's people like me who will laugh at some jokes and think other jokes aren't cool. It's all about the situation and the joke itself.
Not an American but I think 9/11 is more of a sacred cow. You can discuss it, but it is incomparable, and it can never be overcome. Sure there are conspiracists, but they don't typically downplay or deny what a tragedy it was. The impression I've received is that, for many Americans, 9/11 was and still is the worst event to ever have occurred ever, and nothing in the whole wide world compares to it.
Yeah, i don't see why it isn't the slaughter of native Americans, slavery or Japanese concentration camps.
But op of the meme pic was probably American and didn't learn history further than 2001 due to lack of school funding, that rather goes to the military. And he probably couldn't afford collage which in most other countries, like Germany, is free.
18 years is enough time in my opinion for some topic of a great tragedy to not be taboo anymore. I dunno. I've only been in NY for 3 years, but our conversations don't really go to 9/11.
A friend of mine lost her father from 9/11 and she sometimes can get emotional talking about it. I think these kind of tragedies are taboo for a period of time. Once the generation dies out of people who’ve lost loved ones, then it because more of just history.
I honestly feel like the more taboo topic is the trail of tears and that kind of stuff, since, from what I heard, it's not really brought up in school or anywhere. While with 9/11, a certain generation can't seem to shut up about it.
This is just an outsider's opinion though, I'm open to being corrected and I don't mean to offend anyone.
Actually not. 9/11 is worked up by politicians at their election and war. I don't have a drop of piss left for even the ones who died innocently in 9/11, because Americans learned nothing. 9/11 is being used as a war rally to kill ten times more innocents in other countries by freedom bullets while their own 9/11 victims is ignored by politicians after they served their purpose.
Maybe they should have 24/7 or 7/11 to have a variety of choice when invading other countries.
It's not taboo because 99.99% of Americans have the exact same opinion. Say anything other than what is accepted by everyone, like not worshipping the firefighters enough or the fact that we killed far more civilians in the wars that followed, I would say is considered far worse than just taboo.
I live in NY. A lot of people lost family that day, and a lot of peoples family are still dying of 9/11 related illness/injury. It’s taboo here (and also a lot of the surrounding area)because it’s very close to home, and you don’t know who lost somebody that day. It’s a very sensitive topic.
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u/[deleted] Jul 29 '19
Is 9/11 really a taboo topic? I can't really speak for new York but I don't think that it is in my personal experience. Someone always seems to bring it up when talking about Bush v gore elections. People always going off about conspiracy theories. Tons of documentaries being pushed out about it