Vernon on 12/9/2011 at 07:24
I know this isn't the point of the image, but JFK was one of the most vicious, murdering bastards of modern times. I'm still baffled by people believing the bullshit mythos surrounding this guy
Syndy/3 on 12/9/2011 at 08:07
Can we ban Vernon now?
SubJeff on 12/9/2011 at 09:10
Quote Posted by Shug
I was on a two-week high school exchange in Japan, and from memory we more or less woke up to the footage on TV.
You must have had an early night then. I was in Taiwan at the time, for only 3 days!, and was approached by a Taiwanese guy thinking I was American who told me (in Taiwanese I couldn't understand whilst we were buying amazing food off some street vendors) that a plane had hit the WTC. My friend (a local) translated and told me the guy was full of it.
I knew something wasn't right. It was far too bizarre a thing for someone (even in Taiwan, which gets plenty strange) to come up and tell you.
We took the food upstairs and 4 of us watched the news while we ate. I remember thinking that this was potentially the start of some sort of WW3 or something. I was too shocked to be horrified and the way it panned out on CNN and whatever other US news channels the Taiwanese were using that day (they do this weird screen-in-screen thing) it was like a disaster movie unfolding.
It's only been in the following ten years that I've come to be horrified by it. The days, weeks and months afterwards felt too... fragile for me to think about it that way, what with all the Nu Wars and media circus all in your face not giving you time to think. I'm not a fan of a lot of US policy or political culture, but that really was one fucked up day.
heywood on 12/9/2011 at 09:18
For the record, the bill funding health care & compensation for 9/11 first responders did pass during the lame duck session. Not without some objections, but nobody was politically suicidal enough to record a no vote.
Now that 10 years has gone by, I hope we can start to look at 9/11 and terrorism in general with a bit of perspective. Considering where 9/11 fits in the scale of human tragedies, including natural disasters, economic disasters, and armed conflict, our reaction has been disproportionate. And I think we've done more harm to ourselves through our reactions to 9/11 than we suffered through the initial loss of 3000 people and a few buildings. I'm talking about the growing sense of victimhood in our culture, loss of individual liberties and privacy, opportunity costs of spending trillions on foreign wars and security bureaucracy, strained relations with our allies, and rising mistrust & conspiracy.
And aside from the brief period immediately following 9/11, I feel like we've steadily lost unity and purpose. American culture has traditionally been optimistic and forward looking and that had been one of our best strengths. But now I see that being replaced with complacency, a sense of entitlement, and pining for the old days of the 20th century. We've gone soft and I think that 9/11 and terrorism fears continue to be used as a crutch.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that I wouldn't have discovered TTLG if not for the Deus Ex - 9/11 connection. If I remember right, I had finished DX before, but after the attacks I started playing again and I was searching out conversation about some of the parallels which is what led me here.
Scots Taffer on 12/9/2011 at 13:56
Yeah, I take it all back. demagogue's post was definitely an interesting read. It's amazing how the cultural similarities make 9/11 so resonant to the whole western world, it may be wrong but I cannot watch the footage of that day as easily as I can watch the tsunami in Japan or the floods that hit my home city. It may be that it was not an act of nature and something in the fact that it was a direct attack, but I think in terms of engendering a psyhological response - to paraphrase counter strike - the terrorists won. I have more than once felt uncomfortable in my office tower when a plane has roared nearby and we're still seeing the cause and effect ripple through international relations with no end in sight.
Muzman on 12/9/2011 at 16:08
Hmm yeah, I was reading some stuff like Veron must have been reading recently.
(
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2011/07/jfk_worst_president_of_the_20t.php) JFK: Worst President of the 20th Century?
Dunno about worst, but it did make me think about what exactly it was that makes people like him so much. He's pleasant and managed to not start a nuclear war. Space program's pretty good I guess. After that I got nothing really. (people closer to home likely to have more to say on the subject I suspect).
Carter always seemed like a worthwhile guy from what I read about it, largely screwed by circumstances. In that regard Obama does seem similar to me. But I suppose everyone is mad he's not a storming ass kicker who takes shit from exactly no one (similar to Carter) and thereby guaranteed to not get a second term either way. You really want FDR in the middle picture I'm thinking.
The American Leftpartoftheirentirelyringthwingpolitics seems to get mad at these guys for being soft so they let them get kicked out and get the likes of Reagan instead, who seems to have at least overseen the seeding of ...oh.. everything major wrong in the world at the moment.
If you do want the meanest ball breaker in there you just need to get over whatever bullshit and put Hillary in. Since that seems unlikely, so long as Obama is only disappointing and not actively Palpatinian, concentrating on not getting President Perry or whatever nightmare the conservatives are brewing seems like the thing to do.
scarykitties on 12/9/2011 at 16:43
Quote Posted by Rug Burn Junky
To be fair, while it may have been slow going for years, it's decidedly not just a hole anymore. I wish I had pictures (or better yet, a time lapse), because I walk past it about once a week, and have been amazed at the progress. In the past three months, the freedom tower has shot up about 70 stories, and really is starting to take shape.
Huh, interesting. Any idea what design they settled on, then? I know that the Freedom Tower was redesigned multiple times since some of the designs were excessively ornate and too ambitious. Then there was the risk of provoking another attack by building in the same location, not to mention the difficulty of raising funds to build the tower and encourage businesses to purchase office space at Ground Zero.
9/11 I was in 6th grade, I believe. School halted and the teachers rolled televisions into the classrooms for the students to watch the live reports. The general attitude of the class was that they were glad for the attack to get a break from their schoolwork, and about half the class laughed as we watched people tumbling from the high windows of the WTC to the ground.
Gingerbread Man on 12/9/2011 at 16:59
I gotta agree with this. Provided that we ignore the fact that Kennedy was a douchebag with a God Complexx
Mr.Duck on 12/9/2011 at 20:42
Well, to Kennedy's favor he did (apparently) bang Marilyn Monroe.
scarykitties on 12/9/2011 at 20:58
Yes, because how much game a president gets is completely related to how well that president's ethical and economic ideals either build up or break down a nation of hundreds of millions.
I mean, hell, things are going into the shitter over Obama, but at least he probably gets blowjobs. So it's all good, right?
