9/11 changed the world -- how?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Nowadays I often come across something where the writer says something along the lines of “This is when everything changes.”

We said that after 9/11, too. “Everything” was of course an exaggeration, but I know that lots did change. But when I try to enumerate what changed, the only thing that readily comes to mind is air travel and corresponding security.

I’m thinking that a lot of ways in which the world changed due to 9/11 didn’t happen in an instant, but somewhat slowly so that when I look at the world today and compare it to the world of early 2001, I can’t tell what changed due to 9/11 and what changed because 19 years have passed (and therefore would have changed anyway).

So what has changed due to 9/11?

2

Government overreach and violations of the 1st and 4th Amendment.

Far more than was done before the attacks.

3

Unending war.

4

Pithy answers so far.

Most disturbing ( to me ) is how many more people I’ve heard glibly defend a burgeoning police state by using the same pat excuse: “But they keep us safe…”. The difference of attitude pre/post 9-11 is most apparent. It seems the “shock doctrine” is working as designed.

5

I think thats when warfare moved away from battles between two official state militaries fighting each other and moved more towards special forces, intelligence agencies and law enforcement working together against individuals and terrorist cells.

6

Ask a brown-skinned person what has changed, and I’ll bet they’ll tell you they are living under a whole new paradigm. They are the new whipping boys. People serving them in public places can’t refuse to serve them, but they can serve them last, and refuse to make eye contact when they do. Such people don’t even actually have to be Muslim-- or even Arab, because most dumbfucks in the US can’t tell an Arab from a Sephardic Jew, someone from the subcontinent of India, or even many people with Hispanic backgrounds. I know a Sephardic Jew from Israel, with one Ethiopian grandparent, and a guy from Peru who is a naturalized US citizen, and has been since the 80s, who get all sorts of anti-Muslim shit.

And gawd help you if you really ARE Muslim.

Any time anyone, no matter what their political leaning, sees someone in a military uniform, or finds out you are a veteran, they say “Thank you for your service.” I enlisted in 1993, and officially became a veteran in July, 2001, with my honorable discharge (interestingly, I got all my official paperwork in the mail, including my DD214, and my discharge certificate, in the mail on 9-12-01). I never heard this once before 9-11, and really, not until about halfway through OIF. But I hear it all the time now. My driver’s license has the “veteran” mark on it, because places that have military discounts occasionally extend them to vets, so I just need my license to get it. When I pull it out, the cashier says “Thank you for your service,” and so does anyone in line who is aware of what is happening. I hear it all day long on Veterans’ Day. I also get cards from people on Veterans’ Day. Never got one before. I don’t even think they were a thing before.

A lot more people display flags. People aren’t as flag-crazy as they were before 9-11, but I still see lots more than before. I have noticed that a lot of apartments with outside doors have flagpole sconces, or whatever they are-- those cylindrical holders for porch-display flags.

Having a flag lapel pin no longer indicates that someone leans right.

Security is crazy-fanatic in NYC and Washington, DC. Getting into any kind of landmark requires almost as much security as boarding a plane.

You now need a passport to go to Canada or the US, and soon you are going to need a much more secure driver’s license than previously if you want to travel by plane, even domestically. Even within a state.

Depending on what you do for a job, or where you live, you may have “acts of terrorism” written into your insurance policy as one of the types of damage covered for a house or car. If you have a sensitive job, travel a lot for work, or otherwise might be thought of to be at risk for being the victim of an act of terror, you may have to pay more for life insurance, but you may also get a double indemnity clause.

“Jihad” is now part of our vocabulary, and people use it figuratively.

You can’t enter a bank wearing a hat, or scarf that covers your hair or the lower part of your face.

There are “how-to” books for parents on how to explain terrorism to your small child.

Schools have drills practicing what to do in the event of a bomb threat, or another threat of terrorism. Private schools that can require things public schools can’t often require parents to have an emergency pick-up plan if the student should need to be picked up immediately due to the threat of terrorism.

This one is more in the realm of speculation, but I have read some op-eds, and know some people who hold the opinion that 9/11 is responsible for the more lenient pot laws, including the legalization in some states. It goes like this: with terrorism the new bogeyman, people care much less about drug use, pot in particular, and people also care about law enforcement and the justice system, as well as the prison system having the time and capacity to deal with terrorism, SO, if they are relieved of dealing with low-level drug crimes, that frees up the time and capacity.

Another speculative one is that the “Me too” movement was helped by 9/11, because it helped a lot of people “get” the idea of someone being targeted because they belong to a class of people; the individual may not particularly matter to the perpetrator, and the class may be targeted because of the perpetrator’s prejudices or presumptions, and no other reason.

The last two, I’m personally still thinking about, but I do believe that there are certainly wide-rippling effect, the connection of which to 9/11 may not be immediately obvious.

7

I work in aviation, so I can tell you everything is different there. Yeah, I know - that’s a newsflash to everyone. But to expand…

What I really resent is that flying is now a very unpleasant experience, in a different way than it was previously. Pre-9/11 flying could be fun. I always loved flying, which is how I eventually found my way into the profession. Every time I walk into a commercial airport I resent what we’ve done. And we did it to ourselves, largely.

