Yes we have a serious problem with that. I’m not sure what that has to do with a large threat like 9/11 though. We lost 3000 Americans in a day. We can discuss that without having to bring in every problem at once.
That's entirely the point. Instead of small problems that are consistent and easy to ignore, it was a singular event that's much easier to focus on. That's why so many politicians used it as an opportunity to consolidate power and enact draconian legal protections.
9/11 wasn't just "bad thing happen" it was "big bad to distract from small bad".
In Europe we’ve been ignoring the real issues with excuses for a long time. Now we see a lot of discontent and a political shift right. That’s not gonna solve anything, but it’s a symptom or result of not facing the problems we have.
A massive terror attack? I consider that unlikely.
A generation-defining historical event? We had one in Covid.
A mass casualty event? Again, Covid.
An excuse to wage war on another country, remove American rights, consolidate government power, and enrich certain people? I think that’s quite possible. It worked extremely well for that purpose once.
(note I’m not one of those “9/11 was an inside job” conspiracy nuts, I just think there were some very smart, very greedy, and very evil people who seized the opportunity of 9/11 to effect the awful stuff)
I think we’ll have an environmental “9/11” moment fairly soon where a major American city gets flooded and the waters don’t recede and large parts of the city will need to migrate elsewhere. There will be a lot of handwringing, and news channels going, “How could this have happened?”, and stuff like that. Similar to Katrina I think, but it’ll affect more white people this time, so that’ll make it worse.
As for terrorist attacks, yeah that shit will keep happening, maybe not at the scale of planes crashing into stuff, but there will probably be significant, mass-casualty events I should think.
I think it’s more likely that we will see smaller scale attacks by domestic terrorists, ranging from mass shootings to something on the scale of a Timothy McVeigh. I can also see a probability of a return to a 1960s/1970s level of political violence and assassinations.
I think those are more likely than a large scale attack from foreign terrorists.
Twice a week? According to this, there were 346 school shootings in the US in 2023. Almost enough for one per day. Then remember holidays and the winter and summer breaks…
I think this stat only counts K-12 schools too, not colleges.
Oh god, why do I do this to myself…fuck, ok, here we go
deep breath
Like almost all gun statistics that are shared in left-leaning media, this one is grossly misleading.
Casting a wide net, the database captures not only incidents in which a gun is fired on school property, but also those in which a bullet hits school property, whether or not school is in session. Incidents in which a gun is brandished but not fired and those in which there are no victims are also included.
So in this case, a “school shooting” can include incidents where there was literally not a single shot fired at all by anyone. A kid bringing his parents’ gun to school and showing it to his friends is counted as a “school shooting”.
People are not rational when it comes to guns, abortion, anything to do with children, etc. Contributing information is usually a bad idea and roundly rejected.
We lose more than a 9/11’s worth of people every day still due to COVID. The presence of other factors that result in death in no way erases this amount of loss, and yet we’re so numb to this it almost feels like it isn’t happening anymore to most of us.
Unfortunately I think we’re all too desensitized from the last decade or so to care if anything does happen, but I genuinely hope I’m wrong. It’s not looking good, though.
I recently read a book by a retired agent about the effort against terrorism. If I remember correctly, terrorism has changed substantially since 9/11. The author described that terrorist nowadays are still organised more or less centrally but have a focus on smaller activities. I remember them describing them as “Nike terrorists” because of Niles slogan “just do it”. The smaller and more isolated activities are apparently much harder to detect and counter than massive attempts like 9/11
As someone who is not American, it’s so obvious that your shit is a bit fucked. Everyone is so deeply unhappy, it’s being channelled into political partisanship.
Honestly I don’t think there’s any way to get back on track without some kind of event that galvanises you.
I was thinking that a more imminent or physical threat would be “galvanising” but then, the way information gets all twisted around these days, I don’t think such an event really exists.