06-05-2018, 06:13 PM
(06-04-2018, 07:31 PM)TheNomad Wrote: No, because America turned back quickly to an Unraveling mood. The President told people to "travel" and "go shopping", much in contrast to the response to the Pearl Harbor attack. After "the Date that will live in Infamy", America quickly put an end to luxury production and started rationing. The government pushed war bonds and military production. Young men in large numbers signed up for military service at the expense of lucrative civilian careers.
The only high-prominence sport, film star to sacrifice his career on behalf of his country was NFL star Pat Tillman, who eventually died for his choice. What equivalent of Jimmy Stewart or Ted Williams joined the US Armed Forces after 9/11? From 2001 the government promoted a speculative boom in real estate, including such rip-offs as mortgages with negative amortization. Maybe journalists tried to compare 9/11 to Pearl Harbor, but the generational cycle suggests that such timing was off. Those journalists gave up on that talk quickly as nothing came to resemble the American response to World War II pulling America in.
Quote:I'll address this because the rest was more about the 2008 issue.
The president told people a lot of things. It is not appropriate that a president told people to do things when that means nothing compared to what the people actually did. You say all these people signed up to go to war and while true, THAT war was very different from 911. They tried as hard as they could to make it the same scenario but due to the large common feeling those wars were about lies and not about protecting anything American, we did have some who hurried to sign up and fight but not so many (as you have astutely made clear).
Just imagine FDR telling people to ramp up their consumer spending after Pearl Harbor. That takes some imagination, as that is not what happened. Luxury spending all but vanished from the American economy. I was all ready to buy war bonds and work in a defense plant had I been encouraged to do so.
Quote: If you don't think 911 is a "date that will live in infamy" I think that is a misnomer on your part. Everyone knows where they were on that date, there were massive changes to our society that still linger today, the mere mention of that date is in everyone's mind who were alive then and even those who were not born yet. Just like WWII a slew of war films came from 911 when prior to that a war film was probably unheard of as anything anyone would want to see in a theater or for entertainment.
Many dates can 'live in infamy', as might September 25, 1986 among fans of the Boston Red Sox, when a ground ball went between the legs of Bill Buckner for an error, turning what (had Buckner played the ball cleanly) would otherwise have given the Red Sox their first World Championship since the 1910s into a chance for the Mets to win a Game 7 -- which they did.
Of course there is one date that one associates with FDR's appeal to Congress for a declaration of war against the gangster empire of Japan. One uses such rhetoric with care because it has had one unforgettable use.
Quote:You seem to only want to accept 911 as part of the Crisis of this saeculum when in your mind it mirrors your views on what happened due to a pearl harbor event. Again, I make the claim most of your insights are somewhat wholly subjective. Subjectivity is what needs to be abandoned to find realism. Subjectivity is an echo chamber. It serves no one. However, as I keep saying, subjectivity is the defining trait of your generation.
You may have a problem with reading comprehension -- sorry -- I have never called the 9.11 as a Crisis event in the sense that the Confederates firing upon Fort Sumter or the Japanese naval and air forces performing an unprovoked attack upon American naval facilities. America reacted far differently after 9/11. Rhe 9.11 attack is a war crime and an act of war -- but so was the Zimmermann telegram that led to American involvement in World War I.
The generational constellation for 9/11 might be a harbinger of a Crisis; I compared a short-term financial panic and the 'anarchist purge' after WWI as non-Crisis events.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.