don't panic

[calimac]

So I already wrote that I didn't think 9/11 fundamentally changed my perception of the world. "We'd long been vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Even people who read Tom Clancy novels would have known that. The WTC had actually been attacked once before. There was reason to respond, but absolutely no need to rewrite our foreign policy."

Now comes a post by Matthew Yglesias explaining why it did. "I think the thing about the event that’s hard to understand if you didn’t live through it is how much everyone changed their subjective assessment of the likely of major terrorist attacks. The earlier World Trade Center bombing had happened, the US embassy bombings had happened, we had movies about terrorists, it’s not like it was some unknown thing — but it wasn’t live."

So I guess that gives the explanation of why I wasn't "everyone" - or, if you take his formulation literally, anyone. I didn't watch it on television. I told you: I'd given up watching TV news, even for breaking events. Talking heads yammering away endlessly, filling in the long gaps between new information by endlessly recapping what they'd already said. Who needs this when you've got the web? If something dramatically newsworthy happens, I open a browser tab to a reliable news source, and then go about my other work on the computer. Every half hour or so - new info doesn't filter in much faster than that - I pop over to the tab, hit "refresh," and see if anything has been added.

Embedded film clips were rare on the web then, and I never actually saw film of the planes hitting the towers until Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 came out three years later.

Maybe this is responsible for my more sober reaction (even Yglesias admits that he had been "caught up in what looks, in retrospect, like a kind of hysteria and I was wrong"), or maybe a more sober approach is why I chose this method of absorbing the news.

(Also, the towers had already collapsed by the time I got to work and started following the news - that happened at around 7 AM Pacific time. Perhaps time zones also affected my reaction?)

Comments

[duskpeterson]

I saw the collapse - in quick glimpses of the TV, because I'd just become visually impaired - after the towers had collapsed. But I lived outside Washington, DC, which made a difference in my reaction from yours. My ex worked for a government contractor, my father and stepmother live close to the Capitol, and my mother - who I thought was perfectly safe in the suburb we both lived in - turned out to be visiting a doctor near the White House that day.

My mother (on the phone to me that day): ". . . People are saying that this might be an attack on the World Trade Organization, so during a break in the medical tests, I went over to the gates of the World Trade Center here and talked to the guard at the gates. He confessed he's rather nervous--"

Me: "Mother! Stay inside!"

It was a nerve-wracking day in my family.

(My ex's brother was on duty as a baggage handler for United Airlines.)

[ranunculus]

You were a LOT closer than I was that day, by about 3,000 miles. I can totally understand why you might get a bit frantic about it.

[ranunculus]

I'm with you on this one. We had warnings, and then they suceeded with a rather spectacular target.
My reaction on 9-11 was this.
I was up reasonably early (for the US west coast) and was prepairing to go to Ukiah. Our roommate came out and said a plane hit the twin towers. I said yes and continued getting ready to go. To be fair I had no idea it was an airliner, all I could imagine was a small plane off course and out of control. I don't think that would have changed my mind to know that it was an airliner. When my roommate saw that I was still packing he said: "you aren't really going to GO"? I said yes, and he said but, but, tragedy!! I said: "well, I can do nothing to change the outcome. It is 3,000 miles away and I can be of no help what-so-ever; meanwhile I CAN do something productive at the Ranch".
Two hours later at the Ranch my mother and sister were watching endless replays of about 3 clips of the disaster. I watched them through twice, determined that I could do nothing productive about it and went out and fixed fence in the fresh air with the radio OFF.
I'm glad I did it that way, and didn't spend the day obsessing over a horrible tragedy I had no control over. In the end I was less traumatized by the event than most I know.
I've now spent the 20th anniversary of 9-11 out at a competative trail obstacle competition. These are very friendly competitions that focus entirely on displaying a horse and rider's skill, quietness and cooperation in negotiating obstacles. Almost anyone can do a basic level. No fancy equipment or clothes. The competition focuses on building cooperation between horse and handler/rider without violence. Lots of very nice people.