Hijacking of aircraft was a common occurrence some decades ago. The difference was that the hijackers generally wanted to live through it. OK, we learned the hard way on 9/11 that wasn’t going to be the paradigm going forward. So cockpit doors were armored, crew changed procedures to never allow an unauthorized person past it and we committed to some better screening. That should have been sufficient, IMHO.

But no. Here we are years later still enduring some frankly stupid rules because a guy tried to blow up his underwear, now a long time ago. Or because of theoretical threats involving liquids. We can’t question any of these rules effectively because that would require the powers that be to disclose in detail why those rules are in place, thus enshrining a Catch-22 in our system. We created a whole new cabinet position and department for this crap, and hired a workforce that is now the subject of derision*.

What saddens me most is the “officious” nature of it all. There’s no way to have intelligent exceptions to these policies, which is why we still see people exposed to inappropriate screening. I find it very disheartening, and I don’t see how it can change for the better. No politician, not even a single-issue crusader, is going to make that their focus.

  • I try to be very polite to TSA workers, not because I think anything good about the organization per se, but because I realize they are trapped in a frustrating situation enforcing very stupid rules that they didn’t personally make. That said, I’m dismayed by how often I see them acting rudely.
8

Llama, Llama, Llama, if you think flying was less fun after 9/11, you are going to "love the post-pandemic era. Temperature readers at airports, mandatory health certificates to cross international (and occasionally national) borders are just a taste of things to come.

9

Security almost everywhere changed after 9/11, not just airports, but nuclear facilities, embassies, court houses, museums, hell even sporting events and concerts.

10

Driver’s License pictures are even worse now.

11

The increase in security over the past 20 years was not just because of 9/11 though; it was also because of the increased number of mass shootings and the increased media coverage of them.

12

Not in Canada.

13

What 9-11 gave us specifically was a new Other, to replace the one that had disappeared into a wave of democracy in 1991. This Other is robust and undying, but also relatively ineffective (they can’t end the world with a flip of a switch). Nevertheless, the tactics of the radical minority have been effective, not in killing our nation from without, but in killing it from within. The evils mentioned in the above two posts have been done largely with the population’s consent, because they are afraid of the nearly infinitesimal possibility that they will be hurt suddenly and without warning.

It’s interesting to me how different this era is from the Balance of Terror that held sway when I was growing up in the 50’s and 60’s. There you had two approximately equal powers either of which could effectively destroy the world. Most people during that time, though, were not paralyzed by fear, nor did we think the world was actually going to end, it was just too unthinkable. During the Cuban Missile Crisis we kind of held our breath for a few days, but that was the exception. And if the world did end, that would just be it, and we’d all be in the same boat. (Cue Tom Lehrer, “We Will All Go Together When We Go”)

But we have since learned that we can be hurt, and that a relatively small amount of damage can cause widespread fear of the Other. What is it we’re afraid of? That we or someone we care about will be in a plane or a building or otherwise minding our business and be killed out of the blue, and lots of other people won’t be touched. That somehow seems to make it worse, to be one of just a relatively few that are hurt and for everyone else life goes on. All those other people left behind to imagine the worst, how terrified those victims must have been, and how it would be if it happened to them. We can’t let that happen again, it must be prevented at any cost. Any cost. And bye bye protections against government over-reach and hello endless war.

14

Remember that FEMA was created by Carter in 1979, and Homeland Security just carried it scross the codification line when 9/11 conveniently underscored the value of what has come about. 9/11 was a watershed of perception, not a first call for action.

The pre-9/11 FEMA had well-known ramifications.

15

I think the biggest impact was that the Bush administration used it as an excuse to invade Iraq, which resulted in the destabilization of the Middle East. The invasion also marked the beginning of the end for the US as the global hegemon and we are now at the end of Pax Americana and we are just seeing the resorting of the world under this new reality.

16

Agreed. The al-Qaeda goal was to remove Western influences from the Mideast, to kill the West’s will to interfere, by destroying Westarn stability. They failed with the former but succeeded with the latter. America tearing itself apart with this crap means al-Q won.

Note that Dubya was installed, not by a popular vote, but by a partisan SCOTUS, some of whose members should have recused themselves because close relatives (wife, son) were officers in Dubya’s campaigns. Tramp was installed by a rigged electoral system. We see how well luzer presidents have worked out - badly.

IMHO the main US 9-11 aftermath is toxic partisan politics and blatant corruption in the name of national security or whatever. All this plays into Putin’s hands. GOPs should be ashamed of their Make Amerikkka Gutless Again program. None dare call it treason.

17

When you say “9/11 changed the world”, do you really mean “9/11 changed the United States”?

18

In courthouses in the United States (and then in other government offices), this goes back much farther, to the 1970 abductions and murders of a judge and others in a high-profile courtroom kidnapping case in Marin County, Ca.

Marin County Civic Center attacks

After that, courts all began to have security and metal detectors like you see now.