Everything After - A 9.11 Youth Circle

I guess you've all seen it by now; I'm mentioned in the article featured on WireTap. They sent an article WireTap's did about this group to everyone in our newsgroup by email.

Was impressed to see myself in there:

"But at the same time, back in the U.S., a boy in Florida, Sergei, said 'how this attack could alter anyone's values puzzles me,' arguing that the last presidential elections had a bigger impact on his life.

How can youth in distant Siberia feel more of a connection with the attacks of 9.11 than a boy living in the country where they occurred? Perhaps the youth in Siberia are over-empathizing, both with the Americans and the people in Afghanistan. And perhaps Sergei in Florida isn't thinking about how the war that followed changed the American psyche and our perceptions about civil liberties."

That got me to thinking, "DID the war change the American psyche"? As for the topic of civil liberties, I actually thought about that issue enough to start my own topic on it on our old group (Group 3). I certainly can't say MY views on civil liberties has changed any. And then the question we have to ask is "What changes in perceptions about civil liberties?" Have the changes been Americans who didn't care about their rights anymore once the towers had been attacked? Or those who changed to value civil liberties more, or at least more militantly, because of the blatant karate chops on the Constitution being proposed after the attack and the horrors of the War on Terrorism -- showing people how easy it was for these things to be taken away that they had thought were a given? It seems the main change is not-exactly-libertarian people who wouldn't have been so vocal before, now parading their support of new government proposals and contempt of the concept of civil liberties to toe the line.

Did you find your quote anywhere in the article?

I read that whole article too -- even though none of my posts were included. Now as for the changes to the American psyche ... the talk about things changing is so much a media soundbite. People were talking about how the whole world "has changed" practically the moment the towers were done talking over, even before people got any opportunity to observe how people were behaving or what they thought. People noticed flags and announced that the world had changed forever, and it barely took any time at all before the media came up with a few clich�s and sterotypes that they announced indicated a "changed mood". From what you read back then, you would think people would never want to watch a violent movie again and that the American people were going to let go of entertainment and frivolous things. You would think that Americans would unite and put everything unrelated to terrorism behind us, that we would be nicer, that no more people would argue. It was predicted it would be the end of pop culture, especially the youth culture that centers around feelings of alienation from the system, the government, and anything "traditional". Even then, it only took a couple of months before people began talking about how everything was "back to normal", and how culture/media makers had underestimated people's craving for entertainment or ability to get over the attacks.

By now we've seen statistics being released, and it's turned out we've seen more and more the absence of changes in society every time a new one is discovered. It keeps looking more and more doubtful.

I, for one, didn't believe that America had united the days after the nation lost its World Trade Center and a war was in the planning. The people who were beating of other Americans of Middle Eastern descent certainly weren't united with everyone ... nor were their victims. At school all the liberals were still liberal, the conservatives still conservative, no one was saying "I'll stand together with everyone". People didn't even give up their causes to focus on terrorism or on fighting the war. Not to mention that they all went out for pizza afterwards.

Now that I reflect on myself, I guess not even my own values are changed. Which is good, because it probably means I had the right values in the first place.

I believe that SOME of my values have changed. I still have MANY of the same views on politics, religion, and other major issues as I had before. I'm still a complete socialist and I still believe almost everything Christianity has taught me. But I must say that after the attacks, I now have a closer relationship with God; I have become closer to many of my friends and other kids in my school because of the discussions we had immediately following the attacks. We now stand outside afterschool and while playing Hacky Sack have political and philosophical discussions. (It's starting to scare a couple of the teachers who hang out with us...). But to me, most everything HAS "gone back to normal", whatever "normal" was in the first place. I get up every morning and I go to school. I go to classes, I eat lunch with my friends. I go to more classes, I hang out with my friends. I laugh, I cry. I read, I watch TV. I do everything I did on September 10th. What really did change? isn't the question we need to ask. We can tell ourselves that. The question we need to ask is: "Should anything have changed?" What do you guys think?

Yeah, a better relationship with God, just where you need it. Praying is something that people did a lot more, as that's something people do in any times of trouble, regardless of the permanence. I agree with both Lindsay and Paul on their topics on this. People do their normal things and most of us hold the same ideology, but this did wonders for people's spirits.

Yeah, I certainly remember hearing prognosticators say that funky pop culture is soon to come to an end and counterculture values have their days numbered, while traditional values will return. The fact that THAT didn't change I'm sure shocked a lot of people.

What SHOULD have changed but didn't? Homophobia is one point we've mentioned. This event did so little to permanently alter people's ideologies that people who believed homosexuality was a sin, let alone wanted the government to enforce discriminatory laws against it, didn't change their attitude one bit. After seeing what these values steeped in religious fundamentalism did on September 11, a big lesson about this fundamentalist stuff was exposed to the world. Those who needed the learn the lesson the most didn't even notice it. There was a big reaction against Jerry Falwell's statement right after the attacks, but even he was more or less forgiven-and-forgotten by his old constituents in the months that passed. So that's one lesson that passed the world by.