@evan very important. A Danish tech news site just informed me that 9/11 was the birth bed of surveillance capitalism. In a way, that makes me feel like the terrorists have won...
"U.S. response to 9/11 led us on the trail of a new data-authoritarian regime" in Danish: https://radar.dk/holdning/kommentar-usas-reaktion-paa-911-ledte-os-paa-sporet-af-et-nyt-data-autoritaert-styre

@evan Historically and politically, very important. But in terms of commemoration at this point? Very unimportant, except to people with a close personal connection (like people who lose friends or family).

@evan in terms of historical events, very important. everything got a lot worse fast and never recovered, and a lot of people died in the pointless wars that followed. i don't think i've ever seen as an abrupt and stark change in the people around me and in the broader world as back then.

as an anniversary, it is very unimportant. the fash milked every last drop out of it, and the healthiest thing we could possibly do is not try to live in that moment forever.

@evan
I think knowing the history and what actually happened is important. Many of the draconian population controls spawned in once everyone was convinced to be terrified of anyone from the middle east, and by extension, anywhere but white-centered America.

@evan I think in terms of the victims and those they left behind, it’s been hugely important.

Though IMO, not enough focus has been placed on it’s cause, that being meddling in other countries’ affairs, overthrowing gov’ts, assassinating heads of state, destabilizing economies, starting wars, perpetuating extractive capitalism, etc.

9/11 didn’t happen in a vacuum, and I feel like to this day, most of the response has been around airport security and immigration, as opposed to national soul-searching about how this nation treats others.

@evan not very. That day on 2001 was the day the US first started to get paranoid and their paranoia has now spread to all air travel protocols, which is kind of annoying, but I think it servers more as a marker of when people noticed something was happening rather than consequential to the thing itself

(I may be biased as my family was in a very remote area at the time and we only heard about it on a long-distance phone call a few days later, but then again the US is itself very far away)

@evan As a historical event extremely important. It defined a lot of things over the subsequent two decades.

@evan After the Cold War, many in the West thought that the end of history had finally arrived; that global affairs were on the right course at last; and that democracy, liberty and trade would gradually spread through the world, freeing men and women and decreasing poverty.

9/11 woke the US from that pleasant dream.

On the other hand, if it hadn't been 9/11, it would have been something else, maybe Pres. Putin. Somewhat important.

@evan
To me 9/11/1973 was more important than 2001.

@evan Important but that was the day we started to descend into stupidity and have not recovered since.

@evan

Somewhat unimportant.

Right after 9/11 happened people at work organized a memorial event. Again on the first anniversary. And again on the second (I worked in a different department after that).

I wouldn't have gone, but social pressure forced me to attend. I thought a 9/11 memorial was horribly hypocritical, there were never any memorials for all the people killed in other countries, some by the very country we were memorializing.

@evan was the start of the end of democracy

@evan I voted “very important” because, historically, it marked the beginning of the US slide into the paranoia and fascism we see today. Suddenly, US citizens were confronted with their vulnerability.